nucleation

ARG-040: In use, an utterance is interpreted by its contrast with the alternatives its speaker could have used, so what a translation must let a receiver reconstruct is those contrasts, not the wording or the proposition

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Properties10
StatusProposed
Version2
Formanalogy
Tagslinguistics, philosophy-of-language, translation
Linepragmatic-transport
Workswhat-survives-translation
Rests onCLAIM-242 — The use-level counterpart of Saussure's value is an utterance's contrast with the alternatives its speaker could have used in context; values do not cross between languages, which is why fidelity is graded transport through an anchored correspondence rather than identity of value
GroundsTHEORY-172 — In Frank and Goodman's one-shot reference games, listeners' mean bets matched a parameter-free listener inverting a speaker who chooses among true utterances by informativeness, with a separately measured salience prior, and not salience alone; and in Bergen, Goodman and Levy's signalling games with novel symbols, listeners read a signal as excluding what the available alternative would have conveyed, LIT-809 — That's what she (could have) said: How alternative utterances affect language use
ConcludesCLAIM-220 — For a named population of receivers and a stated family of tasks, what survives a translation, retelling or rendering is the set of task-relevant communicative distinctions those receivers can still recover from it, and measured preservation of the pragmatic observables predicts that recovery better than preservation of the wording or of the proposition, with or without its force
Rendered intodocs/arguments-by-conclusion.md

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The inference

CLAIM-242: “The use-level counterpart of Saussure’s value is an utterance’s contrast with the alternatives its speaker could have used in context”. In Frank and Goodman’s reference games a listener who inverts a speaker choosing among alternatives predicts the bets people make (THEORY-172), and Bergen, Goodman and Levy show alternative utterances shaping what is understood (LIT-809). If interpretation in use runs through contrast with alternatives, then what a rendering must preserve is that the receiver can still reconstruct those contrasts and act on them, which is CLAIM-115.

ARG-033 reaches CLAIM-115 from Saussure’s value through CLAIM-082. This line does not use Saussure: the two are independent, and either could hold without the other (ADR-032’s either-or support).

Critical questions

  • In what respect are the cases alike? In both, what a hearer takes an utterance to do depends on the alternatives the speaker passed over.
  • Is that the respect the conclusion needs? Yes: CLAIM-115 is about what a receiving system can reconstruct, and a contrast with alternatives is something a receiver reconstructs.
  • What relevant difference is there? Reference games fix a small, shared set of alternatives and a single referent. In translation the alternatives differ between the source and target languages, and the receiver of the rendering never saw the source speaker’s options. Whether the target reader can reconstruct the source’s contrasts, rather than the target language’s own, is what the analogy does not settle. That is why it is Proposed.
  • What transfers, and what does not? The mechanism, interpretation by contrast with alternatives, transfers. The alternative sets do not, and CLAIM-242 says why: “values do not cross between languages”.

Filed 2026-10-28 at the sixth status review, at the owner’s direction.

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