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8/15/2019 Givon Logic Pragmatics Epistemology
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Journal of Pragmetics 6 ( 1982) 8I=. 23
Narth~Hailand Publishing Company
The history of the treatment af bath semantics and pragmatics in Linguistics has been until
recently a captive of over-Iogiciaation, where the dcduc.i:vc, algorithmic, close-ended,
I:ontcxt-free
properties of the system were oa*er-cmphasiaed o the dc’rimeat 01’ more realistic view of facts of
natural language. A careful survey of even the traditional preoccupations of
hgicians and
philosophers of language, such as reference, definite description OPpresupposition, nz vcals hh\t the
Iogico-dedrxtive treatment of these subjects misrcprcsentcd
8/15/2019 Givon Logic Pragmatics Epistemology
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foundations, however, are buried in a facile and superficial analysis of an
artificially-narrow
tanp of language faces, culled from a narrower yet range of
natural
lmguqes, ancil
orced into an analytic mould that has little regard for
the burden of empirical validation. This tradition has persisted in one guise or
another via the two er;trernist schools of Western eplsternology - P.ationalism
and Empiricism -
through the medieval Mc4istae and their Thor& and
Anselmic descendents, an through the
Part Rayd se’hd
and the Age &de
Raison, then onward through the first formal logicians OS he 19th century,
eventually coming into full bloom in the Logical Positivists of the early 20th
century and their anti4nguistic bias. Modern American Linguistics, while
the frey rr:latively late in the early 1960’s, fell squarely into ;an
hed formal Isgico-deductive tradition in its approach to the an
meaning, on both sides of the so-called Great Debate.
Challenges to the logico-deductive analysis of’ meaning begin with CS.
Peirce in the second half c the 19th century,, via a tradition that traces it&f
back to Kant. A simirar challenge was mounted later on by Wittgenstein,
roughly contemporaneous to the ascent of Logical Positivism. These early
challenges were quickly neutralized by the growing power and prestige of the
“more rigorous”
:formal logicians. Within Positivism itself, the early broader-
scoped Russell and Whitehead slowly gave way to narrower formalists such as
Carnap, Tarski and Montague. Iiy #ihenPeirce had been (effectively co-opted by
social philosophers and the impact of his pragmaitism on epistemology thus
largely obscured. The early Wittgenstein was admired as a brilliant
the late Wittgenstein yulasdismissed by the Positivists as impressio
Formal logicians had of course, b;y then, been en
,aged in a rear-guard battle
agains’t the encroaching shadow of context-depe
Idence in human Iaqua
aeducing
the open-ended complexity of reference and
defi
neatly-packaged deductive-logic formulae, while ruminatin
old-time favorites such as quantification and
predication.
language meaning and communicritive use was left largely
disturbed. Thus
when American linguistics was at last readly to
outgrow
strictures which relegated Semantics to either the natural sciences or to
Mathematics ( 10lloon~b~ield933: 154, 153), the seductive
was the only game in town. And so, elaborate deductive-lo
as the Katz and Fodor “model” soon spra
ing to represent meanin
as a closed syste
“rtiles”.
When Pragmiatics finally reared its
ly head in Amc
entle whimper. The
Sapir-
then a cxgent observation (2
121The original hypthesi:b was two-edged, allowing either that l~~gu~~g~WIS ~ultu~~~~~~nd~slt or
that culture was language-constrained (W’horf IWd),
8/15/2019 Givon Logic Pragmatics Epistemology
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thus context dep ndency of Ian
e and meaning. Both early and late
structuralists were not impressed, and soon ma
the observations to “cultural vocabulary” and tl
sties at the very mar
same issues in his
ian nave , Of the post-
ed entities shn~h as
“bekief ‘,
“interlt”, “judge’“,
Peters (19759, inter alia).
very soul of PragmEiics may >e given initially as
the four properties in tab1
1,
c:ontrasted with tieductive logic.
The implications of Pr matics to the st\;dy of human language and human
nition are immense, b the Positivist tradition in Logic and its bobsie-twin,
Generative tradi on in Linguis1ics, seem to force all pragmiktic incursion
into one or two blin strangulation in irrelevant formalism, or
toward marginal exist
le ling-istic system. And
it seems that no am
Ie contrary, culled from
psycho
uistics, disburse studies, developmental psychology or perception.
has so
succeeded in dentin this doctrinaire delusion of modern linguistics
In this paper I propose to erform an epistemolo cal c-OURk grace upon
this stale and mis uided tradition. I will first tackle s e OS he more habitual
Table I
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preserves of the deductive logician, such as reference, definite description and
presupposition, showing how a deductive-logical analysis, while attractive and
on occasion self-consistent. has very little to do with the actual meaning system
used in natural language.
f
will then proceed to discuss more complex cases
which formal logicians have - for good reasons presumably - consistently
avoided. The main argument I hope to present, that the meaning system in
natural language is inherently of a pragmatic nature, will be made cumuMvely
and with an eye to one fundamenttal truth of science - and a fundamental
feature of pragmatics: that
cmnplete
proof is a deceptive mirage, and that
science is bound
‘to
accept lwi h grace the: pragmatically-tainted
prep~n~~~rff~~ce
of evidmce
[3].
On the face lof it, this old bastion of logic-bound analysis seems alto
context-free, depending in no way on entities outside the bounds of the atomic
proposition -.
__^_
or CVCII outside the bounds of tiie quantified argument (NP)
itself. Logicians could thus with impunity posit an “existential quantifier” that
would instantiate an. individlual argument into some “real world”, or so it
seems. One may of course rzise superficial arguments concerning pronouns
whose co-referents are non-referential, as in:
(1) I am looking for LJ
orse,
and
rt
better be white
But this can be “handled” via the modal ogic of “possible worlds”. And while
such a treatment involves the tacit assumption that existence and reference do
not i~~lve mapping into
the
real world, but rather into a unioer.se
o~dismurse,
the logician could still consi(der the “bulk” of reference to involve
this
real
world, and relegate modal areas to the margins of the system.
There are other cases, however, which make the predicament involved in
defining existence in logical terms more acute. The / involve the refer~n~~e-~~in
properties of many languages, perhaps mo
a mapping into
the
world, nor into a 1
discourse. Rather. existence dependa upon
ctantrnuni c~tit~e ntent
of
uttering the discourse, specifically on whethe:, a particular individu
(NP) is going I\Obe
intportanr~
nou
its
specific identity
is important,
o
encric Q:P~
~~~~l~~~ h~~.
will
[3] While this work. deals primarily with epistemolo y i t i s on l y to be expected tha t wh a tever valid
conclusions emcrgtr at the end will bo equally applicable to the philosophy of science. Thus, to the
extent that a scientific, method aims at obtaining
crew
~s~owl~d~~, it must abide by the
c~~hsttsoints
suggestedy Peirce (1955) and Wittl5cnstein (1918).
8/15/2019 Givon Logic Pragmatics Epistemology
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85
illustrate this behavior first with data from Israeli Hebrew, but identical
ted from ‘Lrkish, Mandarin, H
arian. Sherpa, Persian,
Creg,les
141. n w -zh
anguages,
numeral ‘one’ has just
le NP’s, so that in
ential interpretations, one
ani
r ~~~~~~
efera~~~?~ he-neevad li
-for book-one that-lost to-me
book that I lost’
bishvil ha-yeled shel-i
for the-boy of-me
book for my boy
further, cannot ark the object of a negative sentence,
consider:
i ther be NM-deferential OSreferential=Jefinite
[ 51.
Thus
lo karati et ha-sefer ha-ze
NIX3 read-1 ACC the-book the-this
‘I didn’t read this book’
ati (af) sefer ha-shavua
read-1 (any) book the-week
‘I didn’t read (any/a) book this week’
rati sefer-pxad (ha-shavua)
read-1 book-one (the-wee
ation or the modal
‘1
nce of their object.
ch verbs that the on1
or’,
most verbs in any
one would expect in
ssib%e ontrast would be
further, in Hebrew the
e referential-indefinite object in stlch a context, as
is indeed the ease in:
(4) (a)
karati sefer~~~~~ebmol,
ve-
.
[4] For ~~ ~~~ou~d and man) details, see Givbn (
19’73a, 1978, 198 1a).
(51 For discussion of the prq~~~tic motivation for this restriction, see Giv6n (1979a: ch. 3).
8/15/2019 Givon Logic Pragmatics Epistemology
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So
fax, then, the: markin
system in Webrew seems r3th
the speaker refers to an
that NP is marked with ‘one’. While if the
speaker
particular indiwidual, but rather irr t&in
less sF specific identity,
then the NP is
seemingly clear and
1
could also find a &‘ogi
marked as a etcbn-referent
sider
:
(5) karati sefer letm01,
ve- . . .
read-Bbcxik yesterday stmd-
‘I read a bodk yesteday, and..
. ’
In 1ogicaI terms., both (4a) and (5) must re
since if one hlaisread it, thal individual book must 1
been identified. But in terms of discourse-pragma
radically different. In order* I:Omake this difference expli
little more ccntext into the narrative, and consider
th
below
:
(6) COG-REK
PRAG-RE’f :
. . . az axarley h a-avoda hi laxti Ia-sifriya ve-yashavti sham
. . . so
after the-work webn-1 to-the-library and-sat-I there
’ . . . So after work
I went to the
library
an
ve-karati defer-exam’,
and-read-l: book-one
and I read1a book,
ve-ze baya sefer metsuyan
. .
and-it was book excellent .
. .
and it was an excellent book..
