Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 12:56:25 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711141756.MAA08475@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: pragmatics X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 3319 X-From-Space-Date: Fri Nov 14 12:56:26 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU [Not so much off-topic as "hypertopic", this, I think.] la robin. cusku di'e > Ellis, J.M. (1993) _Language, Thought and Logic_. Evanston: Northwestern > University Press. > > It's an interesting, if somewhat extreme book, in which Ellis lays into > just about every linguist and philosopher of language around - about the > only people he likes are Saussure and the later Wittgenstein. Ellis' (and > my own) objection to "encoding" as a metaphor for language is that in the > normal meaning of the word you encode one sign as another by ceratin rules. > I do not think that language encodes meaning in this sense. There is no > meaning CAT which is encoded by the word "cat"; as Ellis says, nothing is > "just a cat". It's not obvious to me that nothing is "just a cat" - or at least I don't get the point. > There is a category which (in English) is implied by the > written word "cat" and the vocalisation /kat/ (lack of phonemic symbols > means I've just aquired a Geordie accent!), [Does that mean you are another English Lojbanist? There aren't many of us, at least not at the moment.] > but these do not _encode_ > anything, unless you believe in "mentalese" (Pinker, 1993). I'm somewhat mystified. Mention of Saussure & Wittgenstein gives me a very very vague inkling of what the gist of this idea is, but nothing I can get a grip on at all. It is pretty much universally accepted that words are phonological signifiers. I happen not to believe that, though I believe it to be true of stems and sentences. Even so, there is still some sense in which the rules of a language translate deterministically from sentences to meanings. OK, I should take a look at Ellis's book, but if you have the patience then perhaps you might have another go at explaining. (One of the things I like about Lojban list is the way it is a confluence of thoughtful people coming from very different intellectual backgrounds. Very educational.) > la .and. cusku di'e > > >Pragmatics is partly communication and partly social interaction. > >Neither are inherently or exclusively linguistic. By "language > >proper" I meant "stuff to do with language that can be studied > >in and of itself, not as a nondiscrete subpart of some larger > >field". > > Then you're left with very little, I'm afraid! That's the problem with > Generative Linguistics: first you lose pragmatics, then you lose semantics, Generative Linguistics does not see this as a problem. Part of its broad research program is to establish a principled division of the field of language-related studies into discrete domains. I find that rather insightful. You don't "lose" pragmatics; rather, you assign pragmatics to other larger domains. But you don't ignore them. Or rather, you ignore them only when wearing your pure-linguistician's hat. > then syntax gets compressed into an increasingly abstract set of principles > and parameters, until linguistics becomes a minute and non-discrete part of > cognitive science. Linguistics proper is but a small part of language-related studies, but so what? Also, it's a branch of cognitive science only on certain views (those where both lx and cog sci are mentalist disciplines, or those where neither are mentalist). > Oh yeah, and isn't "encoding" supposed to be part of > semiotics? I don't know. --And