Stress and Intention

The logician and analytic philosopher Michael Dummet  is a dense writer:  never wilfully obscure, but the ideas have heft, and are tight-packed,  the arguments of the sort for which “Follow me closely here, Watson” applies.

I read any of his essays  sentence by sentence,  possibly moving my lips, and pausing for breath after each;  and frequently pen-in little accent-marks, or separation-signs whose value is taken as slightly weaker than that of commas, to make antecedently clear, upon re-reading, whích clump of words belong together, and which individual words are to be taken in other than the unmarked sense.   (As, just there, whích, corresponding to Spanish qué versus que.  --  The grouping-mark, in manuscript, is a small downtick between minor constituents;  in these essays, I often place two spaces between such members  rather than one, for the convenience of readers.)   For in writing such as his, where the thoughts are not already familiar to the reader, it is easy to start down an interpretive “garden path”, whenever some connective might be taken in more than one way  and we ill-fatedly take it (without taking thought) in a given way (generally, the commoner use of the word), and  so doing  provoke a “premature collapse of the semantic wave-packet” (thus foreclosing the continued interplay of mutually influencing ambiguities), and are obliged to begin again at the beginning.

Consider then this, from his closely-reasoned essay “Is Logic Empirical?” (a reply to Putnam’s celebrated paper of the same title)

            … the assumption is that …

The usual reading of the assumption is that X would be the same as for one assumes that X, or X is assumed.   In this case, the “is that” is quite unessential, and the phrase could be rephrased with neither copula nor relative pronoun: Our assumption:  X, where the colon has ostensive force.

That, however, was not the intended use in the sentence in question, which we now quote unabridged:

Putnam remarks  of this assumption  that it is the usual operationalist idealisation.  That is perfectly true:  but the specifically operationalist part of the assumption is that to the effect that, for every property, there exists  a test  for its possession.

Or, rewritten with diacritics:

Putnam remarks  of this assumption  that it is the usual operationalist idealisation.  That is perfectly true:  but the specifically operationalist part of the assumption   is thát   to the effect that, for every property, there exists  a test  for its possession.

In this sentence, indeed, there are three occurences of the orthographic word that, each of which is prosodically and grammatically distinct, and which indeed would each be translated differently  into French, much as with our Spanish example above.  

(1) The first that in the second sentence is an anaphoric back-glance at the content of the proposition stated in the previous sentence.   Its rhetorical import, and consequent phonetic treatment, can differ subtly in strength.  It its weaker use, it does not focus at all on the details of the proposition anaphorized, serving rather as a sort of blandly dismissive wave of the hand, and accordingly would be completely unstressed, and indeed could even be omitted completely:   the first clause could be rephrased

            All very true, but…

The French equivalent is likewise phonetically reduced (c’), and even omissible:

            C’est bien vrai, mais … / Bien vrai, mais …

In a slightly strengthened form, the phrase would instead take seriously  the proposition being anaphorized,  conceding the point but only in so far, implicitly contrasting it with congeneric propositions with someone might likewise put forward but which the present author might reject; the particle could here be stressed:

            Thát (much) is (indeed) true;  but …

And here the French would use the full form of the particle:

            Cela est vrai ;  mais …

or even (now mimicking the fuller rephrasing  of the English  which we denoted using parentheses:

            Ce propos-là est bien vrai;  mais, …

or (in a context in which propos or proposition would be understood)

            Celui- là / Celle- là …

(2) The thát which I have graphically stressed  could be replaced by the one;  the French here would have celui qui.

(3) The remaining occurrence of that , in to the effect that, presents subtleties of its own.  In this idiom, that makes no independent contribution, and would accordingly be destressed, in uses like “… to the effect that a person….”, where the French could (antevocalically) reduce que to a mere clitic  qu’ :    “ … dans le sense qu’une personne…”.  

