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A pragmatic logic for commands
302
Book reviews
Mulac, Anthony and Rose ~ash. 1977. Effects of intonation pattern of synthesised and t~atural speech upon listener resolution of semaatic ambiguity. Language and Speech 20: 274-279. Anne C~tler is a psycholingt,,ist who~)eresearch has conceraed sentence comprehension and production in general, the proee~;sing of presody and the implications of speech errors in particular. A Ph.D. at Texas and a stint a t M.I.T. preceded her curren': reseatreh fellowship at the University of Sussex.
Melvin Joseph Adler, A pnzgmatic logic jbr commands. Amsterdam; Jo]hn lJenjamins, 1980 (Pragmatics and beyond, 3). viii, 131 pp.. Dfl. 30.00 (paper). Although the title of the 0ook rc,%r.~ to a 'logic' ,ff commands, it is import~lt to stress ~t the outset that Adler is not directly concerned w~th the validity of trguments having commands either as premisses or conclusion, or with conseff, ence relations between commands. Rather, he defines his enterprise as an attem~,t to ~.,'h~,'~,'*"';~°.....~.~,,........ ,, ,.,,,h°* he ,.,u,~"~the institution of commanas, . . . . .tnat is to say, tile constitutive rules (in the sense of Searle 1969, one may guess) determining not only which speech acts are to count as commands, but also h~,w commands are used and what reactions they elicit. "[hi~ enter;',rise divides into five main subtasks: (i) to find the necessary and sufficient conditions which enable a speech act tt) qualify as a command; ( i t ) t o identify those features of commands wifich must be represented in their formal logical structure: (iii) to construct a formal syntactic system of commands; (iv) to show that the :surface sentences t~sed to give comma:ads can be generated from their logical (deep) structure; and fin'Aly (v) to give an interpretation of these logical structures of commands in terms of flow charts. Unfortunately, none c.f these is suc,:essfully achieved. The two ini~ial tasks are of a preliminary nature ~tnd occupy the first part o' the book (up to p. 44). This is an informal and analytic work, which consists mainly of a rc~:ision of Searle's (1969)account of commands and of z' discussion of some of the distinctions made by R(:scher (1966). Wh~le Searle required that the propositional content of a comn and predicated a (.possible) future action of the addressee, Adler has no propositional content rule. He rejects (p. 10) Searle's analysis of an ill,)cutionary act as consisting of an illocutiorary force plus a proposition. This attitude is based on an undue assimilation of this analysis wi~h the so,:alled performativ.e hypothe:~is of generative semanticists, and a justified belief that it has been proven tmtenable. Adler does not realize that one can accept Se~,rle's analysis wlfile dismissing tt:e main thesis of generative semantics, that surface sentences are generated from t]:leir logical structure by rules of sy~tax alone. To the contrary, he conlmits himself to a version of generative semar:tics which does r~t incorporate :he performativ,~ hypothesis Adler modifies Searle's analysis in two further respe~ ts. He argues (p. 22) that art utterance can count as a command even when the a,ddressee is not able to do the required action
Book reviews
303
or when the speaker does not believe that he is able to, thus invalidating Searle's two preparator:¢ rules stating that it cannot be so. Now, I agree that there is, prima filcie, no reason why (1) should not qualify as a command, while (2), though physicaUy impossible, is undoubtedly an assertion: (1) Jump 100 feet into the air! (2) I jumped !00 feet into the air. I think there is no need to say, as Adler insists, that ttfis can be the case only in the context of some extra-linguistic institution such as the army, where iit may happen, and perhaps usually happens, that absurd commands are given. But this does not really improve upon Searle's account, for his preparatory rules were not meant as conditions for a speech act to qualify as a command s impliciter, but as conditions for a speech act to qualify ~~ a ~wn-defective command. And a defective command still counts as a command, trader Searle's view. There is, therefore, no need to weaken Searie's rules in ~he way suggested by Adler. The last and most significant modification of Searle's (1969)account consists of replacing the condition that the speaker has authority over his addressee, by the condition that either the speaker has and is believed by the addressee to have authority over him, or that the addressee