Part 12 (2/2)

Notice that the point at which Strawson's distinction was introduced concerned just the limited issue of whether set-theoretic approaches capture salient linguistic intuitions. Central to set-theoretic approaches is the issue of whether the is a quantifier (or a name) at all. Strawson's distinction shows that our linguistic intuitions suggest that the is not a quantifier in the set-theoretic sense, even if one and only one is. If this distinction is traced to felicity conditions rather than truth conditions, fine, but then the set-theoretic step of truth conditions fails to capture the distinction that our intuitions demand. In other words, what is central to our intuitions about the-the reason for having it specifically in (some) languages in addition to one and only one-is not captured in the formal semantics approach, given that these approaches are incapable of capturing crucial felicity conditions such as ''drawing on independently established resources.'' To my knowledge, Heim 1982 is the first serious formal attempt 114

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to incorporate Strawson's view of descriptions in her file semantics: ''For every indefinite, start a new card; for every definite, update a suitable old card'' (Heim 1982, 276). Unfortunately, technology apart, it is hard to distinguish file semantics from model theory, as Heim's later work based on Montague semantics ill.u.s.trates. Further, grant that Heim's proposal works for interactions between indefinite descriptions and anaphoric definite descriptions: A dog bit a woman. The dog ran away (p. 275). Still, it is unclear how to ''update a suitable old card'' for a typical nonanaphoric ''Russellian'' description like the king of France or the first line of Gray's Elegy; obviously, the entire explanatory weight is on suitable (Mukherji 1987, 1995 for more on ''Russellian'' descriptions).

Returning to Strawson's observations, it seems that we respond with exactly one to questions of the form how many?; we respond with the F to questions of the form who/what?, when asked in a context in which the speaker is a.s.sured that the audience can draw on an independently established resource. It begins to look as if Russell's equivalence is involved in a fundamental confusion amounting almost to a category mistake. We may view the pa.s.sage cited as a theoretical explanation of that confusion.

It is important to distinguish such who/what questions from another sort mentioned in Strawson 1950. There, Strawson suggested that we must have some way of forestalling the question, what (who, which one) are you talking about, as well as the question, what are you saying about it (him, her). That distinction, in Strawson's technical sense, was between referring and ascribing, and it grouped both the F and exactly one F as referring expressions in that technical sense. In the pa.s.sage cited from his later writing (1961), exactly one F performs a resource-presenting function, while the F performs an identifying function within the generic referring function mooted in Strawson 1950. The distinction can be generalized. We answer a how many question with any of all Fs, some F, a few F, most F, as well as exactly one F.20 Quantified phrases, therefore, do what they are supposed to, namely, signal a quant.i.ty of Fs.21 Designators, on the other hand, simply refer back to these objects signaled in advance.

Contrary to what Russell suggested, a use of the never produces a quant.i.tative picture, implicitly or otherwise. This is not to deny that, in a use of a singular definite description, the use of the predicate F in the singular itself bears information (roughly) paralleling the information borne by one and only one F, set-theoretically speaking. But this fact has nothing to do with the definite article and has no eect on a general theory of def- Grammar and Logic 115.

inite descriptions. Curiously, the same point emerges in Strawson's rare agreement with Russell: ''There are certain well-marked cases in which a full-scale Russellian account is obviously correct. . . . The only man who refused to sign was shot. . . . It is clear that part of the content of the information explicitly conveyed is precisely that one and only one man refused to sign'' (Strawson 1995, 400). Explaining further, Strawson observed that the ''presence of the word only is just what marks such cases as clearly Russellian'' (p. 400). Strawson did not cite a case in which the presence of the marked it as clearly Russellian.

So, the semantic value for the F proposed independently by Neale and Larson-Segal is now explained. Not surprisingly, both set up semantic values only for the singular F without setting up the value for the full definite phrase. It is hard to see what else to do with the resources of formal semantics, for there is no additional semantic value to be set up for the definite article itself. The same truth clause will remain intact for a variety of quantified phrases-one F, one and only one F, exactly one F, nonzero but less than two Fs, unique F, and so on-even if natural languages failed to contain the definite article. The most ubiquitous closed item of a language turns out to be meaningless from the (formal) semantic point of view. At least one crucial instance thus supports Strawson's (1950) general claim that ''ordinary language has no exact logic.''22 3.6.

Summing Up In this chapter, I have reached the following conclusions: 1. There is no coherent division between syntax and semantics in grammatical theory; in that sense, grammatical theory already contains a semantic theory.

2. Logical notation may at best be viewed as representing data of linguistic intuitions; this much may be accomplished by grammatical notation, which also has (independent) explanatory value.

3. Many of Davidson's structural conditions for truth theory can be captured in grammatical theory; what cannot be captured seems to merely be pretheoretical a.s.sumptions.

4. There is no interesting sense in which formal semantics explains the external significance of language, although its vocabulary purports to attain that goal.

5. For this reason, formal semantics cannot be viewed as explaining the internal significance of language either.

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6. Linking up with (2), resources of formal logic cannot even represent linguistic intuitions in the crucial case of definite descriptions.

The upshot is that there is no compelling reason so far to deny the original proposal that the nonphonological component of grammatical theory may itself be viewed as a theoretically salient semantic theory (section 3.3). This is because the most relevant nongrammatical theory, namely, formal semantics, lacks explanatory motivation; hence, attaching this theory to grammatical theory does not enlarge the explanatory scope of language theory.

