The bottom of page nine... — creativesoul

I've looked at the post a couple times, since you keep suggesting you provided all the answers there, and it's not doing much for me. On the one hand, sure it's reasonable to distinguish cases Davidson lumps together -- Lepore and Stone for instance argue that malapropisms, nonsense, and neologisms should all be treated quite differently. But just distinguishing cases he chooses not to is not enough; you also have to provide an analysis more compelling than his, and I don't see that on the bottom of page nine.

An excuse for talking as much as I do about chess and baseball:

Chess, like language use most of the time, is turn-based. Baseball is kind of a hybrid -- there are things that happen simultaneously, but the structure of the game itself is so fundamentally turn-based that it has a turn-based feel to it, unlike, say, basketball or soccer.

A game of chess is a sequence of moves by both sides, and those moves together constitute a game. Even though there are skills you must have to play chess at all, and other skills you must have to play it well, those skills are not enough to have a game; you need an opponent, and the two of you together create a game. Baseball similarly has a myriad of skills that make up ability to play the game, but two teams must take the field and play together for their to be a game.

Both games have a natural back-and-forth, action-and-reaction rhythm. No action stands on its own, but is part of a phrase (as in music): he develops a knight and attacks the center, so I pin his knight with my bishop, so he kicks the bishop with his rook pawn, and then I retreat, having created a weakness I'll try to exploit later; the pitch is inside so the batter turns on it sending a high grounder toward third, which the third baseman has to take deep in the hole and, since he won't be able to make the throw to first in time, he pivots and throws to catch the runner heading for second, who slides wide to try to avoid the tag he knows is coming because the whole play's in front of him.

Both games show this move and countermove, move and response pattern, where each side's actions interlock with the other's side's previous actions, and together they form a meaningful whole. When you look at an action on its own, you can only imagine sequences in which it would make sense, but it doesn't on its own. The pitcher throws to first -- how? why? Was it a put-out? Or is he holding a runner? If holding a runner, should he? Is he screwing with the batter? Is he a nervous rookie? With chess it's even more obvious that a move on its own could mean almost anything, and what it means depends entirely on the course of the game it's part of. The "same move" (say, Re1) may be played multiple times in a game and have a completely different meaning each time.

What I find so uninspiring about Davidson is the choice of starting point: someone has blurted a sentence and I must interpret it. That's not how language is actually used at all. It's a back-and-forth cooperative behavior with participants contributing to a whole, much like chess or baseball. (Yes, chess and baseball are also cooperative, I hope in a perfectly obvious way, though also competitive, as conversation is sometimes too.)

All of this is rule-governed, but the rules don't tell you any of this. Nevertheless, the rules enable the complex behavior we get to enjoy. Of course, the rules of language, broadly construed, change more than almost anything else, including chess and baseball, but that doesn't mean that what rules there are don't function, perhaps temporarily, as the inner structure that supports the elaborate constructions of language use.

The bottom of page nine...
— creativesoul

I've looked at the post a couple times, since you keep suggesting you provided all the answers there, and it's not doing much for me. — Srap Tasmaner

I'm not suggesting that it provides all the answers. I'm strongly suggesting that it adequately explains how we successfully interpret malapropisms.

It finds Davidson's notion of first meaning inadequate, and thus also places his suggested fix to the problem into question as well. However, when regarding the inherent inadequacy of the three principles in question, I agree with Davidson. From that post...

The issue:Malapropisms break the rules of conventional language use, but they are readily understood/interpreted by the listener nevertheless, and that particular sort of success causes unresolvable issues for any strict adherence to the following three principles...

(1) A competent speaker or interpreter is able to interpret utterances, his own or those of others, on the basis of the semantic properties of the parts, or words, in the utterance, and the structure of the utterance. For this to be possible, there must be systematic relations between the meanings of utterances.

(2) For speaker and interpreter to communicate successfully and regularly, they must share a method of interpretation of the sort described in (1).

(3) The systematic knowledge or competence of the speaker or interpreter is learned in advance of occasions of interpretation and is conventional in character.

Do you find my account of the issue contentious?

On the one hand, sure it's reasonable to distinguish cases Davidson lumps together -- Lepore and Stone for instance argue that malapropisms, nonsense, and neologisms should all be treated quite differently. But just distinguishing cases he chooses not to is not enough; you also have to provide an analysis more compelling than his, and I don't see that on the bottom of page nine.