. ’
(7) LOG;-.i?EF, PRA G-IVOIV-R
. . .
a2 axarey ha-avoda ha1
. . . so
after the-work wentA
to
‘.. . So after work I went to th
az karati sefer, ve-karati shney
itonim,
so rc:ad-I book and-read-1 tw
so
I
read a book, and a
coup1 n went home..
. *
[fi) I am deliberately expressing t heseconditkns hcrc in tern-1s f the 8
W’s; ntent 01’bdi’ ef
Logicianscould of course easily convert &an
imte
trutha-3atians b~tw~n propaitians, I supple
via modai logic and possible-worlds.
8/15/2019 Givon Logic Pragmatics Epistemology
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87
6) and (7) to ctie
id~nti~~y s what
matteredp
text,
mast specifL
where referential-
aya ici- t a,bo
-want REF-bask
‘I warlt a spec@e bask’
i cd can&as
t
dws not exist, the pragmatic one manifests itself
us c6
~sid~r :
(IO)
(a)
-hook
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88
A similar situation may
the contrast of refer%7ntiality3n
e
reading is aHowed, by contrasti
inde pe nd ent NIPS (REP;).
‘Ibus
(11) (a)
REF:
(12) (a) REF:
(b) NON-REF:
But again where the
ILogicalcontrast is absent, the
pnagrrra~ic m
manifests
itself and is coded by
exact1
the
same
devicle
‘I want a book (be it an:y)’
kacb-n py’Qclwa+ (‘urti) pynikya-na
NEG-I bo&OBJ (that) s~~-N~~~PA~~
‘1 didn’t see the book’
kac6-n p#qva-pvnikyn-na
N EC&I book-see-N EC&PAST
‘I didn’t see a/ur~_)r ook‘
m;bt sr)’
The facts II am discrrssi thus, are nst limit
paradigm, but are ratha
English, except thi\t
En
vs. non-referential inde
consider:
8/15/2019 Givon Logic Pragmatics Epistemology
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hat what we
have here
in
envi ~nrnll~n
ts
t, if it were ~~~~~~ted,hen the fact
ferantiality may appear t y
r a noun is logi6@y
rential. Thus, one looks for “(a
ok does not mztter
discourse c8n tex
.
s
where the issue is whether
a purgicuiur book), What we
/ semalwtic feature
contrast is uugm znred by a
ion, is not independent of
involve the components of
evancci within the dis-
either havrng in mind
The fact that
II
izcd only Ae extreme case
ion on tht methodological
8/15/2019 Givon Logic Pragmatics Epistemology
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3. Coreference ad dtefinite descripthn
Logicia.ns have traditionally tried to interpret
the use
(and with it ana@ruric pronouns
problem of establishulg unique ~i ~~r~~~t t iu~
that didn’t quite masr:h the facts
concept of
premppo.v i m,
construed as 8
I
propositions or partip of them, arnd
son 1950). And various later refin
notion that definiteness is a matt
while skirting the intrusion of t
beliefi
(Donellan 1966). Logicians, and 1
classical examples such as:
( 16) The king of France is bald
*here the truth-value of th : sentence .n~y be Fafi-
WWUPSC~
i i)iii YVi_l,=iff~iUli
perspectrves. First, going along with the presupposition that “
Frxlee”, (16) may 13e udged either true of false in case the
or not bald, respectively. Alternatively, if one does not
s
presupposition,, thrrn ( 16) presumably “has no truth value”. In this
way,
logicians reduced dcfini tcness to the realm of presuppositionality 191. t wound
take a relatively small expansion of the data-base, however, to illustrate how
definiteness in human language is inherently a
pragmatic
~Il~n~$~
volving the speaker’s belief about what the hearer is
l ike tcr
know
in, and about ittowM~V t is going to be for the hearer to uniquely i
referent under consideratilon.
Logicians have never been forced to wrestle with the
eat diversity of
language devices all employed in making unique reference
These devices, or at least a commonly recognized sub-
raup
of them
f
lo), may
be hielparchized according to a continuous,
non-discr
termed as either:
(a) the degree of difficulty that
th
speaker assume the hearer will ex
in identifying the referent uni
[9] Logrcictns proceed 80 idcdfy two scparatc: interpretations of the
atian of 6161, .e. ‘The king
of F: arlcc
is not balcl’, an
in ternul one
which acmpts the pmuppositim but denies the arsmrtion,
and un
exrernd
lone which denies the ussertion knee qf failure of the ~~~~u~~~~iti~~nK
1969).‘The act
that anguage
users tend to admit only the intsrnnl i~~t~~~~~t~ti~n,f such a 11
.sentcnce
(Givbn 1979a: ch. 3) seldom bothers Io@ians.
[ 10) It
may
be shown (Giv6a 1979a: ch. 2, and 19801~:ch. 17) that other
~~~tr~~t~~n$,
uch as
passivkation, Y-movement, indefinite3 and focus-cons,truGtions, as well as the
VSfSV
variation observed in Spa&h QSilva4JorvalBn 1977) and Hebrew (Givbn 1976a, 1978
the same ;ontinuunx
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d~sco~~~nu~t~n the referent-tracking sub-system
~ctabiiity in discourse.
men t
erlirzhy is massive iind corn
e exampi;~ from En lish.
-- ^a
Consider fhi ik
uns (or verb agreement)
m,
saw Mafy, pulled a
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92
T. Giwti,~~L agic us. pragntatics
In ( l&Q, the topic is continuous and no interference from other topics,
exists. Therefore, except for the first introduction of the referent ‘he?, all other
references ;~e given as zero
ampho r a [ 121.
In (18b),
we:
start with the s
of maximal continuity. But then a break occurs where ‘Mary’ takes over as an
important to pic/subjeet. And again when the topi~/subj~t switche* b
‘he’. All three continuities are broken in these cases, and zero-
phortr cxnnat
be used
ar ly
more, Rather, the ~n~~~~~~@~p~~#~~~ust bt: u
[ 13]b ~~~~1~~~
the sequence: given in (18~) illusttrates the fact that the disc~ntinu~~ty
nlrst
have to be due to topic switch, as in (18b), nor to an
overtly- fest
discontinuity in the action sequence. It can be purely thematic, simply a way sf
or&an.idng t’be %ame’ sequence into different, more discontinuous cr;rent~~~~~~~.
Let us ne:xt illustrate the relative ranking of unstressed vs.
&-es p K=+
nOun5:
( 19) (a) JoJnn told Bill that he was sick,
W)
and that he couldn’t come
(1~) ohn to”:3 Bill that he was sick,
(d)
and that h3 couldn’t come
(e) .‘fohn told Bill that he was an idiot,
(f)
and that hu couldn’t come
(g) John told Bill that he was an idiot,
(h)
and that hh couldn’t come
(i) John hates Bill, and he hates Mary
(j) John hates Bill, and h6 hates Mary
In ( 19a) the first referent of ‘he’ could be either John or Bill, but the second
unstressed ‘he’, in (19b), must be coreferent to the ‘he’ in ( 19a). On the other
hand, the
stressed
‘he’ in ( 19d) cannot be coreferent to the unstress
( 1%).
Thus, unstressed pronouns are used when chins of to~?i~-id~nt~t~~re
broken/disrupted. In (19e), the mere se:-nantics of ‘telli
you/he is an idiot’ militates strongly
the object rather than with the subject. And
must be coreferentt with ‘he’ in ( 19e).
not
be coreferent with ‘he” in (1
with thri: subject ‘John’
[
141. But
stressed
‘he’ in (
B j)
[ 12) In Eaglish, zero anaphora covers a much narrower
ran
of the. continuity scats, and i@
customarily referred to as
phrasal conjwctiao,
eithe
Hinds, 1978), on the other hand,, zero anaphora c
functiowl range covered by unsttwed pronouns
in
the lattw, further, subject agreement covers the fun
is obligatory.
[
131 The I’unctisnal mnge of unstressed pronouns in English is covcrcd in Spa&~ by
obh
subject rlf;reemen\.
[
141The verbs ‘tell (to)’
and ‘hate’ have diffentnt topic-orientation r=haractenstics, since thle subject
of ‘tell (to)” is datiue-recipietit, but that of ‘hate’ may be inwt and ~ni~~~~ (ix, ‘patient”). This is
8/15/2019 Givon Logic Pragmatics Epistemology
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‘tck-reference - vs.
nce -
is att{:sted in
iated with stress need
r
counter
expectationr.
draft, but Sohn told ill rtlkwasn’t so sure.
and unstressed pronouns, here
from expectations about
n other -
thematic - sources.
pr0r~0tir~1ss. DEWS
P’s and
P”s are used when not enough
le the hearer to identify the
e either the presence of ot
a major
thematrc
break.
tlia Prince aud the General.
H& thanked him profusely.. .
ed around and sat down. He was tired
in his chair and waited.
came into the room, looked around and sat down. The man in the
se to midclle
age but still young.
the pr~se~~~ of ‘prince’ and ‘general’ preclu c refering to ‘king’ as ‘he’,
so a pronoun may be
ssed pronoun. In both
evertheless, in (2 lc) two
to mark them. But the
re disruptive:, removing the
(tts in being tired or
insteacl
[
161. It is thus
yaidel~tifiable referent INith a DEF-NP
coxntn ), W e (Ciivbn 198Oa).
se continuity (see Ciivb 1877; Hopper
refstritq to the &jwt of ‘tell (to’)‘, Thus, it
ndntity of topic, but rather
the
property
of M@YJN~~whew datives out&c acmsativ~s (Giv6n
lW6b .
