At 2:41 AM -0500 1/17/08, John F. Sowa wrote:
Pat,
As I keep saying, I don't think we disagree. I have no
quarrel
with your summary of the kinds of things that have been
discussed
when people use the word
'context'.
....
But what I have been suggesting is that
there is something common to
all of the above:
1. Syntax: There is some text -- in a broad sense, which
could
include NL printed stuff, spoken snippets of
conversation,
or some formal set of statements.
2. Semantics: That text is
relevant to something, such as a
situation, in
terms of which the pronouns and incompletely
specified references are
resolved.
Hmm. This is interesting. There seem to be two distinct (and
opposite?) senses used here. This 'something' might be what the text
is, in some sense, 'about', the thing or part of the world which
defines its topic, what the text is focused on; or it may be the
overall 'background' in which the text is situated. In the latter
case, it isn't necessarily what the text is actually about in
any sense. So for example, in the case of a time-interval, the text
which is "in" such a context might make no reference to
times at all, and yet still require that the reader know what time it
is 'set' in, in order to know that "the President" refers,
say, to Jimmy Carter. Maybe you mean to cover both of these by
speaking of 'relevance' but I wonder if its worth distinguishing them
more exactly, as they really do seem different, and maybe need
different syntactic treatment.
Pat
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