The framework there is perfectly capable of explaining how we successfully interpret all cases of malapropism. Seeing how that is the issue at hand...

It does quite a bit for me.

In addition, I've already begun laying the groundwork for an exposition, by pointing out that that which is interpreted is already meaningful, and that there is an actual difference between interpretation of that which is already meaningful and attributing meaning to that which is not. You've neglected that along with other relevant posts I've made since.

That distinction is crucial to understanding our ability to interpret and/or invent novel utterances, including but not limited to language acquisition itself.

The world holds its breath.

Charming. No point in my continuing this conversation.

It seems you read Davidson as saying that conventions play no role in understanding what someone says.
— Banno

I haven't figured out how to read him. — Srap Tasmaner

Same here. So is Davidson using language in a new way that hasn't been imitated or simply not using language correctly, or is it you and I that are not using language correctly by not figuring out how to read him?

It leads to Harry Hindu -ism. — Banno

Oh, Banno :heart:

IT's not a thing at all, unless you want to call acts "things"!
— Banno

Is that a problem? — creativesoul

Malapropism is a noun.

That's true, but there is nothing in chess analogous to malapropistic expressions. I think my response to the earlier "soup tureen" example shows that there are no rules, and that it is mostly a matter of association. — Janus

I think an excellent example would be using a meat tenderize to hammer a nail, or a hammer to tenderize your meat.

Both tools are similarly shaped, just as words are shaped and sound similarly, but do not have the same use. Observers will understand the use, even though its not the conventional use of a meat tenderizer, because of the similar shape and action in using it.

We only question the proper use of some words when words were used but communication didn't occur.

↪Dawnstorm, by way of a start on explaining T-sentences. — Banno

I do think I get that much, and I also get:

The interpretation is not word-for-word; it is holistic. — Banno

The problem I have is a different one:

There are many different possible sentences that contain "soup latrine". There may not be a limit to them. Assuming that "soup latrine" is a malapropism for "soup tureen", all the truth conditions would hold the meaning we associate with "soup latrine". Since only the left side of T-sentences is the actual utterance, it shouldn't matter what word is on the other side:

A) "This is a nice soup latrine" is true iff this is a nice soup tureen.
B) "This is a nice soup latrine" is true iff this is a nice soup latrine.

The only difference between A) and B) is whether I use the word "soup latrine", too (in the meaning I have heretofore associated with "soup tureen"), or not. The interpretation, being holistic, remains the same either way. How do T-sentences deal with word meaning? Why aren't A) and B) synonymous? How do I interpret a host of difference sentences (A1...An) in which the systematic difference is that there's "latrine" on the left, and "tureen" on the right?

By virtue of the T-sentences "This is a nice soup latrine" and "This is a nice soup tureen" should be synonymous, so I should be able to write "soup latrine" in my attempt to tansliterate my holistic interpretation, too, right?

Now try explaining why this doesn't work without recouse to convention. Am I making a mistake here? Where?

We only question the proper use of some words when words were used but communication didn't occur. — Harry Hindu

No, that's clearly not right. I might wonder whether you've misused a word if I understood what you said but am very surprised to hear you say it, especially if a substitution would yield a sentence I think you more likely to say.

Should we say communication has or hasn't occurred here? Evidently, as the audience, I'm not sure.

"Did I hear you right? Are you saying we should tell our customers when Gimbels has an item we don't, or is offering the same item at a lower price?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying!"

No, that's clearly not right. I might wonder whether you've misused a word if I understood what you said but am very surprised to hear you say it, especially if a substitution would yield a sentence I think you more likely to say.

Should we say communication has or hasn't occurred here? Evidently, as the audience, I'm not sure. — Srap Tasmaner

Until we clear up whether the use was intended or not, no communication has happened. After all, there just might be a new dance called the Flamingo.

By virtue of the T-sentences "This is a nice soup latrine" and "This is a nice soup tureen" should be synonymous, so I should be able to write "soup latrine" in my attempt to tansliterate my holistic interpretation, too, right? — Dawnstorm

I believe in Tarski's original version, which was intended for formalized not natural languages, the LHS within quotation marks is in the object language while the rest is in the meta-language. (Of most importance to Tarksi is that "true" here is part of the meta-language; the truth predicate for a language cannot be defined within that language at all.)