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94
The use of right-di .loc81ted DEF-NP”s
may be likened to an “afterthou
de vice 171whereby thle speaker first assumes that there is
eno
the: discourse to warrant using a pronoun, then ehan
adds the full DEF-NP as “insurance”. To illustra : this consider:
(212) (a) The
danced and sang. Later on
retired..
.
(b) The
danced, then other people
rformed.
Then kle ~~~~~~~~he
b&g
did,.
(c)
The king danced, and the prince and the
retired,.
. . ,
Irl (Z&I), with full referential continuity, a pronoun is used. In (22b) t~hni~~lly
there is no referential confusion, but there is Rlready a one-clause
intrusion of other participants in the subject position. There
“ungrammatical” with using only a pronoun here, but still it is a typical
comr;xt for using rig’ht-dislocation in conversation
[
181. Finally, in (22~) there is
w reason to even nedge and use a pronoun first, since referential
cc,ntinuity/predicta’bility is- broken. So a DFF-NP is used.
Finally, left-dislocated DEF-NP’s are used primarily over Ion
absence, where a referent/topic is re-introduced into the d&course. To il-
lustrate this in contrast with normal DEF-NP’s, consider:
(X) (a) There once lived a king and a queen in an enchanted forest.
The k ing was fat and ugly.
. .
(b)
There onc,e Ifved a king in an enchanted fores
, He ~8s rllurriccf tc:, ;i
beautiful queen, and she was the real powl:r In the realm. Near the
forest lived a poor prince, and the queen used to visit him and have
lunch. NOW t he ki ng. he didn’t like the guy,.
. .
One must bear in mind, however, that in
ti
tly-plwrmed, written teXt the use
c f left-dislocatic;:1 is not common, though it
Ion
in informal speech
and conversatiosl (See Ochs (1979).
Duranti
and
(
( lY99). ~~~1~~~
and
Schieffelin
(
1977))
The prece&ing - albeit encapsulated
.-
survey of the major devises
us
tilefinite express;ons in human
langua
firmly establish that we are Indeed
oealing with Q sccrle, and that the scale is sensitive to either of the three major
factors of continuity:
(i) Topic/referent continuity and identifiability
(ii) Action continuity in a narrower, sequential sense
(iii) Thematic, Continuity in a larger sense
117)The explanarion couched in the term “ufterthought” is due to Mymw ( 1975).
[ 181Both right- irnd left-dislocation are used primarily in conwrsation and informal spertch (O&s
1979; Giv6n 197%; Duranti and Ochs 1939).
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nts near and lies
lity to f~I~~w that continuity;
of the hearer’s expectation
s-near to the actual
.
diSCourSe
and the
scour-se, and assess-
about themes and
rounded in either the speaker’s
of previous encounters
of the hearer’s
rsonality
and computa-
t of specific facts concerning the hearer‘s
r’s t~~~pat~~ ability and thus
“direct access” to the thought
recesses of the hearer
[ 191.
could of course an and an, but it is not rea ly necessary.
It
seems quite
Clear thtrt definite
sorption is a
t
tcr, involving
gradations,
~.~~~~a~~d~d~~~~s
nd I of the spealrer about the
m d
about
the
d~~~c~~~;~.~~”
na “cw I cI
of course
nt that when the
ted and ~~~i~~~t~
df the system may
rllth rcs1nflr.c.
~~ 11. . *.iU.aVLIS
buckn, whate
le who have access to each
other’s thoughts either
cptrrhy,
o meet ea.41
other after ,J year of absence,
‘) wtd
the other
replying: “HP is. Wonder who’s
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41.Nonldiscrotenw of reference
P&ost
linguists folllow logicians in
assuming that an
ar
referential or generic/non
evidence from natural la13
indeed common, one may
also
find gr
like “semi-referentiality” that is bound
p&e,consider the following contrast:
(?4] (a) Did you see myth ing there?
(b) Did\ you see
something
there?
Officially, both expressions in (24) are non-referential, but (24b) is somehow “a
li .tle bit more referential”’ than (24a). The distinction be
ween
the two i~volv
n>ughly, the
degree
to which the speaker is willing to co
mit himself or
her
to a specif;c :individual they have in mind which they s~pcrct - but art’ not sure
- alay have in fact been involved. *When a speaker uses (24aj, he or she is iess
committed to having, an individual in mind, while the use of (24b) su
swcwger ommitment. But the gradation is even more extensive. Thus co
(Z 5) (a) Did you see
any
man there?
(b) Did you see
some
man there
(c) Did you see a man there?
(d) Did you see J man there wearing a blue tie with
rcen ~~~~~-~~ts an
twirling a silver batorl on his right-foot roe?
In
(25), (25cl)
is practically a u
ue referential description, at least as it is
likely to be used in natural
lang
One may also show the phe
enericity”‘, ~a ;r\ the
following example from Spanish [20]:
(26)
(a) Maria siemprle
hahl 3
con &u@s
‘Mary always talks to sorcerers’
(bj MaAa siempre habla con &-ubn&as
(i) ‘Mary always talks to (the) sorcerers
(ii) ‘Mary always talks to the sorcerers (t
Sentence (26b) has two readi
one (26b(~ii))fully d~~i~~it~.
(26b( i)> is “semigeneric”,
rou
, a ~~?~~~l l~ r~~?~~~~~~1
rom
any smallerqet group of “brujos” may be pulled out trl fit the d~s~ripti~~~
[20+]A similar dlistinction s observed in Mandark (Standra
Th~p~n prs.
camm.), wheta
the
contrast is between %e” and
“exist”
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87
5 yews old, blue eyes, brown
and lives in a suburb of
tc..
. . ,
and he lives nextdoor
tian can thus be?: rmtkr of fiae
gradation,
approaching
in the s~~~all~stof i~~~e~~ents, each one of which
unique identifi-
Cre in W W-questions
non-referential
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The answer to (29a) may be properly ‘.lohn’, ‘my teacher’, ‘the doctor’ etc., i.e.
bly some unicluely-referring DEF-NP. While the proper answer to (29b) may be
‘a. doctor”,
‘ia teacher’ ‘a horse’ et’c.,
i.e. by an attributive/non-referential
illdefinite expression. But the non-referenti;;? question - as i
S] IOWurther gradation, involving roughly the
degree af ~~~t~in
about the exact type-membership of the referent. Thus consider:
(ICI (a) Normal TYPE-identity:
‘in
i
‘ark-‘ay In a?
WH be-PROG t~so,4~~~-~~~J
‘What kind (of animate) is this one?’
(b)
Unwtain TYPE-identity:
‘in i-kwra ‘ar&‘ay “in&
W H-DO WBT be-PWOG
this-
SUBJ
‘What kind (of an aliiruate) could this one
possibly be?’
Thus, not only can human languages treat “definite identification’* an
ing unique
reference” as scalar properties, they can also treat “having unique
type-meinbership” as a scalar property. While it is true then that
languages tend to
code
major
extreme
ends of this system in a see
discrete fashion, there is inherently nothing pa-titularly discrete ab
cognitive space of definiteness, referentiality and gsneticity. Rather, it seems to
bc a continuous, flon-discrete space involvin certainties and probabilities.
5. Truth, fact and presupposition
The early history of the notion of “presupposition” in lingui4cs was io direct
and slavish outcrop of an earlier logico-deductive tradition 1223. Several
supposed “pragmatic” formulations still strive to represent the cystem as
closed. tight #anddeductive-looking (see Karttunen (1974),
rice (
).~~$/
197
1).
Glxdon and Lakoff (197 1) or Gaxdar (1979), inter alia), In this s~~ti~n I am
going to try and show, by citing langu
e-data from various sources,
that the
logicians once again have
misrepresent the
general
thrust of a
s
in essence
pragmatic, by
rigorously eliminating from their d
quantities of relevant evidence. I will attempt to show, then,
t
tion in language does not involve truth relations
rather probabilistic assumptions that the speaker makes about
{2i:] See eg. Keenan (1969, 1971), Horn (1972), ,imr dr~c. Kgartturren (1944) has su
may formultie i)resupposilion for human language in
prt~gntrr~ic erms,
kc. with reference to the
spcwkds be l ie f
ather han to
atomic propositions. But he still formulates presupposition in terms
of “truth relations** between various beliefs/propositions held by the speaker. This is a rear-guard
attempt o salvalseome
eductive properties for
the
system.
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99
I
sub-domains cf the entire field does presupposition
at& sentences ii1
r~,~ra~rn~ti~s, so
or *‘be used apT:qrieitely”,
aff~~~~ative must have
e speaker must QSSUFPI~
at.&,
~?l~~~~l~do b& we
in it,
tly toward it, etc. As
(31) (a)
~~nl~~~t~
“Hi, how are ysu, what’s new?”
Well, my wife is pregnant”
Well, my wife is not pregnant”
y
CVb) ic vised
ropriately on the bac&%,
oround of (i) total lgnoralnce of
s~~lfi~,s, and in addi
n (ii) the culture-
ed assumption that women (at
blast nl~~~~d~ys~re more likely to be UL~-p
ant than pregnant. On the other
affirmative is “a
ng “pragmatic
logically presupposed”,
t “N EG-p
presq~posed
eahng here with two
and,
and disgourse-
hen severa, facts
example. many
s in syntax into two groups (see discus-
‘Thus, for
ivhn
1975) every assertion is
rn~~h~l~
e verb itself is included or
xcluded from the scogdr
?fnlc~~
asserted. But the following
constructions are ~utorn~t.~~~~~n~r~~~ for ~~~~~~~~ the verb from the:scope
of new information:
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too
(33)
REL-clauses, VW -questions, CLIWT~asentences, NC
(including IF-clauses)
Most of these constructions are “logically p~suppositi~
sumably “have no truth value? (stx? further ~IQw~~ whit
course/pragmatic presuppositional or
are they grouped together9 A.gain, I s
is a jgc9ze&property hat
iis
inherent1
(34)
The speaker asswmes that a prclpcsition p is
~a~i~~a~ o
the
to be be/it~d by the hearer,
ac~essibie to the
hearer, withia
the hearer etc. OR
whatever grour rds.
