Re: WOT logical form (was: OT Use of Ellipses (was Wikipedia entry on XyWrite))

[David Auerbach auerbach@xxxxxxxx]

On Jun 14, at 2:09 PM, Patricia M. Godfrey wrote:
> That may be the logical explanation of it, but the grammatical one--
> holding true, I suspect, in most of the IE languages--is that it is
> a compound verb: one subject, two or more verb, whose "actions" or
> states of being are "performed" by the one subject.
Exactly, hence the divorce between grammatical and logical form. Well,
there's been a reconciliation and, lately, a civil union in some
modern formal grammars of English. A reconciliation isn't too hard:
there's the underlying logical form and then there's a various surface
grammatical ways to express that form.
'Jack and Jill went up the hill' (just to switch to a compound subject
for the fun of it) is, for logical purposes, equivalent to 'Jack went
up the hill and Jill went up the hill'. And, the latter is primary for
logical purposes since its form (A & B) supports the obvious inference
(to A). That is, it follows from 'Jack and Jill went up the hill' that
Jack went up the hill. It doesn't follow that Jack.
It was recently the centenary of what was one of the most important
philosophy papers of the twentieth century-- a paper that made
important hay of the distinction between logical and grammatical form.
There were numerous centennial collections of commentaries. (oh, there
has to be a better way to say that last; what's a good adjective?
'Commentary' seem pallid.)


David Auerbach
Department of Philosophy & Religion
Box 8103
NCSU
Raleigh, NC 27695-8103