Sub-sentential logical form. On Robert J. Stainton's words and thoughts.
| Autor | Barceló Aspeitia, Axel Arturo |
RESUMEN: Stainton arguye (2006, 2001) que, dado que los actos de habla suboracionales carecen de la estructura sintáctica apropiada para tener forma lógica, las proposiciones comunicadas de manera suboracional no derivan su forma lógica de ellos. En este breve comentario desarrollo un argumento a favor de la tesis de que los actos de habla suboracionales, no sólo tienen la estructura sintáctica apropiada, sino que --de acuerdo con la propia teoría pragmática general de Stainton sobre el habla suboracional-- también satisfacen todos los criterios mencionados por el propio Stainton para ser los portadores básicos de forma lógica.
PALABRAS CLAVE: sintaxis, actos de habla, estructura, pragmática, argumentación
SUMMARY: Stainton argues (2006, 2001) that since sub-sentential speech acts lack the proper syntactic structure to have logical form, it is not from them that subsententially propositions conveyed derive their logical form, in this brief comment, I develop an argument for the claim that sub-sentential speech acts not only do have the proper syntactic structure, but that according to Stainton's own general pragmatic account of sub-sentential speech, they also satisfy all the criteria put forward by him to be the primary bearers of logical form.
KEY WORDS: syntax, speech acts, structure, pragmatics, argumentation
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The central goal of Robert Stainton's Words and Thoughts (2006) is to argue that sub-sentential speech is a genuine phenomenon and to spell out some of its implications for our understanding of the relation between language and thought. By "sub-sentential speech", Stainton means full-fledged speech acts, where the speaker utters ordinary words and phrases, not embedded in any larger syntactic structure, and yet literally conveys a full proposition easily graspable by the hearer. Genuine sub-sentential speech is ipso facto non-elliptical, since what is produced in the speech act is not a semantically or syntactically elliptical sentence, but a sub-sentential linguistic unit. In other words, in genuine sub-sentential speech, the thing uttered not only sounds like a bare phrase, but actually is a bare phrase.
One of the implications Stainton wants to draw from sub-sentential speech is that there are things, like propositions, which have logical form and yet are neither expressions of natural language nor derive their logical form from that of other linguistic entities. This serves Stainton to refute a common implicit position be and Reinaldo Elugardo (2001) have previously referred to as "vernacularism", the view that logical forms are fundamentally assigned to linguistic entities like speech acts or expressions of natural language, and are only derivatively assigned to anything else: e.g. propositions, mental states, etcetera.
Even though I find Stainton's arguments against the primacy of sentential logical form over propositional logical form persuasive, I do not think they warrant his stronger claim that propositions have logical form non-derivatively. In this brief commentary, I will try to show my reasons for doubt. The plan for this text is as follows. First, I will sketch Stainton's argument against vernacularism. From this sketch I will identify the premise I will later challenge: that propositions conveyed sub-sententially cannot get their logical form derivatively from the sub-sentential speech act itself, because this kind of acts lack the proper syntactic structure to have logical form. In the remaining part of the text, I will try to develop an argument for the claim that sub-sentential speech acts not only do have the proper syntactic structure, but also satisfy the rest of the criteria put forward by Stainton to be the primary bearers of logical form.
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Anti-Vernacularism
Stainton's argument against vernacularism (Stainton 2006, pp. 177-190) is the first of several theoretical implications of sub-sentential speech discussed in the third and final part of his book. By then, Stainton has already established sub-sentential speech as a genuine phenomenon, i.e. he has given us ample evidence that we can use words and phrases to convey a proposition, without deploying internally any sentence of natural language that expresses it. Now, Stainton wants us to accept that these propositions conveyed subsententially may also have logical form. He bases his claim on a series of imaginary examples of sub-sentential argumentation, that is, conversations where premises or conclusions are conveyed subsententially. The examples are very plausible and even though one may have qualms regarding the formal nature of the exemplified entailments, (1) more adequate examples would be just as easy to come by. From the consideration of these examples, Stainton draws three important facts about sub-sententially conveyed propositions in general: (i) they can be true or false, (ii) they stand in entailment relations, and (iii) at least some of these entailment relations are form-based. From these three facts, it follows that what is conveyed in sub-sentential argumentation exhibits logical form.
For this to be an especially controversial conclusion, it is also necessary to show that the logical form of a proposition conveyed in sub-sentential speech is not derived from any other linguistic entity. It is pertinent therefore, to wonder what it takes for one thing's logical form to be derived from another's. There are certainly many senses in which one may talk about an object having a property derivatively from another object that has the same property. However, Stainton settles on a psychological conception. (2) For him, an entity a derives its...
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