A Presuppositional Analysis of Specific Indefinites by Yeom Jae-Il;

Author:Yeom, Jae-Il;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4219241
Publisher: Routledge

4.2.4. Interpretation Rules for Speakers

Speakers must follow the maxim of quality (Grice 1975). That is, they are expected to say what they believe is true in their information states. Their information states do not change when they utter a sentence, the sentence just has to be compatible with them.10 This has to be different from the way a hearer updates his information state with new information.

(19)

ø is true in an information state ss iff ss•||ø||=ss.11

The operation •|| || is defined as follows:

(20)

ss•||R(1,2,…, n)|| = {wg ∈ ss | <g(1),g(2), …,g(n)> ∈ Fw(R)}

ss•∃iø|| = ⋃d∈D({wg ∈ ss | ∃i: g(i) ∈ Dw }||ø||)

ss•||¬ø|| = ss − ss||ø||

ss•||ø ∧ ψ|| = ss•||ø||•||ψ||

ss•||ø → ψ|| = ss•|| ¬(ø ∧ ¬ψ)||

Among these rules, the rules for the existential quantifier and the negation operator are different from those for hearer’s. The rule for the existential operator must be different from the rule of updating a hearer’s information state with it. As discussed in the preceding section, where a hearer updates an information state with an existential sentence, the existential quantifier introduces a new peg to the domain of the hearer’s subjects. In contrast, when an existential quantifier is used by a speaker, the corresponding peg must be already in the domain of subjects in the information state. Also hearers’ interpretation rule of the negation operator was formulated considering possible expansion of the domain of subjects, but speakers’ rule does not have to consider this possibility. The condition for a speaker’s uttering a negative sentence ¬ø is that the speaker has evidence that ø is false.

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ø is false on the basis of ss iff ss•||ø|| = ∅

In a similar way, you can say ø only if you have evidence that ø is true in your information state. We have to notice that there is a gap: we cannot say ¬ø even if ø is not true in ss. There are cases where ∅ ⊂ ss•||ø|| ⊂ ss. This means that ø is not true nor false on the basis of ss. In this case, the speaker cannot say ø nor ¬ø.12 As regards the other rules, there is no reason for being different from hearers’ rules.

Due to the maxim of quality, a speaker cannot make a statement like the following (assuming that the information state of the speaker does not change midways).

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John may have stolen the car, but he didn’t.

This statement cannot be true. If the first clause is true in an information state, the second clause must be false in that information state, or vice versa. There is no information state which can make the two clauses true at the same time. In a conversational mode, the following two clauses can be said in a sequence consistently.

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A: John may have stolen the car.

B: Actually he didn’t.

This shows that consistency must be defined in the dynamic side of information.

Also the maxim of quantity prohibits speakers from making some kind of statements. You cannot utter the following sentence, with respect to a fixed information state:

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John may have stolen the car, and he actually did.

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