c6ncedes to him the status of an authority (p. 23). This condition clearly boils down to its second disjunct, which it wiLl therefore suffice to consider. Adler gives (p. 13) the example of a jadge saying to a Red Brigadesman to shut up during a court session. He comments that the judge's utterance is not a command, and the Brigadesman not obliged to obe?z so long as the Brigadesman dc,es not recognize the judge as having authority over him. But this reasoning has the somewhat peculiar consequence that the Brigadesman catmot be said to refuse to obey the given command, for there is no such thing if he s~ desires. In Adler's view, the addressee has complete control over the illocu~ionary force of utterances addressed to him or her. This seems unl~lausible. It implies that someone can refiase to obey a command only when he has recognized his obligation to obey. But it is difficult to imrgine tlmt someone might refuse to do so nething he admits to be obliged to do. It is not that it could not happen, but it is certainly a pathological situation. We do not want to say that only abnormal perso:~s can refuse to obey a command. in the case at hand, it seems that we should admit that the Brigadesmart clearly recognizes that the judge's utterance was issued as a command. This should be sufficient to ensure that it has the force of a command. We may then say thai: the Brigadesman refuses to obey the given command precisely because he derbies that the judge has authority over him. Adler completes his analysis of the institution of commands by adding that a command creates the obligation to obey on the part of the addressee, and that the addressee of a command must actually exist, e.v~n though its source or authority may well be fictitJ.ous. He then proceeds to search for the logically significant tea..
3()4
Book reviews
tures of comm~mds, engaging hi a somewhat lengthy (pp. 2 4 - 4 4 ) , and not alway:~ relevant, discuss,ion designed to provide the grounds t'or the formal definition o( (the logical structure oO a cot~lman4 to be giwm in the second part of the book (p. 47). Adler follows Rescher (1966) in taking conditional commands (that is, comrnands to do something on the condition that some state of affair,.; is realized) as basic, and treats categorical commands as a kind of conditional command ~¢ith an empty precondition (i.e. one which always t~olds). He also agrees that the logical structure of a command is such that it hlcludes its addressee, as well as its mooted action or result: a i d precondition, but not its source or authority. Yet, his logical sl:ructures differs"from Rescher's in sigt~ificant ways. A command addressed to more than one pc3 son, such as (3) You guys, nlove this table! can be understood either distributively, as in (3a), or colle:tively as in (3b): {3a) (Each of) you guys, move this table (in tutrt)! (3b) (Some of) you guys, move tkis teble (together~! While (3a) calls ~br each member of the grot~p ,)f addressees to move the table referred to, (3b) clearly means that each memb:r of ~ome ~ubse~ (no matter whicl~) of the set of addressees should cooperatc wi:h each other to move the table. It is Re.~cher's contention, which seems plausible, tl at the collective reading of (3)can be rephrased as a (somewhat complex) distributive commav, d, along the lines of (3b') Each of you guys, see to it that at least s~ me of you ~,elp each other to move tiffs table! Tiffs, in turn, amo lnts to a set of individual co nmands, lil e any distributive corn mand. The point is that Adler does not take this recucibility into account, nor does he have any ,;yntactic device to mark the distinctiotl between die two teat'~iJ~s of ( 3 ) As his logical structures do not "allow for qttant:fication over addressees, he cottld not avail himself of this reducibility even if h: wished. This means that, while Rescher woald have a different logical fornt for ~ach of (3a~ and (3b), Adler gj,tes them the same ambiguous logical structure, althc ugh he cl,.'arly intends his logic of commands to account for the distinction. A similar defect is reflected in his treal:mert of tim.~, which also lacks the resources of quantification. Adler overlooks the in qportance of Rescher's distinction between do-it-always commands, which allow, or call for, some action to be repeated, and when-next commands, which ca!i tbr some ac~,.ion to be performed once and for all. Thus Rescher provides a differem logical f3rm for each of
Book re views
305
