Observaciones a los fundamentos pragmáticos de la semántica inquisitiva. Consecuencias de la prevalencia del estilo sobre lo práctico

This thesis analyses Inquisitive Semantics (IS), which aims to unify the treatment of declarative and interrogative sentences, treating them as proposals for the actualisation of a common ground. The common ground is a set of shared information that has been established in the conversation; it is usually characterised as a set of possible worlds, those worlds that are compatible with the common beliefs and assumptions of the participants in the conversation (Groenendijk & Roelofsen, 2009, p. 2). In this research, we aim to show that (IS) falls into a prevalence of style in which pragmatic aspects are displaced. The arguments in question are: 1. Firstly, it is argued that (IS) ignores Grice’s maxim of Manner. The maxim of Manner is excluded in the first instance from the modelling and adaptation of Grice’s maxims by Groenendijk y Roelofsen (2009). Subsequently, Brandenburg (2014) argues that the maxim in question is partially contained in other adapted maxims, but that this is not sufficient for (IS) to capture the maxim in its entirety. This reduction of the maxim is also replaced by a formal architecture that captures a notion of meaning that is totally opposed to the approach followed by the Mode maxim. Therefore, this blindness to perspicuity results in a theory that is pragmatically incomplete. 2. The second argument aims to analyse the limits and applications of the computability of one of the fundamental elements of (IS): compliance. In particular, we will analyse the compliance algorithm offered by Ciardelli et al. (2009), which is evidently more complex than classical satisfiability, given the conditions of compliance. Furthermore, it is of little use for modelling real conversations due to its restriction to closed worlds, which is counterintuitive, since conversations are more akin to open worlds. 3. The last argument analyses the collapse of the elegance of inquisitive logic. In particular, the first-order inquisitive logic system InqBQ is the most incomplete and immature of all, as it lacks multiple clarifications regarding its metalogical properties. Thus, when Inquisitive Logic moves from its propositional level to the quantified level, the system becomes a logically inhospitable and unsafe structure for logicians who desire systems with their metalogical properties already clarified. Finally, it is concluded that (IS) is the triumph of formal elegance, but it overlooks practicality and eliminates any pragmatic nuance that exists within it.