I think the Davidsonian adaptation here is that the LHS is in the speaker's language and the rest is in the interpreter's. Thus, just because you use "latrine" as a synonym for "tureen" -- if that's what you're doing -- that doesn't mean I have to, and I'll continue saying "tureen" when I mean tureen.

How do T-sentences deal with word meaning? — Dawnstorm

I think you have to imagine cataloging if not all the sentences then at least all the types of sentences in which a given word could occur, together with their actual or just stipulated truth values, and then working out the "value" of the word like a sudoku puzzle.

If the language is consistent, there will be systematic relations among sentences containing a given word -- that is certain sentences being false will require certain other sentences being true and others still also being false, and so on. Thus the meaning of a word is the "contribution" it makes to the truth or falsity of sentences it could appear in.

Does that make sense yet? It's an approach that was really designed for mathematics, and I think if you get a sort of whiff of David Hilbert's formalism, that's the right impression.

Until we clear up whether or not the use was intended or not, no communication has happened. — Harry Hindu

That seems fair, and an interesting point, that communication is not just the delivery of a semantic payload but confirmation of that delivery. But absent specific cues, we often just assume we've communicated successfully, don't we?

That is, as the audience, I'm not sure; to a third party, until the audience is sure, there's at most incomplete or partial communication; but the speaker is still entitled their presumption of success.

That seems fair, and an interesting point, that communication is not just the delivery of a semantic payload but confirmation of that delivery. But absent specific cues, we often just assume we've communicated successfully, don't we? — Srap Tasmaner

Assuming that we've communicated successfully comes with an understanding that you know the rules and also knowing that others use the same rules, or else what is the point of knowing the rules?

You wouldn't assume that you successfully communicated with a person in China if you used only your very limited/non-existent knowledge of the rules of Mandarin. You also wouldn't assume that you successfully communicated with a person in China if you used English, rather than Mandarin.

That is, as the audience, I'm not sure; to a third party, until the audience is sure, there's at most incomplete or partial communication; but the speaker is still entitled their presumption of success. — Srap Tasmaner

Sometimes we have to dumb down our language use for others to understand what we intend to communicate. Think about how you would communicate the idea of democracy to an adult vs a child. Presuming you have succeeded in communicating entails not just knowing the rules of the language you are using, but knowing the limits of other's understanding of the rules too. Each person is different and may require different uses to get the same idea across, just as you may have certain phrases, or inside jokes, that only close friends that have experience with how you use words, can understand.

Agreed pretty much all around, except I'd be more inclined to say "following the rules", or if I wanted to be really careful, "acting in accordance with the rules", rather than "knowing the rules". An awful lot of the linguistic machinery we operate is below our level of awareness -- some of it might always be, but at least in use it is: we don't consciously work out what the appropriate rule is and then consciously refer to it as we apply it and check that we've applied it properly. We can do a lot of that sort of thing, and will when there's trouble, but mostly the rules take care of themselves without us paying them any attention. Not once we've learned them, at any rate, and though learning requires a lot of conscious effort, it eventually results in reliable habits that require no awareness.

Thus the meaning of a word is the "contribution" it makes to the truth or falsity of sentences it could appear in.

Does that make sense yet? — Srap Tasmaner

Sort of. I still feel it's a little awkward; starting in the middle, so to speak, and then figuring out the meaning of words and texts both on the basis of sentences (if that's what happens). But at the very least I can work with it, I think. Need to let it settle for a while.

I've never tried to work through it in any practical way!

I think I might have an example of how it could work. The approach ends up being inherently comparative and differentiating. (I'd like to say inferential, but I'm really not sure.) I can imagine figuring out that "very" is an intensifier by lining up

"A is tall"
"B is tall"
not "A is very tall"
"B is very tall"

You might also find that "taller than" is never such that both of these can appear

"A is taller than B"
"B is taller than A"

And then further that

"B is taller than A" goes with {"B is tall" and not "A is tall"} or with {not "A is very tall" "B is very tall"}

Anyway, that was kind of what I had in mind as playing semantic sudoku. It's a lot of cross-referencing and looking for consistency among subsets, minimal to maximal, adding and dropping members, etc.