(.4a) Utlways) be polite! (4b) Be polite (now)! (Sa) When you see Paul, (always) be polite! (5b) (Next tm~e) when you see Paul, be polite ! On ti~e contrary, Adler has no way of distirguishing, on the syntactic level, between (4a) and (Sa) on the one hand, and (4b) and (5bl on the other. Instead, he stresses ancther distinction of Rescher's, that between the time at which a command should 'be carried out, and the period of time durlJ~g wlfi.:h i~ is in force, that is to say, the period of time during wluch the addressee is obliged to carry it out (if its precondition obtai~ during this time). Adler claims that the logical structure of each como mand has to include the time interval during which it is in force, while its execution thne, following Rescher, ~hould be treated as a k,."~.d of precondition. But he does not .~otice that tbAs distinction applies ,:,pJy to coman.ands which caU for some action to be repeated daring a certain limi~:ed period, and that furthermore there is no reason why this period should not also be treate,t as a precondition. A command such as (6) During n,~.~:tmonth, call your aunt Jemi~na ever~ Sunday! could well b ~ :rendered as (6') Every S today of next m~nth, crdl your aunt Jemima! Here, Adler would represent 'next month' as an interval of time in the logical structure, corresponding to the period during which (6) s i~~ force, and take 'every sunday' as a precondition. But when the execution ti~e coincides with the period during which the given command is in force, he doe.'; not treat it as a precondition, and provides no rationale for this choice. t may m~w give a version of Adler's formal definition of a command (p. ,~7). A co~unand i:; an ordered four-tuple (X, K, 7', A), where' X is a finite non-er~.pty set (the set of addressees), K is a set of execution preconditions, each of wich is identiffed with ;nine function from points in time to truth-values (i.e. some kind of proposition); ]" is a non-empty time interval representin~ the period during which the command is m force" and A is a set of sentences taken from some (assumed but not dellned) 'k gic of action', representing the conmaand's hooted action or result. Adler r~ads such a logical structure as 'X, if K happens during T, then A'. But this is hardily a reading at all, for how can a connective such as 'if . . then' be ins~ded b~:tween a set of propositions and a set of ,,;entences? ~ should also be not~;d thai the intended imperative force is not mar~:ed in the logical struc:ure (eve:~ in it; informal reading), and that there is no constraint that the elements of A sho~Jd be :~entences about 2"s actions. Thus,
306
Book reviews
(7) Paul, if it rains today, John will sell his car! qualifies as a command. Ad.let give some examples (pp. 48--49) of how this definition is used to analyze particular commands. He renders (8) B:iil, if anyone knocks on the docr, answer him! as '(X2, K2, 7'2, A2)', "where X2-~ 'Bill', 'someone knocks on ~he d o o r ' - K 2 , 'answer h i m ' - A 2 " (sit') and T2 is some contextually specified time interval. He does not even ask tumself how 'him' is to be bound by 'someone' in such a logk:al structure. Turning to the problem of how to derive surface Er, glish sentences frcm their logical struclures (pp. 51-52), he exhibits some string::; such as the following: (9a) (Torn. it rains, today, shut this ~indow) (9b) Tom, if it rains toda3, shut this window! He then ~ornments that the (b) form derives from the (a) form in the obvious way. This completes his demonstration. But what is obvious is lh~t (,9a) is not a possible loNcal structure under the given definition. Suppose we h we a logical slructure, such as (perhaps): (9a') ( {Turn}, {F}, T, {'Ton, shut flus window')) where T is some day on which (9b) is uttered and a," is a f :notion ,~vhic'a lor each minute in T, returr.s Truth as its value if and o~dy il" it is raining at this time. How could (9b) possibly be tlansfor,nationally dm.ved from :ga')'? Adler =Joe,,: not answer ':his question. Ft, rthermore, if Adler's wishes were taken seriously, each impe:ative sentence of English would have as many n on-equi ,alent logical .~tructures as lhere are possible addressees and intervals of riffle, that is, infinitely, actually non-denumerably, many. This may l:e defensible in some other contexts b ul it is clearly incompatible with the basic assumptions of generativ,: li~guistics. Ha'dng thus completed task (iv), Adler proceeds (pp. 5 3 - 7 2 ) i : o define tile notion of a subcomman~J and logic:tl operation,~ such as c,.m.itmc~ion, disjunction an(i negation of commar0s, as well a~ to introduce some rules ,~f inference. Most of these definitions suffer from some or other defect, lvor example, his defiritmn of a subcommand applies only to distri[utive and do-it-always commands. But, as we have seen, these hawe no distinctive syntactic fe¢,tmes. A similar remark applies to negation, which is defined only for a certain, informally characterized, tyt: e of commands, the logical structures of which have no syntactic peculiarilly. It is thus impossible to say, given only the logical structure of a command, whether or not it can be decomposed :into subcommands, or if it has a well-defined negation. Apart