And
only within a limited subsct of ountext do the
or belief by the hearer involve something resembli
obviously still couched - in natural language - in te
about the hearer’s belief.
X?. Restr ictivtp relative clauses
2estrictive relative clauses are one of the
stro
est bastions 0f lo
presupposition in language. On the surface they se quite solid,
sic that
the eulbedded sentence in (3%) below, the full sentence iu (3%) must be
“presupposed”:
(35) (a)
The man I saw
yesterdqy
left
(b) I saw a/the man yesterday
Things begin to blur when one realizes that restrictive relati
modify non-referential head nouns. Thus eonside r:
(36)
(a) I didn’t see anybody wha WCW~blue sb
+t
(b) ?Somebody wore a blue shirt
Logically, there is no way in wh,ich (%a) ~~~~~ ~r~su~)~~s~ 3~b~ u the ~ff~~~
sense as (35a) presupposed (3%).
N(orret
(36b) must hate been the
~is~~u~s~-~~ und
for 98 ~r~~~r use
perhaps a question such as:
(37) Did you see anybody weari ng a bhe shi rt1
This property of backgrounded~ness is thus sha*tbd betw n (35a) and @$a>,
8/15/2019 Givon Logic Pragmatics Epistemology
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only to (35a). Consider
s, its status i snot the
3ameas
ay and nobody came i
ve clauses does not
” information, nor
s to unify srflcases
nformation that is
is an extreme case
11
other subordinate-
with the “bi@W’
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102
presuppositional clauses. But certainly an IF-clause cannot
tionail, logically it even doesn’t have truth value. If some “presupposition” is
invo’lved here, it c:ould not be logical, but must be discourse-pragmatic. To
il us t.ra,te his, consider first:
(41) (3) Context: What will you do if .I @tie you lke rntme~?
(b) Reply: If you give me the money, I’ll buy this houEle,
(c)
Context:
Under what coadition.s wifi you buy this h.~~e~
(,d) Rep/y: I’ll buy this house if you
ve me the money.
The repties in (41b,d) are appropriate in their context, but they are noI
interchafigenble. Logically, the I F-clause is presupposed in neither. But
pra
matically it is established as
backgrtmod
in (41a), while the ma:co clause IS
established as background in (41~).
Such
variation is pos(r:ble in En
acivcrbial clauses may either precede or follow their main claus
impossible in some languages, where ADV-clauses - as well as
c;rlly-background clauses -
can only p,rcxede asserted/main
clau
languages pre-pose all “topic/background clauses”, includin
REL-clairses,V-complements (of ‘knolv’ or ‘think’) and other “topic” clauses.
In other languages, ADV-clauses in text are overwhelming& pre-posed (241.
Unlike IF-clauses, BECAUSE-claua es are “logically presuppositional”. But
t.hey tou eshibit the same discourse-pragmatic variation as IF-clauses. Thus
+zonsider :
C~mt xt
What did she do bee.ause he instrlled her?
Reply: Because he insulted her, she slapped him.
Context: Why did she s/tip him?
RepI): She slapped him because he insulted her.
Mere lo@x~Hy the BECALJSE-clause is presuppositional tn both (4
(42d). Pragmatica ly, however, it is backgrounded in (42b) but
for
(42d). Logical presupposition, involving, ‘“truth values”, is thus a
phenomenon, often corresponding to - but never id~l~ti~al wi
cases of pragmatic backgrounded-ncss.
[23] For an exmplc from C hunve, a clausa.chaining Papwer-Naw
( 198Ob).
[24] Greenberg ( 1966) ha:, crbscrved that in the languages in his survey,
s
type,
he dominant tendency was roughly &I pm~~t of A~V~l~u~ in
20% post-possd.
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103
The semrmticsf
co
tion verbs such as ‘know’ or ‘think’ was an early
in linguistics. where ohe
een ‘“factive” (presuppolsi-
“non-factive” (non
c,
(see e.g. Kiparsky
Given (1973a), inter alia).
ns to break down when one
being an “exotic”
is in fact ~~~~n~~rvas~,ve,lthough its surface coding
and Nichols in prep.).
nya Rwanda (see Giv6n and
hink’ are the same
resupposed from
ment ~la~s~. In addition however, Rwanda has an
evidentiality
in the
w something from
it via
hem-say
or
in~~~~n~~. you use
another. This is, inherently, a sc&r, non-discrete space
of .rMbJecticle
erbnty qf the speaker
concerning
An, logical presupposition
extreme edge
of a much
licated.
Superficially, one would expect a
“dir
her certainty” and “fact/truth”.
tain.
For example, in Sherpa
e Life of the Buddha, is
er that the story-teller
true i-:h he most absoi
sense of the word [ZS].
am other story-tellers.
~~~n~~~he ~ef of the hearsay mode.
ntcd the traditional notion of “subject”.
one-place predictations,
nce the predicate (7) is
t fsf the propositions bound by either an
referred to as ‘“subject”. Things
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104
T. ihka/Li@c ws. riqm utics
become
more coqdicated, however,
when the predicate itself is nominal.
is generic, a logician may yet resort to some type-theory 8
to explain why one of the two nominals
in
the sentence ia
other the predicate, and thus explain the contrast in 126
(43)
(a) John is a farmer
(b) * A Farmer is John
But it is doubttul if logicali criteria alone could dcxidc w
ich ~o~nal is t
subject and which is the prediicate in cases where both are equally ref~r~nt~~l
and definite, as in:
(44) (a) The teacher is the cook
Ib) The cook is the teacher
To linguists and speakers, however, (44a: b) are not int
eablC2: ut they
depend on the rather nebulous (from the logician’s poin view) cri&rion of
“what one is talking about”, a notion that cannot be defined within the bounds
of isolated propositions, but is rather
discourse-cont,crxtensitiue.
In handling two-place predicates, the logician could
notions such as AGENT and PATIENT, then translat
KILL (John), (Bill),. Blurt his notation will 61ot d
active and its corresponding passive. The lo
“atomic” notion SUBJECT, then characterize the active as KILL (J~hn~~~
(Bill), and the passive as KILL (J~.)hn)~ Bill),. But as
lire
would know, “subject”
is
not an atomic notion, but ETJ:
pragmatic entity closely related to the notion “topic’*.
I have already discussed the use of both subject
dislocation in discourse, (see section 3 above), and
s
agreement is used to refer to the
amtinuing
clausal topic, v+ ile left-di$l~~ti~n
is used to mark the switching/disruptive clausal topic, Consider nail:
WV
. Now John, I saw
him leaving a while back..
.
-I- 1___1
TOP SIJBJ
In normal conversation context, a constructional such as
(4
when ‘John’ is :)eing rc-inhroduced into the discussion
while ‘I’ repreLents the continued topic. Clearly,
t
posiit an atomic, context-free notion “subject’” to d
that notion is tied together with many other devices along a scak? which we
(26) All other thing& eing,quaI, the referential
scope
f the subject must be nat~owr than that of
the predicate.See discussion in Giv$n ( 1973a) and Keenan ( 1976).
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ic us,
105
dy shown to be discourse-pra
matic i,n nature. The f;ar;~ hat :%ome
c sub~sys~em ean be described in seemiq&-
but it ~erta~~Iy does not justify viewing the
ordinary-language
cd. Rather, the material
s”, ‘Lconve’:nional
nt the speech-act foundations
tie system (see @rice ( 196V/ 1975)
matic precipice to tvhich
s section li am going to
e discreteness of
ation of a clause is marked by vet% suffixes,
t-point
continuum between the tw,o extreme
alive,
as given in table 2. The difference
in terlns of the
see that we are
rmatory or corrective reapon se.
which by themselves make the traditional
atsve a hopeless
point on the
au (1973: JO), and was brought to my attenticm by Charlie Sato
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The eight-point oontinuusn between the two extreme points of declaratitsc an’d interrog;;
-~~
Particle Traditional label Degree/type of SW
(I)
(2)
0
-yo
I%clarati ve
Ncu tral
Assertive
(3
(4)
-na
-kanaa.
-ne
Exclama ory
Confirmative
(5)
(6)
-desyoo
-daroo
-kadooka
Presumptive (polite)
Presumptive (plain)
Rhetorical
in
0 Informal
i i ; 3
-ka
Formal
Interrogative
certainty; not expectin
High certainty; cxpcotin
be&g emphatic m order
surprise (and thus less ~~rt~~nty~
Low certainty; inviting challsngc or
comment
More presupposed question; artswer is
expected as either yes or no
Rhetorical qtustion when rcpnti s fairly
sure of an answer
Lower corttinty in the answer, more
reliance on hcorer’s response
Lowest certainty: f~rtnai nnd deferent to
the hearer, au;1 thus by implication more”
dcpeeZcnt 011 response
exercises cklicate
pragmaf i c judgmeJr l f
concerni various probabilities, such 8s
his or her own certainty and validity of sou of infornx\tion, the hear&s
kmowledgc:, he hearer’s willingness to respond DenevolentlIy and the he~rec’s
disposition to attack or challenge. And in Japanese at least, subt.le computa-
tions of the
socia l grad ient
between the speaker and hearer must also
into account, and those are not fully independent of the more
considerations.