Here, however, the vicissitudes of syntax, leaving that at the end of a breath-group, insures that it should not be so fully destressed;  nor could French elide (phonetically or orthographically) elide the schwa in que :

            … to the effect that, in every case, …

            … avec le résultat que [*qu’], en chaque instance …

French here makes a triple orthographic distinction  where  English makes none,  not because “ce qui n’est pas logique  n’est pas français”, but owing to the heavy effect that stress-within-the-sentence has had  in the evolution of (usually curtailed) French words  from their Latin originals.   English has a few such instances phonetically, less likely to be reflected orthographically:  as, stressed that, with the vowel of cat, versus destressed, with but a schwa.   Or, consider the very different uses of the complex word always spelled some.   I once participated in an ongoing “Formal Grammar Group” at the University of Alberta, where we discussed things like quantification and mass terms, where we invented graphies some versus s’m to make a stab at making visual distinctions.

One English case in which differential phonetic erosion  did produce a triplet of distinct spellings is that of one > an > a.   Here orthography has still not quite caught up with the phonetic evolution:  depending upon the speaker’s intentions, a may be pronounced  either with a schwa, or with the vowel in day.  -- In German, the parallel evolution (from number-word to indefinite article) did not likewise result in an orthographic split:  ein is used in both senses.  However, a careful writer, analytically inclined, may supply a written acute accent:  eín Grund, wofür …. ‘one reason for which …’

~

Let us take a different example  from the same author.

First, try to contextualize the following initial fragment:

            Yet it is a delicate matter so …

Here is the text in full:

 

Yet it is a delicate matter so to describe the connection between premisses and conclusion as to display clearly the way in which both requirements are fulfilled.

-- Michael Dummett, Truth and other enigmas (1978), p. 297;  as typeset.

Which, in our scribally enhanced verion, would come out

Yet it is a delicate matter   só to describe the connection between premisses and conclusion   as to display clearly the way in which both requirements are fulfilled.

Note that here that the reason that the só receives an accent, is not (as in the case of the last that analyzed above) that it finds itself fortuitously at the end of a breath-group, but that it finds itself separated, by a lengthy complement, from a second particle  with which it logically forms a single correlative conjunction  (like either … or, or neither … nor):  the stress, then, prospectively points (cataphorically links) to its idiom-mate which is eventually to come, much as the full phonetic form of  either / entweder / ou bien  points forward to an upcoming or / oder / ou.

The use of this figure in the sentence quoted, which is characteristic of the author’s thought and style, is absent from spoken language, as from the written  of all but a sliver of the population:  most people would never use it, and might not quite understand a sentence like Dummet’s above.  Indeed  it is characteristic, not merely of the formal or literary style, but of the philosophical, the analytical.

Here is how the plain man uses these words:

John rigged up the contraption so that it would both do your taxes and toast bread.

In light of that,  you might imagine that the unitary connection bolded above (and quite unstressed;  you could even pronounce it as a sort of monosyllable:  s’th’t) represents the basic or original idiom, and that this logically and phonetically tense  só  … that  is a later or professorial refinement.    Yet in fact the versions in which so has a full illative sense, came first, and were widely used in all sorts of writing in former times:  Só that you mind! = “Just so long as you pay attention!” or God so ordered the world that each creature might occupy its proper place in the Chain of Being. 

Now, in our “contraption” sentence, the so, although colloquially quite unstressed, still retains the logical role it fills in God so ordered the world that…;  it could be replaced by something fuller, like in such a way that … ;  and French would use relatively mouth-filling equivalents:  de manière à ce que, afin de, tant et si bien que.  In this case, the modification is logically restrictive:  John constructed the thing using thát method which would insure …   But these unstressed contiguous words  can easily fade into a weakened, non-restrictive meaning:

John blundered up against the house of cards, so that it toppled.

Here there is no design or intention on John’s part, the way there was with his contraption  or with the crafty Creator.   The relation between the propositions is no weaker:  ‘with the result that’, whether or not that result had been consciously compassed  by the actor.  The sentence  could indeed be written with no intrasentential conjuntion at all, the effect of the triggering accident being exported to another sentence entirely:

John blundered up against the house of cards.  (What a schlemiel! ) It toppled.

.

