--- abstract: | This paper was written in the context of a workshop (held in 1989) on logical connectives in discourse. It addresses difficulties that arise from attempts at analysing logical connectives by assigning logical relations to them, taken from a typological listing. As the workshop itself showed, such attempts typically face the problem of on the one hand needing to be broad enough to cover all the instances of relations found in texts and on the other hand needing to be specific enough to differentiate types of relationships from each other. Applying the relevance-theoretic framework proposed by Sperber and Wilson, this paper argued that the root of the problem is that (logical) connectivity in discourse is not created by a fixed set of interpropositional or rhetorical relations, but by the search for relevance, through the inferential interaction between a given utterance and its context. This explains the virtually unlimited variety of relations that can and do arise in texts, without reliance on any defined set of relations. After a brief introduction to the relevance-theoretical framework, the paper applies it to the analysis of the connective –m in Silt’i, an Ethio-Semitic language. It attempts to show how the variety of relations associated with this connective can be explained in terms of the interaction of a simple semantic property with different pieces of contextual information, accessed in the search for relevance. The paper then proposes and illustrates three methods of testing the validity of such relevance-theoretic analyses of connectivity, two of which can be carried out experimentally. altloc: [] chapter: 1 commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: ~ conference: ~ confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: [] creators_name: - family: Gutt given: Ernst-August honourific: Dr lineage: '' date: 1999 date_type: published datestamp: 2003-08-16 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/31/12 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: - family: Loos given: Eugene E honourific: '' lineage: '' eprint_status: archive eprintid: 3112 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/text_html.png;/3112/1/LOGCON.htm full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: pub issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: 'relevance theory, inference, logical connective, implicature, pragmatic connective' lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:55:20 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: ~ pagerange: 1-24 pubdom: FALSE publication: Logical Relations in Discourse publisher: Summer Institute of Linguistics refereed: TRUE referencetext: | Ballard, D. Lee, Robert J. Conrad, and R. E. Longacre 1971 'The deep and surface grammar of interclausal relations' Foundations of Language, 7, 70-118 Beekman, John and John Callow 1974 Translating the word of God, Zondervan, Grand Rapids Blakemore, Diane 1987 Semantic constraints on relevance Blackwell, Oxford Blass, Regina forthcoming Relevance relations in discourse: A study with special reference to Sissala, Cambridge University Press Callow, John 1982 A semantic structure analysis of Second Thessalonians, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Dallas Callow, Kathleen forthcoming Man and message Grice, Paul 1975 'Logic and conversation' in Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan (eds) Syntax and Semantics, v. 3, Academic Press, New York, pp. 41-58; quoted from reprint in Aloysius P. Martinich (ed.) The Philosophy of language, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1985, pp. 159-170 Gutt, Ernst-August 1988 'Toward an analysis of pragmatic connectives in Silt'i' in Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa 26-30 November 1984, ELM Publications, Huntingdon vol. 1, pp. 665-678 Larson, Mildred L. 1984 Meaning-based translation: A guide to cross-language equivalence, University Press of America, Lanham Longacre, Robert A. 1983 The grammar of discourse, Plenum Press, New York Mann, William C. and Sandra A. Thompson 1986 Rhetorical structure theory: Description and construction of text structures, Information Sciences Institute Reprint Series ISI/RS-86-174, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey Mann, William C. and Sandra A. Thompson 1987 Rhetorical structure theory: A theory of text organization Information Sciences Institute Reprint Series ISI/RS-87-190, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey Pike, Kenneth L. and Evelyn G. Pike 1977 Grammatical Analysis, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Dallas, and The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson 1986 Relevance: Communication and Cognition, Blackwell, Oxford relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 8 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:48:28 subjects: - ling-sem - cog-psy - ling-prag - ling-syntax succeeds: ~ suggestions: ~ sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: 'Logical connectives, relationships and relevance' type: bookchapter userid: 3214 volume: ~