Abstract
One need be neither a diplomat nor a lady to use the word perhaps to mean ‘yes’ one time and ‘no’ another. But what is the meaning of a word like perhaps if everyone can make it mean either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as he pleases? Can one in any sense talk about a fixed word meaning here? But if not, what is it Voltaire is telling us when he maintains that the diplomat’s uttering “yes” as well as the lady’s uttering “no” means ‘perhaps’?
When a diplomat says “yes”, he means ‘perhaps’; when he says “perhaps”, he means ‘no’; and when he says “no”, he is no diplomat.
When a lady says “no”, she means ‘perhaps’; when she says “perhaps”, she means ‘yes’; and when she says “yes”, she is no lady.
Voltaire
For helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper I am grateful to Jerry Edmond-son, Donald Freeman, Frans Plank, and David Schwarz. I also want to express my gratitude for stimulating discussions of the material involved to students of linguistics, semiotics, and philosophy of the universities of Hamburg, Montreal, Chicago, Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Stanford. The usual disclaimers apply, of course.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
Abraham, Werner: 1975, ‘Some Semantic Properties of Some Conjunctions,’ in S. P. Corder and E. Roulet (eds.), Some Implications of Linguistic Theory for Applied Linguistics, Brussels and Paris: Aimav and Didier, 1975, pp. 7–31.
Alston, William P.: 1963, ‘The Quest for Meanings,’ in Mind 72 (1963), pp. 79–87.
Boettcher, Wolfgang and Sitta, Horst: 1972, Zusammengesetzter Satz und äquivalente Strukturen (= Deutsche Grammatik III). Frankfurt a. M.: Athenäum, 1972.
Brown, Cecil H.: 1974, Wittgensteinian Linguistics, The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1974.
Chao, Yuen Ren: 1968, Language and Symbolic Systems, Cambridge: University Press, 1968.
Cohen, Jonathan L.: 1971, ‘Some Remarks on Grice’s Views about the Logical Particles of Natural Language,’ in Y. Bar Hillel (ed.), Pragmatics of Natural Languages, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1971, pp. 50–68.
Creelman, Marjorie B.: 1966, The Experimental Investigation of Meaning — A Review of Literature, New York: Springer, 1966.
Dascal, Marcelo: 1976, ‘Conversational Relevance,’ Working paper, Colloquium on ‘Meaning and Use’, Jerusalem, 1976.
Douglas, Mary (ed.): 1973, Rules and Meanings — The Anthropology of Everyday Knowledge, Harmondsworth/England: Penguin, 1973.
Ebneter, Theodor: 1973, Strukturalismus und Transformationalismus — Einführung in Schulen und Methoden, München: List, 1973.
Erdmann, Karl Otto: 1900, Die Bedeutung des Wortes — Aufsätze aus dem Grenzgebiet der Sprachpsychologie und Logik, Leipzig: Avenarius, 1900. Reprint of the 4th edition of 1925, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1966.
Freeman, Donald: 1973, ‘Keats’s “To Autumn”: Poetry as Pattern and Process,’ in Language and Style XI (1978).
Gazdar, Gerald: 1978, Formal Pragmatics for Natural Language, London and New York: Academic Press, 1978.
Gloy, Klaus: 1975, Sprachnormen I. — Linguistische und soziologische Analysen, Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1975.
Gloy, Klaus and Presch, Gunter, (eds.): 1976, Sprachnormen III. Kommunikations-orientierte Linguistik — Sprachdidaktik, Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1976.
Gordon, David and Lakoff, George: 1971, ‘Conversational Postulates,’ in Papers from the Seventh Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, 1971.
Grice, Herbert P.: 1968, ‘The Logic of Conversation,’ Working paper. Berkeley: University of California, 1968.
Grice, Herbert P.: 1975, ‘Logic and Conversation,’ in P. Cole and J. L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics. Vol. 3: Speech Acts, New York: Academic Press, 1975.
Grimm, Hannelore and Wintermantel, Margret: 1975, Zur Entwicklung von Bedeutungen — Forschungsberichte zur Sprachentwicklung II, Weinheim and Basel: Beltz, 1975.
Heringer, Hans Jürgen (ed.): 1974, Der Regelbegriff in der praktischen Semantik, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1974.
Hörmann, Hans: 1967, Psychologie der Sprache. Berlin, Heidelberg and New York: Springer 1967. Translated into English by H. H. Stern: Psycholinguistics — An Introduction to Research and Theory. Berlin, Heidelberg and New York: Springer, 1970.
Isenberg, Horst: 1971, Überlegungen zur Texttheorie,’ in J. Ihwe (ed.), Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, Vol. 1, Frankfurt a. M.: Athenäum, 1971.
Kasher, Asa: 1974, ‘Mood Implicatures: A Logical Way of Doing Generative Pragmatics,’ in Theoretical Linguistics 1 (1974), pp. 6–38.
Kempson, Ruth M.: 1915, Presupposition and the Delimitation of Semantics, Cambridge: University Press, 1975.
Kutschera, Franz von: 1971, Sprachphilosophie, München: Fink, 1971, 2nd edition, 1975.