Of course, one does not have to stray far to find :;imilar
tag-questrcws
in English are clearly an intermediate grade bletween d
and interrogatives. Further, the normal yes-no question pattern in
not neutral, but rather is systematically
brasled
(Jward either
negative response (see Bolinger (1975) $‘ordetails and argun~~~,t~.So that only
the explicit construction below represents total ‘neutrality”:
(46) Given p and non-p, please tel. me which one is true
One could also show that the data of
inchw speda acts
points toward
another continuum between dwlarative and
imperativ
, where at least the
followin: graded dimensions must be involved:
(a) The degree of the speaker’s attempt to elicit action from the hearer
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e information ~~~~~~~r~~~y the speaker is relevant
ssessed by the speaker)
~~t~~ly relevant on top of the
of the type mentioned
intruding. The entire
f non-discreteness and
e edges of the system
to logical-deductive
h topics “hat, in one .Nay or another, have
iogieians fo;la uite a while. But C~FT of
from the use of
human
language in
en touched by logicians. One of those is the
an NP CK phr,sse: or a larger chunk - as a
8 “comment” in a s sequent sentence. As a fairly
consider the followi left-dislocated example in ti
I like Reagan.
an, how do you like
the sky is blue,
uld say that. in principle anything could
that is within the cognitive network
within the network, and the only
is “‘b,y whaq
de e?“, “by how many
w, if the cognitive
ument holds for the paoblem of smunt ic rclatcdness in
nctwarrks and semantic change. Example
:%y, bl;4rsrd nd, ud is reminiscent of the
y childhood, such BD:“Thrxe were QIMXwo brothers, the first
one was tell and hmdwm, and the wad
one likaia heese oo”.
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nety,+rorkwere a clased, deductive system, then in principle crne c&d specilt”y
the degree of connectedness in an sxnct way, pointing out to a discrete number
of
specific computational steps. B11t t is clear that the kind of ~o~~side~at~ons
undlerlying relevance judgment in the examples above are totally
they are sen: itive to anything the spc aker might suspat the hearer
to, including triviaI and accidental information that belies systematic fsrma&
zatiort. In principle, then, the problem of topic relevance, which plays a crucial
role: in the use of language in communication - including the more “syntactic
lo&ing” processes discussed in section 3 above - cannet be dealt with within b
lo&A-deductive sys,em, without trivializing it or ma$king its exp
cat’~ons 291.
9. The context-depedent, relativiftic nature of texical meaning
In the analysis of the “purely semantic” lexical meaning. the same Positivist
tradition of
radical reduct ion ism
observed by Quine ( 1953: 20-46) in philsso-
phy lhas largely prev;.Gled in linguistics. One is thus conditioned to talk about
%emantic features” as if they are atomic, absolute, primal units of meaning in
the grand tradition of Carnap (1947) and Katz and Fodor (1963). Everr.people
f#nr c:moved fr;;m this tradition,
such as the
Diverians (see, for example, Garcia
(
1975) or Kirsner ( 1979). inter alia), proceed upon the assurrpt ion that it is
possible to
segregattt the “core meaning” of words or morphemes, twhiuh is
invariant and context-free, from “contextual inferences” which are contingent
and context-sensitive:.
U’ittgenstein (1953) challenged this tradition of logical atomism from two
$#e:parateperspectives, and I would like to deal with his second clhallerl
III hills
Investigatiorrs,
Wittgenstein attacks logical atomism by citing
BOONS nd
fanlily-~~selnb~~anc~s,
nd in general vcwnbulary items that are more
CJbviously culturally-dependent.
The Positivists and their conscious or unconsci-
ous followers in inguisti,cs are forced to concede the for
iirgument, but confine its scope t,o what they consider tea
c:lf the semantic system, while continu
to int
in
terms of a closed deductive system
eman
“projection”,
“analyticity” and “contradiction” within such a s:fstem. What
I
would like to do in this section is demonstrate, with a few rather ~im~l~~mminded
cxamplcs, how the shoe is on the other foot, and how what Wit
ein
demonstrated to be the “less objective” margins of the semantic s
of
*natural language is in fact true
with u vengemce
for the entire systen~
Suppose you and I were taking a wallk in ~r~m~~~lurnbiax~lcur.hwestern
Colorado, and suppo,se we both saw the followin
(291G&e (1 8/75), for example, includes “relevance” in one of his maxims without further
6tmplification.
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(48) A
man is slow y walking up a hiil; he reaches the
to
, then he kneels
down ir?r ront of a pile of stones and raises his ~krms o the sky.
And su
we had
ta d
asked us both: “What was that man doing?“, and
in
the event* with you claiming (49a) a,~d I claiming
1 endeavor to
show how both “p ng” and “mourning”
y meani
constructs. But how
ts of ~4g)~Ccynsider firs slowly”, and it is easy
is totally rel~~tivisti~~ clstcrrlt-determined, ft>unded upon
er, hot fixed but rather depends
n t/movernen
t
involved [301. Wow
e GriYeria iffctrcntiati tag“walking”
” from “running” ? Well, how about “up”? At
“physical” horizontal plane does
to move “upward”? And is that irbsolute horizental plane defined in
mference? In terms of our visu.31
of the horizon? Next, take “l~ill”, and wonder how it is to be
~liff~r~ntiat~d from “mound”, “heap”, “pile”. “peak” or “‘mountain”‘. Size has
obviously s#methin to do with it, but their there’s nothing absolute about si:ze
mouse is much I;maller than a smal elephant. Take
nder about the point where one reaches the top (of
especially something sue ich does not have a discrejre,
pex but rather curves
)roct:ed to “kneel” - how
eeling? And how elevated
nd need to bc:” And is kn:+contact neces-
knee to tht: yoint of con~~t/approach. is
? And - horror of horrors - what exactly is the
At this point the ~‘Qsitivistshoutd be unable to contain him- or herself and
the objective, sci :ntific nature of our
nd b,r:tween the femur and the tibia/fibula,
m what perspective are he femur and
e a b~n.c~i/j~int between them” Let us consider
(see fig.
1
b 1, and mac~*o (see fig.
abi;,ut optical trick:-; and the finesse of
Plrdee
1 wish to
defer the discussion1 of
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whether scientific truth is in any sense subject to less-pragmatic imd more-ob-
jective criteria of meaning (see discussion in C3iv6n 19’7%: c6 8). But the
cognitive map represented in language clearly judges wheths:r objects are
A
‘;
Fig. 1. Three perspectives of the knee: (a) normal, (h) micro, and (c) macro.
strnight or bent in a ~h-m~e-dqw~~dm~ way given a
p
rticular per.,; 2
* tivc an
utilitarian context.
Let us &I;; in to invest ion of “in frant’“, and we
fine? that different cultures construe it di
ith
respect to
the position
of the observer/reporter, the physical ~hara~t~risti~s of t~hdt
w
vo’rved, and their relative position v:ls4+is each other [3
1).
And
thzse three dimensions is potentially a continuum, We ma
now, and face the same relativistic problems as with
“1
“stones”. and worrv how different they are from ‘kxks” or
*‘I
to “raksiqg’?,
where we must worry about what an
(3 11 Hill (1974) illustrates such differcncws between &q&h and Wausa ia their constrwtian of
spatial relation terms.
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’ to hold, And on to ‘%rm” where similar problesns as seen above for
critlekl angks, visual field etc.
the
moment separate -
matterr is the envy
lllrfboth biologists and behav-
cur ~~~~~~~ -- become, the more and finer
dently of the inst~m~nt~ti~n. Thcrt reality may indeed exist, but v&; is the
in any sense “objective”? Obviously, clnlv from
at is in principle denkd to us (331 - C:CN& ne
support such a faith. The specifics certainly have not
is in principle a pragmatic matter, a,
mo;st concede the great areas in our
frames have: been establishe:J by
tk
that they etre forever
ty is rerr;.i.ve in two
tivistic areas in our cognitive map; and
and context-sensi+ %terwon
of re ative areas of
prkgmati:: map of
hi8
qwat fqt tke
Bhwal in *Mattltiiessen1978).
to stimulating axc:hmp with Tan Bikmn and
8/15/2019 Givon Logic Pragmatics Epistemology
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reality is a useful feature of su~~iu~zl, functional ~w&.s
operandi
of bi~~~~nti~nt
sys terns:
no rapid
dechion making, action schemata and c~t~~~~i~~ ~~/~~
& oices for survival are possible othefwise. The ~bj~:tiv~tio~
alization of reality is a prime SW a&linked feature slf such syi
manifesting itself repeatedly at
evels of percll:ption and
c
re-creating itself -
out of the inherently pragmatic,
discreteness, by re-framing or
re-adjustin
exisl~~;~frames
shaill see directly below, Fluch
re-ad.justme:
is a f~l~d~~e~~t
and language change.