The problem is exactly how we successfully interpret malapropisms despite the fact that they are examples of incorrect, mistaken, unconventional, and thus novel, language use. Davidson is arguing that the odd success of malapropisms places conventional understanding of what counts as having a language, or perhaps what's needed for successful communication, into question.


Davidson suggests that convention has it that, and I quote...

...in the case of language the hearer shares a complex system or theory with the speaker, a system which makes possible the articulation of logical relations between utterances, and explains the ability to interpret novel utterances in an organized way.

This... ...has been suggested, in one form or another, by many philosophers and linguists, and I assume it must in some sense be right. The difficulty lies in getting clear about what this sense is.

If someone wishes to argue that Davidson does not have the basic conventional understanding right, then the burden is upon them to show how his account above is found lacking or wanting. That is, if there is a germane difference between the two, then it needs set out here. Until then, I'm assuming that his account of convention is close enough.

He further expands upon this conventional understanding by setting out what it would take. In other words, what be the case in order for a speaker and listener to even be able to share a complex system or theory which makes possible the articulation of logical relations between utterances, and explains the ability to interpret novel utterances in an organized way. He's setting out what he believes to be a bare minimum criterion, according to conventional standards, for all cases of successful communication/interpretation, which also explains our ability to interpret novel utterances.

As a result of all the reasons I've given on page nine, I find Davidson's notion of first meaning to be inadequate for taking proper account of any malapropisms. Given that his notions of passing and prior theory are grounded upon his notion of first meaning, and since that is found lacking, so too are his notions of passing and prior theory. Although, the issue may be his use of "intention". If that is conventional, then that may be the issue. The more I read, and understand, the more I believe that that may be the case.

I've left first meaning out of the principles(criterion for linguistic competence), for I take them to be an accurate enough account of the conventional understanding and/or account that he's placing under scrutiny. In other words, these three principles serve as an adequate minimalist criterion for attaining, acquiring, and/or otherwise possessing the linguistic competence necessary for successful communication/interpretation of any kind, and that is what's in question.

(1) A competent speaker or interpreter is able to interpret utterances, his own or those of others, on the basis of the semantic properties of the parts, or words, in the utterance, and the structure of the utterance. For this to be possible, there must be systematic relations between the meanings of utterances.

(2) For speaker and interpreter to communicate successfully and regularly, they must share a method of interpretation of the sort described in (1).

(3) The systematic knowledge or competence of the speaker or interpreter is learned in advance of occasions of interpretation and is conventional in character.

According to Davidson, for all successful communication, what must be shared is the interpreter’s and the speaker’s understanding of the speaker’s words, which the three principles above do not effectively outline. With malapropisms what is common to the cases is that the speaker expects to be, and is, interpreted as the speaker intended although the interpreter did not have a correct theory in advance.

All the things Davidson assumes an interpreter knows or can do depend on his having a mature set of concepts, and being at home with the business of linguistic communication. His problem is to describe what is involved in the idea of ‘having a language’. He finds that none of the proposals satisfy the demand for a description of an ability that speaker and interpreter share and that is adequate to interpretation.

I suppose I'm positing that the ability to attribute meaning to an otherwise meaningless utterance(to the interpreter) satisfies the demand that Davidson claims to be missing.

That's not how language is actually used at all. — Srap Tasmaner

TO be sure, Davidson wrote considerably more, and much of it is specifically about the 'back-and-forth cooperative behaviour with participants contributing to a whole... ' It's a bit like being disappointed in Chess after watching only an electric fence endgame.

According to Davidson, the problem is this: what interpreter and speaker share(the understanding of the speaker's words), to the extent that communication succeeds, is not learned and so is not a language governed by rules or conventions known to speaker and interpreter in advance; but what the speaker and interpreter know in advance is not (necessarily) shared, and so is not a language governed by shared rules or conventions. What is shared is, as before, the passing theory(the understanding of the speaker's words); what is given in advance is the prior theory, or anything on which it may in turn be based.

Davidson wrote considerably more — Banno

Yeah, that's totally fair. I haven't gone back and re-read the earlier stuff for this discussion (and never read much later stuff) so I'm not in any position to judge his project. Insofar as I have in this thread, that's overstepping on my part.

