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Single Idea 18028
[filed under theme 19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / d. Metaphor
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Full Idea
Gricean theories of metaphor …assume that conversational implicatures are generated via literal contents, and hence that a sentence cannot generate an implicature without being literally meaningful.
Gist of Idea
Gricean theories of metaphor involve conversational implicatures based on literal meanings
Source
Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5)
Book Ref
Magidor,Ofra: 'Category Mistakes' [OUP 2013], p.72
A Reaction
Magidor gives not details of such theories, but presumably the metaphor is all in the speaker's intention, which is parasitic on the wayward literal meaning, as in cases of irony.
The
51 ideas
from 'Category Mistakes'
17998
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Category mistakes are either syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic
[Magidor]
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18000
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Weaker compositionality says meaningful well-formed sentences get the meaning from the parts
[Magidor]
|
17999
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Strong compositionality says meaningful expressions syntactically well-formed are meaningful
[Magidor]
|
18001
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Are there partial propositions, lacking truth value in some possible worlds?
[Magidor]
|
17997
|
Some suggest that the Julius Caesar problem involves category mistakes
[Magidor]
|
18008
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Generative semantics says structure is determined by semantics as well as syntactic rules
[Magidor]
|
18010
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'John is easy to please' and 'John is eager to please' have different deep structure
[Magidor]
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18011
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Category mistakes seem to be universal across languages
[Magidor]
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18012
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Category mistakes as syntactic needs a huge number of fine-grained rules
[Magidor]
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18013
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Embedded (in 'he said that…') category mistakes show syntax isn't the problem
[Magidor]
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18015
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The normal compositional view makes category mistakes meaningful
[Magidor]
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18014
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Understanding unlimited numbers of sentences suggests that meaning is compositional
[Magidor]
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18016
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Two good sentences should combine to make a good sentence, but that might be absurd
[Magidor]
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18017
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If a category mistake is synonymous across two languages, that implies it is meaningful
[Magidor]
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18019
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People have dreams which involve category mistakes
[Magidor]
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18020
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Propositional attitudes relate agents to either propositions, or meanings, or sentence/utterances
[Magidor]
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18018
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To grasp 'two' and 'green', must you know that two is not green?
[Magidor]
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18021
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Category mistakes are meaningful, because metaphors are meaningful category mistakes
[Magidor]
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18022
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Metaphors tend to involve category mistakes, by joining disjoint domains
[Magidor]
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18023
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Theories of metaphor divide over whether they must have literal meanings
[Magidor]
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18024
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One theory says metaphors mean the same as the corresponding simile
[Magidor]
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18027
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Metaphors as substitutes for the literal misses one predicate varying with context
[Magidor]
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18025
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The simile view of metaphors removes their magic, and won't explain why we use them
[Magidor]
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18026
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Maybe a metaphor is just a substitute for what is intended literally, like 'icy' for 'unemotional'
[Magidor]
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18028
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Gricean theories of metaphor involve conversational implicatures based on literal meanings
[Magidor]
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18029
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Non-cognitivist views of metaphor says there are no metaphorical meanings, just effects of the literal
[Magidor]
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18031
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If a category mistake has unimaginable truth-conditions, then it seems to be meaningless
[Magidor]
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18030
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A good explanation of why category mistakes sound wrong is that they are meaningless
[Magidor]
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18032
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Category mistakes are neither verifiable nor analytic, so verificationism says they are meaningless
[Magidor]
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18034
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Category mistakes play no role in mental life, so conceptual role semantics makes them meaningless
[Magidor]
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18035
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Two sentences with different meanings can, on occasion, have the same content
[Magidor]
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18036
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A sentence can be meaningful, and yet lack a truth value
[Magidor]
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18037
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Maybe when you say 'two is green', the predicate somehow fails to apply?
[Magidor]
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18039
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If category mistakes aren't syntax failure or meaningless, maybe they just lack a truth-value?
[Magidor]
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18040
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Intensional logic maps logical space, showing which predicates are compatible or incompatible
[Magidor]
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18041
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Category mistakes suffer from pragmatic presupposition failure (which is not mere triviality)
[Magidor]
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18043
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The infelicitiousness of trivial truth is explained by uninformativeness, or a static context-set
[Magidor]
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18042
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The infelicitiousness of trivial falsity is explained by expectations, or the loss of a context-set
[Magidor]
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18047
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A presupposition is what makes an utterance sound wrong if it is not assumed?
[Magidor]
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18048
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A test for presupposition would be if it provoked 'hey wait a minute - I have no idea that....'
[Magidor]
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18049
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The best tests for presupposition are projecting it to negation, conditional, conjunction, questions
[Magidor]
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18050
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If both s and not-s entail a sentence p, then p is a presupposition
[Magidor]
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18051
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In the pragmatic approach, presuppositions are assumed in a context, for successful assertion
[Magidor]
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18054
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Why do certain words trigger presuppositions?
[Magidor]
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18053
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The semantics of a sentence is its potential for changing a context
[Magidor]
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18056
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Category mistakes because of presuppositions still have a truth value (usually 'false')
[Magidor]
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18055
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In 'two is green', 'green' has a presupposition of being coloured
[Magidor]
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18057
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'Numbers are coloured and the number two is green' seems to be acceptable
[Magidor]
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18058
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Maybe the presuppositions of category mistakes are the abilities of things?
[Magidor]
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18059
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The presuppositions in category mistakes reveal nothing about ontology
[Magidor]
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18060
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We can explain the statue/clay problem by a category mistake with a false premise
[Magidor]
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