Book reviews
307
from the fact that I was not able to find any coherent nwa:fing to ~is definition of disju action (p. 61), uader his defin;tion of conjuncl:ion (p. '.;8), (10) Dick, if your mother comes, wear your blue coat! turn:; out to be the conjunction of: (10a) Dick, if your mother comes and it is cold, wear your blJe coat! and (10~) Dick, if your mother comes and it rai,ls, wear your blue coat! Tiff ~seems quite unacceptable. t h e r e iS u t u e t o say. aoout ills lLll~S O1 l n l e l ~ I l C t ; omer tnaI~ mat tney are no t, a s Adlcr acknowledges, inference rules in the traditional sense, b~t rather directives as to ~,h~t the sources and addressees of commands should or m2ght do with them. This, in itself, poses no serious problem, but it is not perfectly clear :o me what significance should be attached to these rules. [he last part of tile book (pp. 7 3 - 1 0 5 ) provides the semantic interl:retafion of the syntactic system just outlined. "i-his again has little to do with s~an~ard formal ser~mntics. In Adler's view, the sea,antic interpretation of a ,:omi~:and :onsists of' what the addressee intends t o do to obey it. Adler conceives of the addressee's un:lerstanding problem as one of Ymding a pattern of activities, :he fo)Jowing of witch would imply that he or she has performed the command's mooted action. He co lsequently provides rules for constructing flow-charts repr~ seating such patterns of activities. Adler is thus com~nitted to the view thz~ ~:helogk al ,yntactic structure of any command has as many meanings as there :~c: possible ways of oi~eying it. Tt:at being so, there is hardly any systematic connection between the set 3f logical structures and the set of po:.;sible flow charts (which in any case is not welldcfiaed). For example, th~ flow chart representation distingmshe~ between the distcbufive and collective readings of plural commands (which is not done in the s~ntax), but not between the fore kinds of disjunction introduced in the syntactic s) stem. Adler claims tha~ his flow charts improve on those used it. Resche~ (i966), ~. ~cause they 'allow for two actions to be performed simultaneously and are thus more realistic. But such a claim can have no real m~aning until we have a clear conct.'ption of what actions are. ~n any case, it is not clear that Kescher's computer flow charts cannot allow for t,~.o or more acfious to be performed at the same time. Adler's major goal in constructing this s~mantics was to account for the way m ; ~'kich a command can be obeyed. This explains why he puts the ~mphasis on the aSdressee's planrfing and decision-making capabilities, and makes it clear that his wo:¢k has really more to do wilh cognitive phychology than logic or tinguistic ~. Yet, cognitive psychologists may have little to learn from it.
3 0~',
Book reviews
In my opinion, Adler's theory, as it stands, i:t untenable and would require significant re'zisions (along the lines suggested in th.is review) in order to contribute to our understanding of commands as such. Daniel Laurie; Universit~ d'Aix Marseille Aix-en-Provence, France
Reference, Rescher, Nicholas. 1966. "~he logic of commands. Londor: Routledge and Kegaa Paul. Se,.rle~ Jo'm R. 1969. Speech acts. Cambridge, MA: Camt,idge University Press Daniel Laurier (b. 1951) M.A. in philosophy from t!~e Universdty of Qu~t'ec in Montreal, Canada. New writing a Ph.D. thesis on contemporary philgsophical theories of meaning, at tl~e Ur, iversity ,ff Ai.x-Marseille I, in Aix-en-Provence, France,
Book reviews
Mulac, Anthony and Rose ~ash. 1977. Effects of intonation pattern of synthesised and t~atural speech upon listener resolution of semaatic ambiguity. Language and Speech 20: 274-279. Anne C~tler is a psycholingt,,ist who~)eresearch has conceraed sentence comprehension and production in general, the proee~;sing of presody and the implications of speech errors in particular. A Ph.D. at Texas and a stint a t M.I.T. preceded her curren': reseatreh fellowship at the University of Sussex.
