From: Rolf Furuli (furuli@online.no)
Date: Tue Dec 26 2000 - 06:48:43 EST
Kimmo Huovila wrote
>Rolf Furuli wrote:
>
>> Intuition (assumption) 4. Language is in principle not different from
>> natural phenomena which are studied by the natural sciences. The smaller
>> the part is that we are studying, the more certain are our conclusions. The
>> minimal pair-situation where there are just two possibilities is the ideal
>> situation. The certainty of our conclusions decreases propotionally with
>> the number of elements that we have to explain at the same time.
>
>> Based on 4): The unit of study must be the "word" (this term is ambiguous
>> but at this stage it is useful) and how it functions in its clause. Studies
>> of units above the word/clause-level (such as discourse analysis) is
>> meaningful for other purposes but is not meaningful in an attempt to find
>> the meaning of aspect.
>
>I doubt that studying discourse is irrelevant for trying to find the
>meaning of aspect. This view of yours seems to assume a quite strict
>dichotomy between semantics and pragmatics. What I mean is that to
>analyze whether a feature is even aspectual, we need to see how
>fitting the aspectual meaning would be in that context, not only on a
>sentence level. If we neglect the discourse level, we may end up in a
>system where we have two components of semantics and pragmatics that
>are too unrelated to be realistic. Semantics should not be done in a
>vacuum, isolated from pragmatics. Furthermore, part of aspectual meaning
>is its discourse function.
>
>
Dear Kimmo,
I agree with your words above, except the first clause. Discourse analysis
is an important part of my studies, but it is useless for two important
reasons, when the *definition* of the aspects is at stake:
1) When studying chunks of text above the clause-level,we have to account
for many different factors at the same time. There is no way to know which
factor is responsible for what, because all the factors can contribute to
the meaning. The possible role of each factor (its contribution to meaning)
increases exponentially with the number of factors in a unit of text.
2) One's definition of aspect is decided before one starts with discourse
analysis. There is no way for the reverse to occur.
In short, discourse analysis has no controls, as far as the meaning of the
smallest parts of communication are concerned. In order to have a
meaningful interplay of semantics and pragmatics, my concern is first to
isolate those parts of communication whose meaning is uncancellable. On
this basis is it much easier to find the pragmatic parts.
BTW, can you define/explain your use of the term bounded?
Regards
Rolf
Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
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