This paper, by itself, feels pretty thin to me on that front, but I'm open to being shown I'm missing something.

If the language is consistent, there will be systematic relations among sentences containing a given word -- that is certain sentences being false will require certain other sentences being true and others still also being false, and so on. Thus the meaning of a word is the "contribution" it makes to the truth or falsity of sentences it could appear in. — Srap Tasmaner

Yep. Radical Interpretation is holistic.

"This is a nice soup latrine" is true iff this is a nice soup latrine. — Dawnstorm

"Soup latrine", since it is a malapropism, does not occur elsewhere in the object language, or at least does not occur with any where near the of "soup tureen". Empirically it is not a good candidate for the metalanguage interpretation.

Sure. I'm just puzzled by things you have written such as following:

All of this is rule-governed, but the rules don't tell you any of this. Nevertheless, the rules enable the complex behavior we get to enjoy. Of course, the rules of language, broadly construed, change more than almost anything else, including chess and baseball, but that doesn't mean that what rules there are don't function, perhaps temporarily, as the inner structure that supports the elaborate constructions of language use. — Srap Tasmaner

Now I noted much earlier that the misuse found in malapropisms can only occur, and is of interest because, it breaks the conventions; and hence malapropism presupposes the conventions it breaks. The thought had not occurred to me that Davidson might suppose that there was no role for conventions in understanding what someone says - something you sometimes seem to attribute to him. I'd taken his argument as being against those who suppose that all there is to understanding language is understanding conventions.

I'd seen his argument as rather like Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Gödel showed that in any sufficiently rich formal language it is possible to construct true statements that are not derivable from the axioms of that language. Davidson has shown that in a natural language one can construct sentences that undermine the conventions of that language.

That strikes me as both the purpose of the article and as a significant point.

First, any general framework, whether conceived as a grammar for English, or a rule for accepting grammars, or a basic grammar plus rules for modifying or extending it—any such general framework, by virtue of the features that make it general, will by itself be insufficient for interpreting particular utterances. The general framework or theory, whatever it is, may be a key ingredient in what is needed for interpretation, but it can’t be all that is needed since it fails to provide the interpretation of particular words and sentences as uttered by a particular speaker. In this respect it is like a prior theory, only worse because it is less complete.

Second, the framework theory must be expected to be different for different speakers. The more general and abstract it is, the more difference there can be without it mattering to communication. The theoretical possibility of such divergence is obvious; but once one tries to imagine a framework rich enough to serve its purpose, it is clear that such differences must also be actual. It is impossible to give examples, of course, until it is decided what to count in the framework: a sufficiently explicit framework could be discredited by a single malapropism.

His problem is to describe what is involved in the idea of ‘having a language’. He finds that none of the proposals satisfy the demand for a description of an ability that speaker and interpreter share and that is adequate to interpretation. — creativesoul

I suppose I'm positing that the ability to attribute meaning to an otherwise meaningless utterance(to the interpreter) satisfies the demand that Davidson claims to be missing, and solves the problem of malapropisms. That ability, if I grant Davidson's notions of prior and passing theory, would be part of both.

How would the T sentence method work for translating meaningful sentences that are not truth apt?

For example...

"Don't be scared of the virus." "Don't let the virus dominate your life."

Are these out of reach, so to speak, beyond the 'domain' of application?

"Don't be scared of the virus." — creativesoul

By taking the utterance as an event. Something like:

creativesoul said "Don't be scared of the virus" 6 minutes ago is true IFF P.

...and we try various substitutions, perhaps "Creativesoul believes that we ought not be scared of the virus and enjoined us to believe the same"... or "Creativesoul would like us to all die of Covid 19 and encouraged us not to take any precautions". The choice would depend on an empirical assessment of the context.

There was for a while an active program taking various difficult cases and treating them in this way.

His problem is to describe what is involved in the idea of ‘having a language’. He finds that none of the proposals satisfy the demand for a description of an ability that speaker and interpreter share and that is adequate to interpretation.
— creativesoul

I suppose I'm positing that the ability to attribute meaning to an otherwise meaningless utterance(to the interpreter) satisfies the demand that Davidson claims to be missing, and solves the problem of malapropisms. That ability, if I grant Davidson's notions of prior and passing theory, would be part of both. — creativesoul

does the above make sense?