IO. Pra;gmat~cs
Ever since Saussure:, linguists have tended to s~gregute dja~hr~~nic from syn-
chronic study, pretending that it was possib e to appreciatt: langu
. . .
any fpen porn :t was C* *Ab.w 3JJbWll .
f;v&q c.,,c*fim” jp.:lr, ;r :n 4am.P.tfi4 a-.-t :a
v ra.llc~1c 1.3LBUC; ciuac bUW1 IU
a
necessary methodol~~jcal-heuristic stelp (see discussion in Givbn 1979a:
ch. 6), it is still the fact that language - within the minds of speakers, rather
than as some abstract system of lartlpage
lexicon/meaning, syntax, morphology and
map is thus not only a system of codin
system of re-cuding, modifying and re-
integrating into it newly-acquired lcnow
tradition, such modification is often repre as a purely forma
permuting and re-combining a fixed inventory of atomic primitiv
the order of relati~~ely-fixed formal rulsec,
hus
totally trivializing
language change (see, for example,
1976b)), and also making diachronic ii
logico-deductive dogma.
There are three aspects of aiachronic ch t that would be incom
with a formal/deductive approach to meani
(i)
T/w system-parts dependmcy: III 11 10
primitives are fixed, and any “change
involving formal deductions from exi
1918). Further, the primitives in suclh
value and are thus
not
system~d~~~~nd~nt.
show ; rathe).* Aearly that in human
tan
subtritct&, split or merged, and that
further,
a
syste*m eqkes re-definition of the entire system.
(ii) Ohen-ende&Js; Aside from Goedel’s abservat ions r’n~~~~~~~~~~~
edueti
systems are closed and can absorb no new primitives,
tions that are not deducible from existing ones. The hum
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9 clearly attests to the open-
ity to absorb new knuwledge without
e a number of typical examples of diachronic ~zhange
word-order and syntactic structure, In each close I
-deductive analysis of whilt goes on is in
matic characterization i$; im
of the argument will remain
as the system of knowledge represent ation
it could not possibly be a. deductive-based
e evolution will be
h “know’ and ‘can’
, WC
Anttils ( 1977) and An Jersen
vernaldcvdopments ts(>k place mostly based
an aorist-perfcxl stem
Ided Modern E
know. On tke
other hand,
(OHG km, Modem G kcran, inlinitive
which &a yieldccl Moden E WI. The
the 0 mm ‘lmtm’
and OE
cemm and
ccnmm.; this fbtnote
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114
T.
Giorin/ l ogic OS.
pragma ics
SO) If one knows how tcl do something,
thea the probability is higher tlat one
cari do
it.
That the inference in (50) is probabilistic/inductive rather than deductive is
easy to see, since “ability to do” involves not only “‘knswin how to ~~~~~ut
also possibly “having the physical power to”, “having the ll-pawer to” or
“being physically/mentally un-restrained”. NOW, if the senzz “be aMe to”’ can
be pragmatically/contextually inferred, then presumably “know” at that his-
torical stage in English may be described as ~~A”~entotrs, oughly
alon
following lines:
(51) KNOW +
‘be able to’/‘know how to pIerform an act’
-+ ‘know’/elsewhere
In (51), then, ‘know’ is the “core rneanin~,“’ and ‘can’ a special case in a
narrower context, still pragmatically inferable as in (SO). Next what must have
occurred is a ~&?~J&?&~&,ogjf&yg?? Cg?,
gain,
pr~~mat,ic,/inAnlry;up in fia p,
a**UUY*1 Y
roughly on the line:
(52) If one
can
do something because one kmvs how to do it, perhaps one can
do it for other reasons as well, such a’s (i) physical/mental power, or (ii)
being unrestrained.
Deductively such an inference is absolutel,y unwarranted, but irtdz~ctive
t
proceeds along a “family resemblnnce” cline, noting the “similari iy” between
the three sense: of ‘ability’ (qinowledg,e
how,
power and litck of
outside
restraint). Once such an infererce has czcurred, however, the structure of the
lexical item KNOW as in (51) - with ‘ability’ defined as a contextual variant of
‘knowledge’ -
is now disrupted, since the (:ther senses of ability have nothing
to do with knowledge. At this stage spe&ers face
t, between the
semantic domain of ABILITY and that irlf KNOW bcth of which
overlap at one point, namely the sense “knowing how to”. The conflict, in this
particular case, was resolved by t&in advantage of the phone
kann,/catt, which (presumably by so inferential/inductive st
all its ‘know’ senses except “know how to do’ - and absorbed the other ‘can9
senses. of power and lack of rzsraint.
‘I’lhis
restructuring may be thus sum-
marized as:
(53) KNOW 4 ‘know’
CAN
-+ (i) ‘be able to because) of knowled
(ii) ‘be able to because of power’
(iii) ‘be He to for lack of restraint’
But the fortuitous appearance of an l~tymological v~related stem is not a
prerequisite for the restructuring, Rather, a senzantically-related stem cc&i do
just as well. This was presumably the c:Ebsen German, where 3Lhe
know
that’
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t o wissen
with
k t in rw
ut wissep l ome :
d is attested irr the L. tIi&-re ‘see’,
at see was the original
le: the perfect-resultative
nd t&us know’. And this
tion’““
is again itself the
e original situat’.on may
tic i~du~ti~~~
nf
nee must have then proceeded:
The inference from physical. perception to mental cognition is of course lot
and musi be a human universal [36]. Nevertheless, it is noi. a
ut rather inductive-probabilistic. Presumably. the next
‘,ee’ to ‘know’ in *WI% involved a
general i zi ng i nferewe
(56) If one u~~der~~~~r~dsomethin
because of prior perception/seeing, ma rbe
then one u~d~~.stands it for other reasons as well, s&r as hearing,
explanation, inti-ospection, &ine inspiration etc.
once
in we hnve an overlap
betw
en
two semantic ofmains, of “cognition”
with the point of overlap
which cements the
fandy
“understanding due to seeiqg”.
al variant form, the perfective
form to carry the restructured
) the sti:nse of ‘see anc,l
loa
verb
War’ -wwfw~ms also used for
.
Ihit even mom concrete expressions
ding,/cognition. Tlhus in Amhanc ‘“it
I
get/got it” has a similar sense. In
upon @Othic
s van,
QE
s r,
etc., themsd’ves
via exactly the 881HB ype Of
p~@Tli?W
inference,
i.e. 3: QW follows with the eyes (pcial context of 6follow”) tOlenone sees”. Etc. Etc. Etc.
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Consider the folJlo~ng gradual ejctension of the ~eanin
originally a physical-tastcrl- djst IVC:
(57) (a) sweet apple (physical-taste,
(b) sweet music ~a~l~io/abstr~~c
(c) sweet victory (abstract, be~efi~ial/re
At first glance, one may argue tha.t we have here a straight case of
~~~~nti~~
bleaching, whereby ‘sweet’ has the CXW~~,aniq
the extensions are
contextual injeremxs
from that core
bleaching the more physical/concrete aspects of meani
linguist would argue rather strenuously that no semanti
at all between (57a), (57b) and (57c), bat only a widenmg o
contextual inferrences (see e.g. arguments in Garcia (197S) and Kirsner (2979)
inter alia). But the concept of “‘core me,aning” becomes nebulous when one
considers the fact that the very same h:xical item may mutate in different
diirections, using glifferent components af its total meani
cluster as the
so-calleld “core m.eaning”. IYI his connection, see the discu n of the muta-
tions o.f the verb ‘sit’, further t>elow. In other words,
II
ing withiln the
semantic field,‘dlomain of a \,xicaJ item can be consider*ed either “core” or
“‘contextually in1eiSeS” meaning, given particular
co?mJ:ts.
But the role of
context in this casc~ s lo &ffincl
what is rdmant
lwithia the domain, what will be
held cons tan
t
anfd thus considered “lzorc:”
as against what will be mutated and
thus considered “*contextual inference”. This determinrhtion is
in pnnciplt~
nom-deductive,
bult
rather involves the pragmatic ju
me:at of ‘relevana:’ and
“similarity’. Further, much like the c‘ascs discussed
10.1
&tave - ujQc:h a,,t”cz
*after ah metaphoric in very much tl te
sam
resemblance
rather than with objectiflre/core
I would like to claim here that all semanti
kind as metaphoric extension, and
that
“semantically related words” simply
co
eyes of some scholars. Thus, consider
extension of the
Hebrew root
Vb,
‘sit’:
(58) (a)
Early stqpB: ib
‘sit’
(b)
Late4p tqgtr: y-.fb
‘sit’
Jb-t
‘rest” -) rest from work’ -+‘st; ike’
The split between “sit” and ‘rest’ is obviously a cent
xtual i~f~ren~~ from ‘sit”,
as are the later extensions of ‘res#t’ oward ‘rest rotn work”
“strike’. The added
~v~~t~~ly
phonolo cal differentiation most likely
:
horn the
Gnperfeci third-lpelrson ms. sg. prefix y- for ‘sit’
d the
~~~~~~~~g suffix ..t
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essiveuqxct. The
matit: inference” is
, where an erstwhile ltm tive-directional
rzes next the dative/ben+b:factivc marker
~~~Q~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~arker, as in lhe case of the
initia~l~~, proixcds by bleachmg, along a well-
and the rncw$: Tro
locative to da t,ive-benefactive
I ~~~~ati~ steps of’ in~er~~~e involved in ( Sa-d)
may be
bjcct
moves that person
n, the Arabic guatr’ sit’ has become the
of Iocatic~ned o temporal
cxprcs-
or Givh (I 9’73b). inter dia. The
,n widely documented
(sc:c summary in Givbn,
b). Similar chanp, up to at least the
10, Baatu
ku-,
Ht:brew Ie-, Sherpa Jr,
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118
T. Givcin/Logz’c es. prugnwt ics
(ii)
If a
person can be a conscious-recipient o
conc:r~ti objects, that
person could aIso ble a conscious/recipient of aEst~aet ideas.
