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Putting Syntax First: On Convention and Implicature in Imagination and Convention
Author(s) -
Collins John
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/mila.12124
Subject(s) - convention , the arts , media studies , implicature , sociology , art history , library science , history , art , visual arts , linguistics , philosophy , computer science , pragmatics , social science
As part of a wide-ranging and radical reappraisal of the relation between the linguistic and the extralinguistic in the mind of the competent speaker-hearer, Lepore and Stone (2015) (L&S, hereafter) offer a characterisation of the so-called ‘semantics/pragmatics distinction’ under which conversational implicature (CI) phenomena, traditionally classed as ‘pragmatic’, are explained in terms of linguistic or grammatical conventions; that is, CI, at least in some cases, is part of linguistic competence proper, not mere general rationality. L&S offer many other radical moves against the prevailing consensus. While I applaud their boldness, I shall raise some foundational and more particular concerns for their project, especially as it bears upon what I think is the correct way to proceed in matters linguistic, i.e. syntax should come first.