All,
As a theorist on the origin of language, my immediate comment is that, if
we substitute 'statement' (and question and command) for sentence, then the
problem vanishes. An informative statement, in which one person updates
another about some portion of the real about them, deals, if the hearer
accepts it, in a transformation of understanding. It does not really matter
much how the update takes place: it can even work with a gesture or facial
expression. However, the core of all language is this need to transform
understanding.
Gadamer and Collingwood have both drawn attention to the fact that, because
of this, every statement can be seen as an answer to a question, and what
that question is will transform what the statement actually means. Take
''The cat is on the mat', and check it against 'What is on the mat?',
'Where is the cat?', 'What is the relation of the cat to the mat?', and
even 'Which cat is on the mat?' where the answer is 'THE cat', that is, the
one we have just been talking about. This is why statements can shrink to a
few or even single words, for the hearer who gets the answer 'On the mat'
to the question "Where is the cat?' does not need a reminder of what it is
he or she wanted updating on.
So there is no possibility of the death of the STATEMENT: otherwise we
would cease to communicate! The original complainant was obviously troubled
about sentence structure and its relation to punctuation, as Bill remarked.
Edmond
Dr. Edmond Wright
3 Boathouse Court
Trafalgar Road
Cambridge
CB4 1DU
Tel.: 00 - 44 - (0)1223 - 350256
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