Craig,
I'm not sure what your message is here. Generative theory (of which Opt.
Th. is a branch) does generally ignore things like discourse context and
discourse motivation. That's why things like passive and dative movement
transformations were proposed without consideration of the discourse
motivations for having them.
The intended practical application of OT is to explain native-speaker
competence: why certain structures occur and others don't. I don't know
how generative theory deals with the artistic type of creativity you're
talking about (as opposed to the linguistic use of the term
'creativity', which just means the ability to produce structures that
have never been uttered before).
OT isn't about interpreting a particular sentence in a particular
context. It's about explaining why structure A gets uttered and
structure B does not. I assume ambiguity will be handled in OT as it is
in any other generative theory: one surface form has two different
structural descriptions. Description A goes through a different
'competition' than Description B. In other words, there are two
different 'derivations' (I mean the OT equivalent, which would take a
long time to describe) that lead to the same 'surface structure'. The
fact is, the structure gets uttered and has two interpretations. You use
the theory to describe each, not determine which is appropriate in a
given context. I imagine the appropriateness question would be
considered to be a problem for pragmatics, not syntax.
I am not an advocate of the OT or generative approach, so I'm not going
to try to speak from that point of view. As to 'correctness' of
interpretation, I'm not very up on literary theory, but I do have my own
take on it. Interpretations of texts exist distinctly -- one/some in the
mind of the writer and one/some in the mind of the reader. Utterances
are created by a single mind, and interpreted by a separate mind. There
are all kinds of positions you can take from that point on: Is the
writer's interpretation (intended meaning) fixed and singular? Does it
change after creation of the text? Can it change? Is the originally
intended interpretation the only one that counts as 'correct'? Should
the reader's interpretation be fixed and singular? Should it match
(whichever one of) the writer's intended meaning(s)? Can it change over
time? Should it?
The meaning is not in the text, as I believe the postmodernists
proposed. Texts are sound waves or squiggles on paper or patterns on an
electronic screen. Interpretations are in minds. Minds are in heads. No
two heads are alike.
If a text fell in a forest, would anybody interpret it?
Johanna
Craig Hancock wrote:
>
> Johanna,
> There are, of course, genres, poetry being one, in which ambiguity is
> both nurtured and exploited. From the perspective of discourse theory,
> we also have to wonder if this is not what the formalists used to call
> "intentional fallacy," reducing the menaing to what was intended. If the
> one correct meaning is or is not what the writer/speaker intended, does
> that make our understanding right or wrong, and on what basis? I know
> you're not presenting this as an advocate of the approach, but isn't it
> so decontextualized as to lose all practical application?
>
> Craig
>
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184 • Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone. 756-2596
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] • Home page: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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