Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 08:30:53 -0800 (PST) From: Aaron Fox Subject: Re: Logic, etc Sender: owner-linganth@cc.rochester.edu To: Celso Alvarez Caccamo Cc: linganthro list MIME-version: 1.0 Precedence: bulk

Re: Celso's critique

Leaving aside the issue of what "reference" means vis a vis "semantic" meaning and "indexicality" (we've had terminological disagreements before, perhaps because we were trained in different paradigms, and this would be a huge and sidetracking ball of wax to melt . . . .)

I think the "use/mention" distinction is an interesting case of a putative underlying logical structure in Language. It is not, a priori or analytically, as simple as it seems when reduced to that (classical Western) logical opposition. "Mentions" are forms of usage (metalinguistic *or* poetic, and therein lies a complex issue). And "uses" involve "mentions" which might be all a non-native speaker could grasp but which are certainly accessible as such even to native speakers (or has nobody else ever been talking to somebody when all of a sudden you can hear every word but not make sense of the simplest sentences they are saying?) (issues of comeptence and fluency here . . . .)

My argument specifically was that "mentions" map onto a representation (what I mean by "reference" involves nothing in the real world, only our conceptual and sensory representations thereof) of the lexical item itself, with its semantic reference(s) and especially its social indexicality bundled together. As Bakhtin and Volosinov show, this is a major modality of social typification and multi-accentuality, and often "deforms" surface syntax (perhaps producing the effect of "non-standard" dialects as "bad grammar" for speakers/hearers who have naturalized their own dialect as lacking in these "deformations." This would clearly be a consequence of social privilege and/or isolated monolingual/monodialectal speech communities of languages with more than one dialect.)

BTW, has anyone ever asked AAVE speakers for their grammatical intuitions about sentences in "Standard English?"

Or, Yo mama eat Bosco!

af

PS -- I want to hear more about Indian traditions of logic (Adi, Hal?) On Tue, 21 Jan 1997, Celso Alvarez Caccamo wrote: >On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Aaron Fox wrote: >>all, is a comparative emics. "I don't want nothin'" is after all a different surface form from "I don't want nothing," and could mediate rather distinct cognitive/perceptual/behavioral/affective sets toward "reality" in some dialects of English where the contrast would be referentially marked (as well as indexical of formality of situation and dialect/register commanded by the speaker). >I'm sorry, I don't understand this. First of all, there's no referential expression in "I don't want nothing" -- there's no identifiable referent out there expressed unambiguously by any linguistic form -- so, "nothing" and "nothin'" can't contrast referentially. Semantically, alright, but not all semantics is referential. >Secondly, "nothin" and "nothing" may be indexical of situation (and other things), but also *constitutive* of those situations they index. Now, I don't understand how a given linguistic usage can be indexical of the user's use of that usage. It sounds tautological to me. Or, if it's "indexical", its indexicality is rather trivial. It's just a display of competence. >As for the semantics of "nothing" / "nothin", perhaps the contrast is simply based on the use/mention distinction: >I don' wan' nothin' -- 'nothin'' is used emphatically, i.e. "anything" >I don't want "nothing" -- 'nothing' is mentioned metalinguistically; more or less as Aaron says, but in fewer words. >But I personally don't need two "nothing" in my lexicon, as Aaron Fox suggests. Just one and a little bit of competence-in-performance. >Regards, >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Celso Alvarez Caccamo Tel. 34-81-130457, ext. 1888 >Depto. de Linguistica Geral FAX 34-81-132459 >e Teoria da Literatura e-mail: lxalvarz@udc.es >Universidade da Corunha http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac >15007 A Corunha, Galiza (Espanha) >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ______________________________________________________________________ Aaron A. Fox Assistant Professor of Anthropology Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music The University of Washington Box 353100, Seattle WA 98195-3100 FAX: 206-543-3285, TEL: 206-685-1811 EMAIL: aaf@u.washington.edu WWW: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~aaf/ ________________________________________________________________________ "We're not here for glamor or FAshion but here's the question I'm askin Why isn't young black kids taught BLACK? They're only taught to read, write, and act It's like teaching a dog to be a cat you don't teach a DOG to be a cat you don't teach WHITE kids to be BLACK why IS that? Is it because we're the miNOrity?" KRS-1/BoogieDownProductions "Why Is That?" From *Ghetto Music: THe Blueprint of Hip Hop.* Copyright 1989 Jive Records (BMG)