(iii) If a person is the recipient of anything, chances are he/she is the
possesmr
of that thing.
(iv) Whoever
possesses
an object most likely also ~~~~e~~~rom that
object.
The probzini istic nature of these inferences, and the family-r~~sembiance char-
acter 0% the verb-continuum along which
hey progress, need no further
elaboration. But how did the inference psogress further
dative/ benef ac-
tive to human-accusative? Three facts ab(Dut dative/hen
tives are involved
here:
(a i They are in text overwhelmingly
human (see
discussion in Given 1976b,
1979a: ch. 2):
(c4) They nre in text overwhelmingly definite (see discussion in Oivon 1976b,
i 979a ch. 2);
(c) They have a high probability in discourse/text of undergoing a “dativc-
shift” and thus being promoted to
direct
o@ect/accusatiloe (see discussion
in Giv6n 1979a: ch. 4).
Now, in Engfish dative-shifting involves the loss of the
tposition *to/
for’,
but in Spanish it does not. Thus compare the two co
variant and In& -**wcbc,-u*bject variant,
in table 3. The an;
resemblance” nature of this inflerential space next gave rise in Spanish to the
following inferences:
(6 1) (a) ‘If an object is
dative, 1
has a high probability of also bein
*and
def ine e.
(b’j If an object is
dat”ue-humarL -deji ’ ,tite,
t has a hi
h probability 01’also
being
direct object.
This purely probabilistic re,itsoning i
s
responsible for re-a
others, a.
human-ac.wat;ve
marker. But the very same i
lead 1.0#another resolution. In Swahili, I:‘orexample, (s
1076b) l;he object agreement/proniun first marked dative objects,
tlhen
was
extended to definite direct objects. ,tnd finally was further ~xt~~d~d
.- within
one gender only -
to be the mnrlier of
htrmm direct ok$wts,
indefinite alike. The more general e;utenr;ion in Swahili, then, went from dative
to dqfirrife-direct object, rather than from dative to )runlcrrr+=Clirectbject.
8/15/2019 Givon Logic Pragmatics Epistemology
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Direct-objeez vwial?a
Indirect-object variant
hat the functional domain of
ins that overlap in the passive
(62) (a) th? topic-
ntiwnt
domain:
here a non-agent gets ‘promoted’ to the
/topic position. Other members of this domain are, e.g.
ronouns, definitization, right and left dislocation, etc.;
atisn
domain: here the iderltity of the agent is sup-
p~esse~i in various ways. Other members of this domain are various
rson~)./neut~~l constructions;
(c)
the
stcrtive)l/dc7t~~rasitiveomain:
here
an event is construed as a
st.ate, its “active” p
erties thus suppressed. Other members
omain
are stative-a
ctivals,
ref exives, reciprocals, perfec-
tive-resultatives, etc.
Now, in ~~iachr~~nic~l~nge giving rise to passive corn>tructions of the “classical”
ts properties of all three functional domains of
where the passive arises from constructions
wit~n eiach d,~m~n that are
not
er se passive
constructions, but rather
one of the $three domains. Undergoing
&ly
acquire some of the properties characteristic of the
irtvolve the folLowin
inductive/probabilis-
t is to bat suppress~rd, he next most likely
will be likely to become the
topic of the
nduc, aqxxt 0% the
action is to be focused upon,
the
staous/identity
q f
he agent Is lefss
important.
(c) If the clatlse-tcapic is u noti-agent,
then it is most likely that the
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12 3
T. xbr/ Lo gic s. pragmatics
patient-related properties of the event, such as
state, are /focused upon.
iits being a uesu&ng
InEcrence
(63a)
leads from the agent-identity-suppression
1
domain to
the topic-
identification domain. Inference (63h) leads from the st~,tive~iIlt~~ns~~ve o-
m;lin to the agent-identity-suppression domain. And inferewe (63~) leads from
t
hit topic-identification don,ain to the stative-detransitive doma,in. Each is in
Ijrinciple pragmatic, and each is supported by a wet&h of cross4in
A’ .5. Word-order change
lin Old Biblical Hebrew (OBH, see Givoa 1977) the “unmarked” word order
TNasVSO and a special marked order -
either an “‘anterior” break in
-the
action sequence or a topic-switch - was SVO. In
rew
(LBH), the two orders changed their valuation, wit
the
unmarked word order -
in context of both action and topi@ continuity _I_ nd
VSO assuming specialized, oft-semi-frozen, values (though not the original
perfect/anterior/topic-switch value of the QBH SVO). This re-analysis also
inl~~olves crucial change in
the tense-aspect system, from a perfect-aspect
system to a past-tense system, whereby the OBH “perfect’” than
Gon from “anterior” to “past”, while the OBH “imperfect”’
valuation from “preterit” to “future/non-punctual”. Both UK
tense-aspect change ; niay be characterized 1s “over-use” prc>8essesof de-mark-
(b)
Over-use of the mere marked left-dislocated SW word-order to
identify subjects that are easier to identify and represent h&$er
pvdictability/continuity
than those normally marked by
left-disl
tion (see section 3 above). This de-marked the SVO wordmorder:
Over-use of the anterior “prior to” value that firs/: involved a
specific
look-back function
of “perfect” 8r
“pluperfect”,
maki
mlore general “in the past” :narker. This de-marked t
and made it a past tense.
Both changes are well attested elseINhere, mostly il~d~~~~~~l~~,tf each
other
[40].Both represent
an “over-kill” communicative strategy, whereby the speak-e1
decides
i
ha t
- just for satefy’s sake - he will use a
more m(arked
insure beyond ;a shred ,sf doubt tillat thr: hearer
da-marking or
deualtrativg
that device. A
similar
de-marking the right-dislocated VS word-order and
ev
[M) See Givh
(I
911Ob) or the perfect-to-pm change, and Givbn ( 1976b) flor the clc-mwking af
1~ t-dislocate4 constructions.
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T. Gi vbnJLo\gic vs. prapnutics
121
e from SV to VS “neutral” word-o
-r(see discussion in Slobin 1.1977)
input into such a decision by the
riety of probabilities, cone erning
i sepal-interactive factors all per-
the message without inordinate
irich a decision procedure could be
s;rstem. It is inherently a context-
the child’s acquisi-
e same kind as the
in ( 1977) and Givirn
and enlargement of
d and of his/her
necessarily open-
a Iogico-deductive descriljtion.
discussion in Givbn 1979a: ch. 7),
f human language
and ontogenetic
only is a deductive-base j account incapable of characteriz-
age is undergoing at all times, but
way language has evolved. In this
sense, thus, ~hornsky’~, profoundly anti-evolutionary view of human language
is certainly compatible with his view of
rammar as a closed aigorithmic
system f4
11.
systems,
ein and
iucc
Bert rmd F~uss~ll, n his f Dreword to Wi it
enstein’s Tractatus, acknowledges
eductive syste.ms, yet
noting; that for someone who argued that
anaged
to say quite
nent was of course
ndamentally misdirected, since
though Russell’s
worthy model of
g been made some
[4\] TO wit: “,.t It is quite senseless to s&se the prciblem of erplaining the evolution of human
language ftcrtn more pnmitiw sysre+ns of wmmunication that appeared It lower levels of
intellectwl crap&y.. . *’ (Chomsky 1968: 59).
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decades earlier by Peirce (see Peirce ( 1455) and discussion in Anrtila (1977)).
Both saw c;learly that a deductive, axiomatic system cannot express new
information, but only
tau3Qlugies
totally familiar knowledge) or
c~~ntrud~cti~n~
(totally
strange and un-integrable knowledge). Peirce
went on to win the tam
“abduction” to characterize the kind (Dfnon-de
uctive inference, inductian or
intu iti ve I eap
that must
un
quisitioa of new in~o~~tion~ Still,
Wittgenstein, perhaps inadv
down tile foundlations for
neral
theory of injbrmation
within any
c
municativc* system - ~ert~nly within
natusmal language - w3ere
‘“new information” alwa ys operates ~me~vhere
between the two extrr:mes of tautology and contradiction: it cannot be
t~tul~
new and thus incompatible with all previous knowledge (Le. ‘~~ontr~~dicto~~‘~.
And it cannot be
totally
old and thus redundant and of no interest (i.e.
“:autological’“). Wi&in such extreme bounds, one
coulld
conceive of the
seemingly
logical
impropriety of tautologies and contradicuons such 8s;
(65) (a) Joe is a teacher;
he is tl teacher
(tautology)
(b) Joe is a teacher;
he’ s not a teacher
(contradictlion)
as being merely the extreme margins of the system. But the bulk of the system
of linguistic communications operates somewhere bex~~n these two extremes,
where “degree of redundancy” and “degree of newness/surprise*’ cannot be
ruled upon by deductive means, but TL*Iuste inferred
prqmatico& .
There ore
three empirically-based argunlrenlis that militate for such conclusions:
(; ) The cuntext-dependency argument:
The logician would consider (ir9a. b)
”
above, closed systems, and thus pretend that the contradketory or tauto-
logical second proposition in each is that way becztuse of the first
proposition. But the use of language in communicative context is r&e
open
in two distinct senses: First,
generica& ,
any itelm of shared knowl-
edge within the culture/lexicon can potentially be an
im@cit part
of the
context for
any
prop0
Second, any span of the “specific/
context the speaker
s to be
within reach
of the rhea
legitimate context for a proposition. Decisions on both
principle
probabilastic and pragmatic, given the total
spa
“context” [42].
