Topics Language

Question Is this sentence true: "Miles Davis and narwhals both have horns." The word "horn" can mean a musical instrument (which only Miles Davis has) or a bony protrusion (which only narwhals have.) But is it possible to mean both things at once (which would make the sentence true). Or does the sentence only have two possible meanings, both of which are false?

Accepted:
July 21, 2011

Comments

As with all excellent questions, this one is the tip of a very large iceberg! This one nicely ties in questions of meaning and truth, of literal v. metaphorical meaning, as well as of speaker-meaning v sentence-meaning. But rather than try to answer it here, why not simply observe that there's no reason not to treat it as "true", by common sense, just because of the equivocation in meaning -- for anyone who gets the pun involved will clearly understand that this sentence is a clever way of expressing the proposition 'Davis has an instrument and narwhals have a bony protrusion', which we have no reason not to think of as true. So since the sentence in its rather ordinary use, and context, with many people, expresses a true proposition, why not treat it as true? Meanwhile people who do NOT get the pun (for whatever reason) might understand this sentence to express the proposition 'Davis has a protrusion and narwhals have a protrusion', which they would take to be straightforwardly false (assuming they know that 'miles davis' refers to a non-horned human being!). So these people will take it for a straightforward falsehood ... So at least in ordinary contexts the sentence can be used/understood to express ordinary truths/falsehoods ... so must there be a problem here?
best,

This phenomenon is well-known. It's a form of zeugma that is known as "syllepsis".

I think most linguists would say that this sentence cannot mean that Miles has a trumpet and a narwhal a protrusion from the head. The reason is the obvious one: that "horn" has to be interpreted a single way. Note that, if correct, this shows that "Ms and Ns are F" is not, as we sometimes tell our introductory logic students, simply an abbreviation (or something) for "Ms are F and Ns are F", since, in the latter, "F" could be interpreted differently in its two occurrences.

When one makes a claim like the one just made, we are talking about how the sentence is immediately, unreflectively, and automatically understood by a hearer. So what I'm observing is, in effect, simply that our "language faculty" operates a certain way, and not another way that it could, in principle, have operated. And put that way, the point should be fairly uncontroversial. The humorous effect one can get from syllepsis depends the fact that syllpetic utterances strikes us in the first instance as odd.

But language-use is complex and one can, of course, reflect on what has been said and arrive at a kind of secondary interpretation. Certainly we do that will sylleptic utterances, and so one can manage to communicate something by such an utterance that it cannot literally mean.