Recall from chapter 2 that the scope of grammatical theory is so far restricted to certain mind-internal computational properties of language.

To that extent, biolinguistics promotes a specific, theory-internal conception of language. It is plausible to hold, from what we have seen so far, that the grammatical conception of language is all that we have. After all, a ''final'' account of utterance tokens must deal with many physiolog-ical factors that relate to the production and hearing of sound. Yet we do not expect a linguistic theory to include a subtheory of ear and throat mechanisms. So why not drop the axe even earlier at the natural joint where grammar ends and other things begin?

I am not advocating, in advance of research, what grammatical theory ought to look like and what it should cover in the future. Research on grammars will proceed under its internal compulsions. In so doing, it will abandon some of its earlier goals and cover new phenomena on a case-by-case basis. In some cases, as we saw, it might embrace entirely new domains not antic.i.p.ated in its earlier phases-for example, the by-now familiar incorporation of LF, some properties of external systems, introduction of optimal mechanisms, and so on.

It is also not ruled out that some of the semantic phenomena currently covered by theories of logical form-insofar as they were designed to capture structural conditions on meaning-might fall under grammatical theory itself. In that case, notions like predication, propositional form, and truth-''indications'' will no longer be viewed as primitives of semantic theory, but as ent.i.ties projected by syntax for the C-I interface: ''As if syntax carved the path interpretation must blindly follow'' (Hinzen 2006, cited in Chomsky 2006a; also Pietroski 2005; Stainton 2006 from a dierent direction).

For these purported extensions of grammatical theory, we need to examine closely the additional machinery invoked to see if they have independent explanatory motivation, or whether they push the problems with Grammar and Logic 117.

logical form just a step back. If successful, the approach will reinforce the idea that grammatical theory itself contains the semantics of human languages, understood as structural conditions on meaning. In any case, progress in such directions is likely to be painstaking and incremental and always from within the form of theory already reached.

The process is common in the natural sciences. Studies of the micro-world and fields that are now routine in contemporary physics were not part of cla.s.sical mechanics that studied projectiles and pendulums. Why should the course of biolinguistics be otherwise?

4 Words and Concepts As currently pursued, one of the goals of biolinguistics-perhaps, the goal-is to explain how sound-meaning correlations are established in languages. The Government-Binding Theory sought to explain those correlations as interactions between lexical information and universal principles with language variation restricted to parameters attached to these principles. As we will see in the next chapter, the Minimalist Program went several steps ahead to establish such correlations in even more restrictive terms. But the descriptive goal remained the same: establish sound-meaning correlations.

4.1.

''Incompleteness'' of Grammar Now the problem is that, in some widely accepted sense of ''meaning,''

biolinguistics fails to establish sound-meaning correlations. We argued at length in the previous chapter that the grammatical level of LF represents meanings. But grammar will not distinguish between (the wide dierences in) the meanings of (88) and (89).

(88) John decided to attend college.

(89) Bill tried to attend church.

(88) and (89) have nearly identical LF representations although they dif-fer widely in sound. Thus, two PF representations have been correlated with one LF representation.

Let me be very clear about what exactly the problem is. The task for biolinguistics is not to establish sound-meaning correlations per se, but to establish them in accordance with the native speaker's intuitions which is based on the knowledge of language internalized by the native speaker.

So, properties of English sentences are not the focus of inquiry: knowledge of English, under usual abstractions, is. If the native speaker takes 120

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a single sound to have dierent meanings-ambiguity, as in flying planes-the theory explains that by postulating mechanisms for displacement. If the native speaker takes two sounds to have the same meaning-synonymy, as in active-pa.s.sive pairs-the theory explains that as well, again by postulating mechanisms for displacement. By parity, if the native speaker takes two sounds to have two dierent meanings, as in (88) and (89), the theory ought to explain that too: ''linguistic semantics, if it is to explicate the matching between form and meaning, must be able to distinguish the meanings of words'' (Jackendo 2002, 286). If this is a legitimate demand on language theory, then grammatical theory fails to accomplish it.

The problem could be identified as follows. (88) and (89) dier at three places: proper names John and Bill, verbs decide and try, and common nouns church and college. These things vary in how LF-representations of (88) and (89) fail to meet Jackendo 's demand. Take the verbs decide and try which are listed in the lexicon as transitive verbs that take infinitival clauses; they are also control verbs in that they must have thematic Subjects, among other interesting properties. This cl.u.s.ter of properties distinguish them from other transitive verbs that take infinitival clauses-for example, seem and appear have the complex property of deleting the S-bar node in their complement structure in the G-B formulation. So grammatical theory does get tantalizingly close to a unique characterization of individual lexical items.

Yet, as things stand now, we are still left with at least two verbs (seem, appear) and (decide, try) in each subcla.s.s such that grammatical theory can not distinguish between the members of a subcla.s.s; in that sense, decide and try have the same LF-meaning. However, it is surely an empirical question if there are grammatically significant dierences between decide and try; we just need to know more. Suppose there are. In that case, grammatical theory will succeed in matching each verb with its (own) LF-meaning. Now, if Jackendo demands that language theory must also account for the conceptual dierences between deciding and trying, then he would be appealing to a conception of language theory we may want to question, as mooted in the previous chapter (section 3.6).

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