Détail de la contribution
Auteur: Jacques MOESCHLER
Titre:
The LogPrag project
Abstract/Résumé: The LogPrag project is about logical words (LWs) in natural languages with a special focus on French. More precisely, the linguistic counterpart of logical connectives and negation will be studied in the general framework of the semantics-pragmatics interface. The investigation of LWs is essential for the understanding of some fundamentals issues in linguistics and human cognition: (i) all natural languages have words for negation and logical connectives (conjunction, disjunction, conditional); (ii) all natural languages have pragmatic meanings for these LWs, which systematically differ from their logical meanings; (iii) the linguistic properties (mainly syntactic) of LWs are not universal but vary cross-linguistically; (v) human cognition seems to be firmly based on LWs, as supported by reasoning abilities and argumentation usages of LWs; (v) for reasons of communication, natural languages have developed specific pragmatic meaning diverging from logical ones in very systematic ways. The LogPrag main hypothesis is that the pragmatic meanings of LWs are restrictions on their logical meanings, which are assumed to be their basic semantics. These restrictions in meaning are not specific to a particular language, but they are widespread in natural languages. In French, the meaning of 'et' is not symmetrical (as ∧), and is expanded in temporal and causal meanings. The disjunction 'ou' is mainly exclusive and not inclusive in use (as v). The conditional 'si' is used as a biconditional, a concessive or a counterfactual connective, and seldom as with its material implication meaning (→). Negation is used descriptively as a constituent negation, and not as a propositional one (¬) or in metalinguistic uses with wide scope. Hence, LogPrag is setup to address the following issues: (i) to describe how the logical properties of LWs can yield pragmatically more restricted meanings; (ii) to compare the pragmatic behaviors of various LWs in order to test the 'restriction domain hypothesis' (RDH); (iii) to design a series of experimental studies to test RDH empirically. More generally, LogPrag will examine three types of interface: (a) the code-inference interface, which has been, since the Gricean turn, a pervasive issue in pragmatic theory; (b) the semantics-pragmatics interface, which addresses the issue of how to account for the relationship between logical and pragmatic meanings, as well as the scope of negation and quantifiers; (c) the lexicon-context interface, which addresses the issue of the mutual contribution of lexical information and contextual import in pragmatic interpretation.
Titre:
The LogPrag project
Abstract/Résumé: The LogPrag project is about logical words (LWs) in natural languages with a special focus on French. More precisely, the linguistic counterpart of logical connectives and negation will be studied in the general framework of the semantics-pragmatics interface. The investigation of LWs is essential for the understanding of some fundamentals issues in linguistics and human cognition: (i) all natural languages have words for negation and logical connectives (conjunction, disjunction, conditional); (ii) all natural languages have pragmatic meanings for these LWs, which systematically differ from their logical meanings; (iii) the linguistic properties (mainly syntactic) of LWs are not universal but vary cross-linguistically; (v) human cognition seems to be firmly based on LWs, as supported by reasoning abilities and argumentation usages of LWs; (v) for reasons of communication, natural languages have developed specific pragmatic meaning diverging from logical ones in very systematic ways. The LogPrag main hypothesis is that the pragmatic meanings of LWs are restrictions on their logical meanings, which are assumed to be their basic semantics. These restrictions in meaning are not specific to a particular language, but they are widespread in natural languages. In French, the meaning of 'et' is not symmetrical (as ∧), and is expanded in temporal and causal meanings. The disjunction 'ou' is mainly exclusive and not inclusive in use (as v). The conditional 'si' is used as a biconditional, a concessive or a counterfactual connective, and seldom as with its material implication meaning (→). Negation is used descriptively as a constituent negation, and not as a propositional one (¬) or in metalinguistic uses with wide scope. Hence, LogPrag is setup to address the following issues: (i) to describe how the logical properties of LWs can yield pragmatically more restricted meanings; (ii) to compare the pragmatic behaviors of various LWs in order to test the 'restriction domain hypothesis' (RDH); (iii) to design a series of experimental studies to test RDH empirically. More generally, LogPrag will examine three types of interface: (a) the code-inference interface, which has been, since the Gricean turn, a pervasive issue in pragmatic theory; (b) the semantics-pragmatics interface, which addresses the issue of how to account for the relationship between logical and pragmatic meanings, as well as the scope of negation and quantifiers; (c) the lexicon-context interface, which addresses the issue of the mutual contribution of lexical information and contextual import in pragmatic interpretation.