I like the time before conferences when people start posting their conference papers on the web. This is nice for people who can’t get to the conference, and for people who can’t get to every session at the conference.
Today’s submission is from “Michael McKinsey”:http://www.cla.wayne.edu/Philosophy/McKinseyPublications.html, who has posted his “comments on __Beyond Rigidity__”:http://www.cla.wayne.edu/Philosophy/Remarks-Soames.rtf, for the Scott Soames book party. There’s lots of interesting stuff there, and I recommend reading it, but I wanted to quibble with a couple of points.
First, something McKinsey says about sarcasm.
bq. Here it is plausible to say that the speaker has not asserted the proposition literally expressed that Sam is a fine friend. Rather, as Soames says, the speaker asserts something like the negation of that proposition (p. 58). But notice that typically the speaker would utter the sentence in a special sarcastic tone of voice (Sam is a __fine friend__) which by convention is reserved for the expression of irony. In the absence of this convention, it is not at all clear that ironic assertion would occur. It may even be that the speakers tone of voice functions to conventionally transform the sentence uttered into its negation, so that the spoken utterance literally expresses the proposition that Sam is not a fine friend.
So McKinsey’s view is that sarcasm needs a special tone of voice, and the semantic content of this tone is negation. That’s so obviously correct I don’t know why anyone hasn’t thought of it earlier. It would explain why some people “don’t pick up on written sarcasm”:http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001494.html I guess.
He also denies that “Trenton, New Jersey” is a name, claiming that (20) is just a convention way of saying (21).
(20) Trenton, New Jersey is a small city,
(21) Trenton, which is located in New Jersey, is a small city.
But that isn’t quite right, because (20a) is bad although (21a) is good.
(20a) *Ithaca, upstate New York, is a small city.
(21a) Ithaca, which is located in upstate New York, is a small city.
So maybe the comma elides ‘which is located __in the state of__’. But that isn’t right either, because of the way international locations are given. (20b) is fine in American English, even though (21b) is wrong.
(20b) Melbourne, Australia is the site of the first tennis grand slam of the year.
(21b) #Melbourne, which is located in the state of Australia, is the site of the first tennis grand slam of the year.
Melbourne of course is in the state of __Victoria__, which is part of the federation of states Australia. Maybe (20b) is fine just due to ignorance on the part of the speakers. But maybe not. If the convention that gives us phrases like “Trenton, New Jersey” does not create descriptive names, as Scott Soames says it does, it’s hard to state exactly what it does do.
One final hard case. Imagine Killington, Vermont gets to “secede and join New Hampshire”:http://www.onthesnow.com/news/030604.html as it is trying to do. The proper way to refer to it, as the townsfolk already are, will be “Killington, New Hampshire”. But will Killington really be __located__ in New Hampshire? I think not, though it’s hard to say. I’d say it is located in Vermont, but part of New Hampshire for political purposes. But I could be misusing __located__ here. In any case, I think these locutions are harder than McKinsey allows.