الجزء الثاني من النص الأول :
The sentence in (1) expresses the proposition that John ate a portion of the cookies and is true just in case it corresponds to the outside world. Intuitively, all of the cookies still constitutes a portion of the cookies.
So the sentence in (1) is true even if in the outside world John ate all of the cookies. However, something interesting happens when this sentence is uttered in a conversation like (2).
(2) A: “John ate some of the cookies”
B: “I figured he would. How many are left?”
It is clear from (2) that A conveys the literal meaning of the sentence in (1), i.e., its semantic content. It is equally clear that A implies—or at least B infers—the proposition expressed by (3).
(3) John didn’t eat all of the cookies
You might suspect that what the word some really means is something like a portion but not all, so that the sentence in (1) literally means that John ate a portion but not all of the cookies and (1) entails (3). Let me show you that this is not the case by comparing the sentences in (4).
(4) a. John ate some of the cookies;
# in fact, he ate none of the cookies
b. John ate some of the cookies;
in fact, he ate all of the cookies
In (4a), I cannot follow the sentence John ate some of the cookies with the sentence in fact, he ate none of the cookies because the second sentence contradicts the first sentence. In other words, there is no way in which the world could correspond to both sentences simultaneously. However, no such contradiction arises
in (4b) and the two sentences are mutually consistent. This proves that (1) does not entail (3). If it did, there would be a contradiction. That leaves us with an intriguing puzzle. The meaning of (3) is not part of the literal
meaning of (1) and yet it is implicated by the utterance of (1). It is a systematic inference by the addressee, one the speaker does not try to discourage and therefore must intend. We note this inference using the symbol
+>, illustrated in (5).
(5) John ate some of the cookies
+> John didn’t eat all of the cookies This inference obtains through a special reasoning process, one that relies on our understanding of the conventions of communicative exchanges—or conversations. Let’s assume the speaker and addressee are in some sense cooperating in this exchange to make it smoother and beneficial to both. The speaker utters the sentence in (5) and in so doing conveys its literal meaning. The speaker (in the spirit of cooperation) is being as informative as he can in the exchange and the addressee (assuming he is being cooperative) believes this. The addressee reasons that if the speaker had known John ate all the cookies, he would have said so. Since the speaker did not say so, then he must know otherwise. In other words, the speaker must know that John didn’t eat all of the cookies. So the addressee infers—from what the speaker said, from what the speaker didn’t say, and from the way in which cooperative exchanges take place—that John didn’t eat all of the cookies.
2013-11-19, 09:40