Melvin Joseph Adler, A pnzgmatic logic jbr commands. Amsterdam; Jo]hn lJenjamins, 1980 (Pragmatics and beyond, 3). viii, 131 pp.. Dfl. 30.00 (paper). Although the title of the 0ook rc,%r.~ to a 'logic' ,ff commands, it is import~lt to stress ~t the outset that Adler is not directly concerned w~th the validity of trguments having commands either as premisses or conclusion, or with conseff, ence relations between commands. Rather, he defines his enterprise as an attem~,t to ~.,'h~,'~,'*"';~°.....~.~,,........ ,, ,.,,,h°* he ,.,u,~"~the institution of commanas, . . . . .tnat is to say, tile constitutive rules (in the sense of Searle 1969, one may guess) determining not only which speech acts are to count as commands, but also h~,w commands are used and what reactions they elicit. "[hi~ enter;',rise divides into five main subtasks: (i) to find the necessary and sufficient conditions which enable a speech act tt) qualify as a command; ( i t ) t o identify those features of commands wifich must be represented in their formal logical structure: (iii) to construct a formal syntactic system of commands; (iv) to show that the :surface sentences t~sed to give comma:ads can be generated from their logical (deep) structure; and fin'Aly (v) to give an interpretation of these logical structures of commands in terms of flow charts. Unfortunately, none c.f these is suc,:essfully achieved. The two ini~ial tasks are of a preliminary nature ~tnd occupy the first part o' the book (up to p. 44). This is an informal and analytic work, which consists mainly of a rc~:ision of Searle's (1969)account of commands and of z' discussion of some of the distinctions made by R(:scher (1966). Wh~le Searle required that the propositional content of a comn and predicated a (.possible) future action of the addressee, Adler has no propositional content rule. He rejects (p. 10) Searle's analysis of an ill,)cutionary act as consisting of an illocutiorary force plus a proposition. This attitude is based on an undue assimilation of this analysis wi~h the so,:alled performativ.e hypothe:~is of generative semanticists, and a justified belief that it has been proven tmtenable. Adler does not realize that one can accept Se~,rle's analysis wlfile dismissing tt:e main thesis of generative semantics, that surface sentences are generated from t]:leir logical structure by rules of sy~tax alone. To the contrary, he conlmits himself to a version of generative semar:tics which does r~t incorporate :he performativ,~ hypothesis Adler modifies Searle's analysis in two further respe~ ts. He argues (p. 22) that art utterance can count as a command even when the a,ddressee is not able to do the required action
Book reviews
303
or when the speaker does not believe that he is able to, thus invalidating Searle's two preparator:¢ rules stating that it cannot be so. Now, I agree that there is, prima filcie, no reason why (1) should not qualify as a command, while (2), though physicaUy impossible, is undoubtedly an assertion: (1) Jump 100 feet into the air! (2) I jumped !00 feet into the air. I think there is no need to say, as Adler insists, that ttfis can be the case only in the context of some extra-linguistic institution such as the army, where iit may happen, and perhaps usually happens, that absurd commands are given. But this does not really improve upon Searle's account, for his preparatory rules were not meant as conditions for a speech act to qualify as a command s impliciter, but as conditions for a speech act to qualify ~~ a ~wn-defective command. And a defective command still counts as a command, trader Searle's view. There is, therefore, no need to weaken Searie's rules in ~he way suggested by Adler. The last and most significant modification of Searle's (1969)account consists of replacing the condition that the speaker has authority over his addressee, by the condition that either the speaker has and is believed by the addressee to have authority over him, or that the addressee c6ncedes to him the status of an authority (p. 23). This condition clearly boils down to its second disjunct, which it wiLl therefore suffice to consider. Adler gives (p. 13) the example of a jadge saying to a Red Brigadesman to shut up during a court session. He comments that the judge's utterance is not a command, and the Brigadesman not obliged to obe?z so long as the Brigadesman dc,es not recognize the judge as having authority over him. But this reasoning has the somewhat peculiar consequence that the Brigadesman catmot be said to refuse to obey the given command, for there is no such thing if he s~ desires. In Adler's view, the addressee has complete control over the illocu~ionary force of utterances addressed to him or her. This seems unl~lausible. It implies that someone can refiase to obey a command only when he has recognized his obligation to obey. But it is difficult to imrgine tlmt someone might refuse to do so nething he admits to be obliged to do. It is not that it could not happen, but it is certainly a pathological situation. We do not want to say that only abnormal perso:~s can refuse to obey a command. in the case at hand, it seems that we should admit that the Brigadesmart clearly recognizes that the judge's utterance was issued as a command. This should be sufficient to ensure that it has the force of a command. We may then say thai: the Brigadesman refuses to obey the given command precisely because he derbies that the judge has authority over him. Adler completes his analysis of the institution of commands by adding that a command creates the obligation to obey on the part of the addressee, and that the addressee of a command must actually exist, e.v~n though its source or authority may well be fictitJ.ous. He then proceeds to search for the logically significant tea..
3()4
Book reviews
tures of comm~mds, engaging hi a somewhat lengthy (pp. 2 4 - 4 4 ) , and not alway:~ relevant, discuss,ion designed to provide the grounds t'or the formal definition o( (the logical structure oO a cot~lman4 to be giwm in the second part of the book (p. 47). Adler follows Rescher (1966) in taking conditional commands (that is, comrnands to do something on the condition that some state of affair,.; is realized) as basic, and treats categorical commands as a kind of conditional command ~¢ith an empty precondition (i.e. one which always t~olds). He also agrees that the logical structure of a command is such that it hlcludes its addressee, as well as its mooted action or result: a i d precondition, but not its source or authority. Yet, his logical sl:ructures differs"from Rescher's in sigt~ificant ways. A command addressed to more than one pc3 son, such as (3) You guys, nlove this table! can be understood either distributively, as in (3a), or colle:tively as in (3b): {3a) (Each of) you guys, move this table (in tutrt)! (3b) (Some of) you guys, move tkis teble (together~! While (3a) calls ~br each member of the grot~p ,)f addressees to move the table referred to, (3b) clearly means that each memb:r of ~ome ~ubse~ (no matter whicl~) of the set of addressees should cooperatc wi:h each other to move the table. It is Re.~cher's contention, which seems plausible, tl at the collective reading of (3)can be rephrased as a (somewhat complex) distributive commav, d, along the lines of (3b') Each of you guys, see to it that at least s~ me of you ~,elp each other to move tiffs table! Tiffs, in turn, amo lnts to a set of individual co nmands, lil e any distributive corn mand. The point is that Adler does not take this recucibility into account, nor does he have any ,;yntactic device to mark the distinctiotl between die two teat'~iJ~s of ( 3 ) As his logical structures do not "allow for qttant:fication over addressees, he cottld not avail himself of this reducibility even if h: wished. This means that, while Rescher woald have a different logical fornt for ~ach of (3a~ and (3b), Adler gj,tes them the same ambiguous logical structure, althc ugh he cl,.'arly intends his logic of commands to account for the distinction. A similar defect is reflected in his treal:mert of tim.~, which also lacks the resources of quantification. Adler overlooks the in qportance of Rescher's distinction between do-it-always commands, which allow, or call for, some action to be repeated, and when-next commands, which ca!i tbr some ac~,.ion to be performed once and for all. Thus Rescher provides a differem logical f3rm for each of
Book re views
305
(.4a) Utlways) be polite! (4b) Be polite (now)! (Sa) When you see Paul, (always) be polite! (5b) (Next tm~e) when you see Paul, be polite ! On ti~e contrary, Adler has no way of distirguishing, on the syntactic level, between (4a) and (Sa) on the one hand, and (4b) and (5bl on the other. Instead, he stresses ancther distinction of Rescher's, that between the time at which a command should 'be carried out, and the period of time durlJ~g wlfi.:h i~ is in force, that is to say, the period of time during wluch the addressee is obliged to carry it out (if its precondition obtai~ during this time). Adler claims that the logical structure of each como mand has to include the time interval during which it is in force, while its execution thne, following Rescher, ~hould be treated as a k,."~.d of precondition. But he does not .~otice that tbAs distinction applies ,:,pJy to coman.ands which caU for some action to be repeated daring a certain limi~:ed period, and that furthermore there is no reason why this period should not also be treate,t as a precondition. A command such as (6) During n,~.~:tmonth, call your aunt Jemi~na ever~ Sunday! could well b ~ :rendered as (6') Every S today of next m~nth, crdl your aunt Jemima! Here, Adler would represent 'next month' as an interval of time in the logical structure, corresponding to the period during which (6) s i~~ force, and take 'every sunday' as a precondition. But when the execution ti~e coincides with the period during which the given command is in force, he doe.'; not treat it as a precondition, and provides no rationale for this choice. t may m~w give a version of Adler's formal definition of a command (p. ,~7). A co~unand i:; an ordered four-tuple (X, K, 7', A), where' X is a finite non-er~.pty set (the set of addressees), K is a set of execution preconditions, each of wich is identiffed with ;nine function from points in time to truth-values (i.e. some kind of proposition); ]" is a non-empty time interval representin~ the period during which the command is m force" and A is a set of sentences taken from some (assumed but not dellned) 'k gic of action', representing the conmaand's hooted action or result. Adler r~ads such a logical structure as 'X, if K happens during T, then A'. But this is hardily a reading at all, for how can a connective such as 'if . . then' be ins~ded b~:tween a set of propositions and a set of ,,;entences? ~ should also be not~;d thai the intended imperative force is not mar~:ed in the logical struc:ure (eve:~ in it; informal reading), and that there is no constraint that the elements of A sho~Jd be :~entences about 2"s actions. Thus,
306
Book reviews
(7) Paul, if it rains today, John will sell his car! qualifies as a command. Ad.let give some examples (pp. 48--49) of how this definition is used to analyze particular commands. He renders (8) B:iil, if anyone knocks on the docr, answer him! as '(X2, K2, 7'2, A2)', "where X2-~ 'Bill', 'someone knocks on ~he d o o r ' - K 2 , 'answer h i m ' - A 2 " (sit') and T2 is some contextually specified time interval. He does not even ask tumself how 'him' is to be bound by 'someone' in such a logk:al structure. Turning to the problem of how to derive surface Er, glish sentences frcm their logical struclures (pp. 51-52), he exhibits some string::; such as the following: (9a) (Torn. it rains, today, shut this ~indow) (9b) Tom, if it rains toda3, shut this window! He then ~ornments that the (b) form derives from the (a) form in the obvious way. This completes his demonstration. But what is obvious is lh~t (,9a) is not a possible loNcal structure under the given definition. Suppose we h we a logical slructure, such as (perhaps): (9a') ( {Turn}, {F}, T, {'Ton, shut flus window')) where T is some day on which (9b) is uttered and a," is a f :notion ,~vhic'a lor each minute in T, returr.s Truth as its value if and o~dy il" it is raining at this time. How could (9b) possibly be tlansfor,nationally dm.ved from :ga')'? Adler =Joe,,: not answer ':his question. Ft, rthermore, if Adler's wishes were taken seriously, each impe:ative sentence of English would have as many n on-equi ,alent logical .~tructures as lhere are possible addressees and intervals of riffle, that is, infinitely, actually non-denumerably, many. This may l:e defensible in some other contexts b ul it is clearly incompatible with the basic assumptions of generativ,: li~guistics. Ha'dng thus completed task (iv), Adler proceeds (pp. 5 3 - 7 2 ) i : o define tile notion of a subcomman~J and logic:tl operation,~ such as c,.m.itmc~ion, disjunction an(i negation of commar0s, as well a~ to introduce some rules ,~f inference. Most of these definitions suffer from some or other defect, lvor example, his defiritmn of a subcommand applies only to distri[utive and do-it-always commands. But, as we have seen, these hawe no distinctive syntactic fe¢,tmes. A similar remark applies to negation, which is defined only for a certain, informally characterized, tyt: e of commands, the logical structures of which have no syntactic peculiarilly. It is thus impossible to say, given only the logical structure of a command, whether or not it can be decomposed :into subcommands, or if it has a well-defined negation. Apart
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307
from the fact that I was not able to find any coherent nwa:fing to ~is definition of disju action (p. 61), uader his defin;tion of conjuncl:ion (p. '.;8), (10) Dick, if your mother comes, wear your blue coat! turn:; out to be the conjunction of: (10a) Dick, if your mother comes and it is cold, wear your blJe coat! and (10~) Dick, if your mother comes and it rai,ls, wear your blue coat! Tiff ~seems quite unacceptable. t h e r e iS u t u e t o say. aoout ills lLll~S O1 l n l e l ~ I l C t ; omer tnaI~ mat tney are no t, a s Adlcr acknowledges, inference rules in the traditional sense, b~t rather directives as to ~,h~t the sources and addressees of commands should or m2ght do with them. This, in itself, poses no serious problem, but it is not perfectly clear :o me what significance should be attached to these rules. [he last part of tile book (pp. 7 3 - 1 0 5 ) provides the semantic interl:retafion of the syntactic system just outlined. "i-his again has little to do with s~an~ard formal ser~mntics. In Adler's view, the sea,antic interpretation of a ,:omi~:and :onsists of' what the addressee intends t o do to obey it. Adler conceives of the addressee's un:lerstanding problem as one of Ymding a pattern of activities, :he fo)Jowing of witch would imply that he or she has performed the command's mooted action. He co lsequently provides rules for constructing flow-charts repr~ seating such patterns of activities. Adler is thus com~nitted to the view thz~ ~:helogk al ,yntactic structure of any command has as many meanings as there :~c: possible ways of oi~eying it. Tt:at being so, there is hardly any systematic connection between the set 3f logical structures and the set of po:.;sible flow charts (which in any case is not welldcfiaed). For example, th~ flow chart representation distingmshe~ between the distcbufive and collective readings of plural commands (which is not done in the s~ntax), but not between the fore kinds of disjunction introduced in the syntactic s) stem. Adler claims tha~ his flow charts improve on those used it. Resche~ (i966), ~. ~cause they 'allow for two actions to be performed simultaneously and are thus more realistic. But such a claim can have no real m~aning until we have a clear conct.'ption of what actions are. ~n any case, it is not clear that Kescher's computer flow charts cannot allow for t,~.o or more acfious to be performed at the same time. Adler's major goal in constructing this s~mantics was to account for the way m ; ~'kich a command can be obeyed. This explains why he puts the ~mphasis on the aSdressee's planrfing and decision-making capabilities, and makes it clear that his wo:¢k has really more to do wilh cognitive phychology than logic or tinguistic ~. Yet, cognitive psychologists may have little to learn from it.
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Book reviews
In my opinion, Adler's theory, as it stands, i:t untenable and would require significant re'zisions (along the lines suggested in th.is review) in order to contribute to our understanding of commands as such. Daniel Laurie; Universit~ d'Aix Marseille Aix-en-Provence, France
Reference, Rescher, Nicholas. 1966. "~he logic of commands. Londor: Routledge and Kegaa Paul. Se,.rle~ Jo'm R. 1969. Speech acts. Cambridge, MA: Camt,idge University Press Daniel Laurier (b. 1951) M.A. in philosophy from t!~e Universdty of Qu~t'ec in Montreal, Canada. New writing a Ph.D. thesis on contemporary philgsophical theories of meaning, at tl~e Ur, iversity ,ff Ai.x-Marseille I, in Aix-en-Provence, France,