(ii)
The speaker-hearer argument:
For logicians, eontext is ‘~obj~tiv~~‘,
overtly-listed premises. They are never comfortable with “I
But in language and communication, it is the “I” thett ma
about what
-. generically and specifically -- can be taken us the ~~~~~~~
context for “you”,
and this horror of subjective, inductive inference would
(421 Logicians, of COUIBB~reate a sanitized notion of context by listing: a finite number
of
propose
ims as “premises”.
8/15/2019 Givon Logic Pragmatics Epistemology
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uctive system wide
open. In addition, sooner or later the
with the “‘I” create the classic infinite-
s paradox), and while a logician may
s done [43], that does not make the
section 8, above, even
diate, visible, proposi-
o get the logician off
the hook, This is so
visible, immed.~ate context is judged by the
:lance as context. And as we have seen
t is in prizrrciple crpen-ended and pragmatic.
ic may define the u pel: boundis of
systems (the l~~~t~ern~ases), the bulk of the actual
atic irr nature, where “new” and “o;ld” informa-
U@ct open ended generic nd specific contexts.
mv
context
m to take symqvmy for granted as d matter of
iat would find it extrt:mely hard to identify a bona fide case of
her lexicon or grammar. Marchand (1964) refers to the seeming
nymq in;l he lexicon 2~s the eccxxmy principle”, and that may
ect ~~p~~~ati~n, at letrst in part, since one would be hard put to
ex~~,~~nwhy speak rs should store two forms coding exactly the same meanrng
or function. Appa nt cases of synonymy tend to dissolve, on closer examina-
tion, into more subtle semantk, pralirnati:, socia
istic, dialectal variation.
On the ather harlkd
and grammatical ity in sentences olrt of
cantext -. is much
ier to document,
being indeed one of the most pervasive
s of 1exiCOR n
types of diachronic changes discussed in
this, so that in fact language change at all
Jly-dependent proliferation of senses and
e two extra @??. oles of the system of
cOai’n$j
is the extreme case 01
~l;ecoding, where the very same
one csei e
bnits. While polysemy is the
sage units - presumably along
domain -. are coded by only
seem to avoid the one extreme so con-
1’~p~r~dc~~
nd
its implications for epis emology and pragmatks in
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fjjistently d indut sistently? The answer,
1
clearly abides by this dictum,
the polysemy/ambiguity end?
On
n it violates it so ~~~si~
If language were a closed, deductive system d~a~in
meaning, this question would indeed be bafflin
I believe, already established that lexical and
in language is
open-ended
and
context-smsitix. Thus t
can tolerate the seemingly hi incidence of p~ly~~erny
must be that they constarttly make use of the context ta disa
while a small core or “m;~rgins” of the semantic syst
they are absolute and context free”, the bulk is conte.~t-dependent, at least
--
when one considers the actuai facts of language use. Gtven su
?,nguage, it seems that it &GS indeed “strive to operate” by
one-to-one correlation between code and message, Either tota
an infinite number + f:ode-units expressing the same message) or total
ambiguity (i.e. an infinit c number of messa coded by a sin c~d~~u~~it)
would be a communicative nightmare. The
t
would impose enormou~q
and non-functional MVIKV~:~’ur&rr. While the ond would impose
t~~t~~
ciependenqv cm con ext. I
seems to me that Ila in fact 8 ~~~_~~~~~
c*ompror~t~~e
ystem, relying to some extent on m en - where items
and rules can be memorized in a relatively “atomic”, context-free
fmhion
while to some extent rel>ting on disambi tion via context, where items a&
rules shift their meaning /usage depend
That such a compromise should be root
anism seems too obvious to require further COI
When one considers the ont
struck by the fact that
carlie
polysemy/ambiguity and
t
And that from those earli
eny of human lan
more the extreme
umbiguotrs
and HIOIV
ich& coded. I t
is
communication and primates communica
in the extreme (see discussion in Givbn 16
here-and-now, visible topics and
I-and-you.
One may
thus
of language, both phylogenetically and
s:mtax out of discourse, “core meaning” out contextual rn6ani
out of pragmati:s, and thus - in very much the same s
8/15/2019 Givon Logic Pragmatics Epistemology
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c3f context-free,
n the human organism
le, .is their fundam~nt~~~ connection and constant interchange
nt ext-free automated routines and context-sensi-
First are uscd~ along established, routine path-
nrajor
ch.w’ficl;rtory
nodes of the system, where pre-
ulate about what \h analytic scannin
native device is on automatic pilot. One
tional level - at the
theme
the ht urcr - in order to
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14.1. Lmgutqy, cw t tmunicati on nd prugmat ic:l ; s. ogrc
I think an txnpiricul study of language data, without idea
or abstracting use, context and eomm
points out clearly to the fact that 3,@
stripe can achieve little in eithelr de
cognition. This is not to say, howevtr, &at
col;itdstitig
them with pragmatic ones from
the
informatior./cornmunication theory, cannot
yield some in
about the parameters that bound cogGtion
differences betwlcen the two systems ma;y be su
The fact that a fundamentally prag
the human orglinism nevertheless gives rise, repeatedly and in various sub-
systems. to islands of relative firm~~ment/dedu~tabi~ity, is an important evolu-
tionary and epktemological fact. The hybrid system that is thus treated is
t-annhlFi fif aAnr9tino tr\ turfi rncaiplr nar-aml*t*rc fif banvirnnmant sank-4 ckrrwiuul*
YUps”.b V* U”UyCIa.@ Z” b”” “.‘UJ”.
puW1a.“bY.” Va V*a.*.Va.a.aYI*. w4‘U VU+. .* .U‘W
Flexi bi l i t y, change and i ndet ermi nacy:
this is a fundamental fact of reatity,
and only an organism capable of dealing with it could survive in a real
universe.
(ii)
Speed of decision making, planning and action:
this is a fundamel~ta~
Table 4
Pragmntic processing
.-
Ikductive processin
Spuce
Context relution
System bounds
WC& of inference
Mode of proof
Mode of data-
prwwsing
Functional distri-
bution
Spead of processing
hlemory/hardwart:
d cpendence
Pro~rerm/software
d~~pendence
Continuum
Con tcx dapcnden
t
Open-anded, chan~eablc
Inductive/abductive
Pwponderonca of cvidencc,
open
Analytic
certainty und high corn--
plcxi ty
‘L,ow p
Low dapcndcrrce
Low dependence
Catc~orial/discrcte
Context fr
Closed, fixwl
uc: ive
uctive proof, cslosed
Automatic, ~l~~rjthmic
certainty crud low corn-
plexi ty
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in a potentially hostile universe,
action
is of the esseracec
do not reveal a measure of rnutinized
nis:m in its cognitive evolution has been
the syntacticized vs. the
h. 5). it seemed to me then
, one
reflective of general
r the last few years, it has been gratifying to
find out how that initial hunch indeed pans out. The psychological
with works on the auto~~at~~ation/rout~nizati~~n of percep-
ast literature exists concerning the routini-
neurolo#cal literature
f feedback-free circuits is
ard ~11 hese phenomena
suggest hkolds for the
t such compartmentalism is bound to be self-defeat-
rstanding of both what
ition is now as well as -
ow it evolved out of so-c
Q6. itn#tiC ~r~~~~~i~&n perccptkinelnd caglition, alcc
Kbin ( 1973),
Pssner
wd Snyder (19’14). Atkinson arld
rin (1947),
inter aNa. Fur
autsnlatizutiorr nJ rautinizuti0t7
t (1975,1930),
hapiro
nd Ghmidt (in press), Shapwj
in press), rrsf~dia.
For the ncurolagical basis f’or
Margain ( 1950) or Pkllard ( I 960), n, ter
cd
routines/reflexes, see Smith (
I 980) ,
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128
T. Givh,/ Logic vs. prugntutics
ability to react to feedback and fast-changing feedback, the copin
indeterminacies and imponderables.
Ultimately, think, we must elaborate not only a theory of human co
as it is now, but aiso a theory ey;plaining the rise of h an cognition 8s m
~O/M~UMJ~,biological process. What I believe will em
as p=t of such a
theory is a hierarchic view of the evolution of organismic
functions, whereby
simple, “lower” functions get routinized via repetition and the eventual catee
gorization of tokens of both stimulus and behavior as
“be
a more
general typ8 X”.
This categorization makes routin~~~d of the
response/behavior possible, thus freeing the analytic, f~~back-dependent
capacity to seek, create and pursue higher levels of organization. But eventually
those higher levels get similarly categorized and eventually routinized, etc.,
perh,aps potentially ad infini~~r?l. Categorization into hieriuchic
tok~naty~e
syste.m:; may thus be viewed as the prerquisite for routinization,
parcel of the same
eneral process of systems creatioa And
routini
processing is what makes it possible, in turn, to keep increasing the
depth of
the
processing system, by freeing the analytic capacity to pursue the next
level.
14.3. TIie rise
of order out of chaos: C’ arnup and Wittgenstein revisited
To some extent, the rise of deductive, closed, well-ordered, discrete and
algorith,mic systems out of the non-discrete, chaotic mire of pragmatics must
remain a fundamental mystery of the sentient organism. Philosophical exm
tremists since time immemorial, be they Western epistcmolo
ts and
latter-day
logical a tomists or mushy mystics and late-Wit -outs of whs tevcr
stripe, have all striven to represent the roots o
gnition as one of the extreme
poles. Ia’epistemology is