Kutschera, Franz von: 1975, ‘Conventions of Language and Intensional Semantics,’ in Theoretical Linguistics 2 (1975), pp. 255–283.
Lang, Ewald: 1977, Semantik der koordinativen Verknüpfung (= studia grammatica XIV), Berlin (GDR): Akademie-Verlag, 1977.
Lehrer, Adrienne and Lehrer, Keith, (eds.): 1970, Theory of Meaning, Englewood Cliffs/N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1970.
Leisi, Ernst: 1953, Der Wortinhalt — Seine Struktur im Deutschen und Englischen, Heidelberg: Quelle and Meyer, 1953, 4th edition 1971.
Lewis, David: 1969, Convention — A Philosophical Study, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969. Translated into German by R. Posner and D. Wenzel: Konventionen — Eine sprachphilosophische Abhandlung, Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1975.
Lorenzer, Alfred: 1970, Sprach Zerstörung und Rekonstrukton — Vorarbeiten zu einer Metatheorie der Psychoanalyse, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1970.
Lyons, John: 1968, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, Cambridge: University Press, 1968.
Mooij, Jan J. A.: 1976, A Study of Metaphor — On the Nature of Metaphorical Expressions, with Special Reference to Their Reference, Amsterdam, New York and Oxford: North-Holland, 1976.
Morris, Charles W.: 1938, Foundations of the Theory of Signs, Chicago: University Press, 1938. Translated into German by R. Posner and J. Rehbein: Grundlagen der Zeichentheorie, München: Hanser, 1972, 2nd edition, 1975.
Naess, Arne: 1961, ‘A Study of “or”,’ in Synthese 13 (1961), 49–60.
Posner, Roland: 1972 a, Theorie des Kommentierens — Eine Grundlagenstudie zur Semantik und Pragmatik, Frankfurt a. M.: Athenäum, 1972.
Posner, Roland: 1972 b, ‘Commenting — A Diagnostic Procedure for Semantico-Pragmatic Sentence Representations,’ in Poetics 5 (1972), pp. 67–88.
Posner, Roland: 1972c, ‘Zur systematischen Mehrdeutigkeit deutscher Lexeme,’ in Linguistik und Didaktik 12 (1972), pp. 268–276.
Presch, Gunter and Gloy, Klaus, (eds.): 1976, Sprachnormen II Theoretische Begründungen — ausserschulische Sprachnormenpraxis, Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1976.
Raz, Joseph: 1975, Practical Reason and Norms, London: Hutchinson, 1975.
Richards, David A. J.: 1971, A Theory of Reasons for Action, Oxford: Clarendon, 1971.
Rollin, Bernard E.: 1976, Natural and Conventional Meaning — An Examination of the Distinction, The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1976.
Sadock, Jerrold M.: 1974, Toward a Linguistic Theory of Speech Acts, New York: Seminar Press, 1974.
Schmerling, Susan F.: 1975, ‘Asymmetric Conjunction and Rules of Conversation,’ in P. Cole and J. L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics. Vol. 3: Speech Acts, New York: Academic Press, 1975.
Schmidt, Wilhelm: 1967, Lexikalische und aktuelle Bedeutung — Ein Beitrag zur Theorie der Wortbedeutung, Berlin (GDR): Akademie-Verlag, 1967.
Searle, John R.: 1969, Speech Acts — An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1969.
Seuren, Pieter A. M.: 1977, Zwischen Sprache und Denken — Ein Beitrag zur empirischen Begründung der Semantik. Wiesbaden: Athenaion, 1977.
Skinner, Burrhus F.: 1937, ‘The Distribution of Associated Words,’ in Psychol. Rec. 1 (1937), pp. 71–76.
Slobin, Dan I.: 1971, Psycholinguistics, Glenview/Ill. and London: Scott, Foresman and Comp., 1971.
Titchener, Edward B.: 1912, Lehrbuch der Psychologie, Part 2, Leipzig: Barth, 1912.
Travis, Charles: 1975, Saying and Understanding — A Generative Theory of Illocutions, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975.
Ulmann, Gisela: 1975, Sprache und Wahrnehmung — Verfestigen und Aufbrechen von Anschauungen durch Wörter, Frankfurt a. M. and New York: Campus Verlag, 1975.
Walker, Ralph C. S.: 1975, ‘Conversational Implicatures,’ in Simon Blackburn (ed.): Meaning, Reference and Necessity, Cambridge: University Press, 1975.
Watson, John: 1919, Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, Philadelphia and London: Lippincott 1919, 2nd edition, 1924.
Wilson, Deirdre: 1976, Presuppositions and Non-truth-conditional Semantics, London, New York and San Francisco: Academic Press, 1976.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig: 1953, Philosophical Investigations, ed. by G. E. M. Anscombe and R. Rhees, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1980 D. Reidel Publishing Company
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Posner, R. (1980). Semantics and Pragmatics of Sentence Connectives in Natural Language. In: Searle, J.R., Kiefer, F., Bierwisch, M. (eds) Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics. Texts and Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8964-1_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8964-1_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-277-1045-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-8964-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive