Abstract

LOPEZ ASTORGA, Miguel. Implicit premises and transitivity relationships. Leng. [online]. 2019, vol.47, n.1, pp.73-90. ISSN 0120-3479.  https://doi.org/10.25100/lenguaje.v47i1.7162.

In 2010, Johnson-Laird stated that the fact that not all of propositions establishing relationships allow for its interpretation in terms of transitivity is a problem for certain theories; particularly for those trying to explain reasoning and human communication syntactically. Ina nutshell, his argument is that if those propositions refer to identical logical forms, the relationships that could possibly be derived from them would have to be identical as well. However, in this paper, my claim is that syntactic theories can respond to this criticism. It is enough to consider the existence of implicit premises that only act in certain contexts. Thus, it will be argued that only some propositions enable to think about transitivity because only some of such propositions can be linked to hidden premises expressing that relationship. As it will also be shown, from this perspective, mistakes in this regard can be understood in the same way.

Keywords : logical form; pragmatics; implicit premises; transitive relationships; syntax.

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