Yet it is a delicate matter so to describe the connection between premisses and conclusion as to display clearly the way in which both requirements are fulfilled.

-- Michael Dummett, Truth and other enigmas (1978), p. 297;  as typeset.

Which, in our scribally enhanced verion, would come out

Yet it is a delicate matter   só to describe the connection between premisses and conclusion   as to display clearly the way in which both requirements are fulfilled.

Note that here the só receives an accent, is not (as in the case of the last that analyzed above) that it finds itself fortuitously at the end of a breath-group, but that it finds itself separated, by a lengthy complement, from a second particle  with which it logically forms a single correlative conjunction  (like either … or, or neither … nor):  the stress, then, prospectively points (cataphorically links) to its idiom-mate which is eventually to come, much as the full phonetic form of  either / entweder / ou bien  points forward to an upcoming or / oder / ou.

The use of this figure in the sentence quoted, which is characteristic of the author’s thought and style, is absent from spoken language, as from the written  of all but a sliver of the population:  most people would never use it, and might not quite understand a sentence like Dummet’s above.  Indeed  it is characteristic, not merely of the formal or literary style, but of the philosophical, the analytical.

Here is how the plain man uses these words:

John rigged up the contraption so that it would both do your taxes and toast bread.

In light of that,  you might imagine that the unitary connection bolded above (and quite unstressed;  you could even pronounce it as a sort of monosyllable:  s’th’t) represents the basic or original idiom, and that this logically and phonetically tense  só  … that  is a later or professorial refinement.    Yet in fact the versions in which so has a full illative sense, came first, and were widely used in all sorts of writing in former times:  Só that you mind! = “Just so long as you pay attention!” or God so ordered the world that each creature might occupy its proper place in the Chain of Being. 

Now, in our “contraption” sentence, the so, although colloquially quite unstressed, still retains the logical role it fills in God so ordered the world that…;  it could be replaced by something fuller, like in such a way that … ;  and French would use relatively mouth-filling equivalents:  de manière à ce que, afin de, tant et si bien que.  In this case, the modification is logically restrictive:  John constructed the thing using thát method which would insure …   But these unstressed contiguous words  can easily fade into a weakened, non-restrictive meaning:

John blundered up against the house of cards, so that it toppled.

Here there is no design or intention on John’s part, the way there was with his contraption  or with the crafty Creator.   The relation between the propositions is no weaker:  ‘with the result that’, whether or not that result had been consciously compassed  by the actor.  The sentence  could indeed be written with no intrasentential conjuntion at all, the effect of the triggering accident being exported to another sentence entirely:

John blundered up against the house of cards.  (What a schlemiel! ) It toppled.

~

Our colleague  Dr Massey  comments:

It is my impression that such logical fine distinctions, supporting distant correlative constructions,  are characteristic of English and German, and even moreso of Latin;  less so of Arabic (though in other ways that classical language is very rich).

[Postscript]   Dr. Massey, the official Latinist of this site (lavishly compensated out of our enormous profits selling Platonism Rules! coffee-mugs and t-shirts), weighs in with a parallel to the two uses of so that  noted above.   In this case, no phonetic/stress disambiguation is available, since the equivalent is here is single word, indeed a monosyllable:  UT. 

Similar remarks could be made about the classical Arabic Hatta.

Pertinent is, perhaps the distinction between the Latin Purpose Clause and the Result Clause.

Interestingly, the clauses are identical with the exception of some element in the Protasis such as "So much, so great, so" (tantum, tot, etc) in a result clause.

Consider the following.

Caesar urbem intravit ut inimicos interficeret.

Caesar entered the city in order to kill the enemy.

Here we have a simple purpose clause, Caesar did one thing in order to do another thing.

But the addition of some "so much, so great" element in the protasis can render the apodosis to be a result:

Caesar tantos inimicos interfecit ut sanguis in vias fluxerit.

Caesar killed so many enemies that [as a result] blood flowed in the streets.

Now, Caesar did not kill because he felt the streets needed more blood in them. He killed because he was a murderous thug. But the result of his activities was that the streets flowed with blood.

.