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Shorthand, Syntactic Ellipsis, and the Pragmatic Determinants of What Is Said
Mind & Language (2004)
  • Reinaldo Elugardo, University of Oklahoma
  • Robert J. Stainton, University of Western Ontario
Abstract

Our first aim in this paper is to respond to four novel objections in Jason Stanley's 'Context and Logical Form'. Taken together, those objections attempt to debunk our prior claims that one can perform a genuine speech act by using a sub‐sentential expression—where by 'sub‐sentential expression' we mean an ordinary word or phrase, not embedded in any larger syntactic structure. Our second aim is to make it plausible that, pace Stanley, there really are pragmatic determinants of the literal truth‐conditional content of speech acts. We hope to achieve this second aim precisely by defending the genuineness of sub‐sentential speech acts. Given our two aims, it is necessary to highlight briefly their connection—which we do in the first part of the Introduction. Following that, we introduce Stanley's novel objections. This is the role of the second part of the Introduction. We offer our rebuttals in Section 2 (against 'shorthand') and Section 3 (against syntactic ellipsis, among other things).

Keywords
  • Shorthand,
  • Syntactic Ellipsis,
  • Pragmatics
Publication Date
September 1, 2004
Publisher Statement
Uncorrected proof. To cite the paper, please consult the printed version.
Citation Information
Reinaldo Elugardo and Robert J. Stainton. "Shorthand, Syntactic Ellipsis, and the Pragmatic Determinants of What Is Said" Mind & Language Vol. 19 Iss. 4 (2004)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/robertstainton/23/