stumped? Or just can't be bothered?!

[Arnold D J]

>  In response to Doug Arnold's claim that "What a short book!" does not 
>  express a proposition -- I would strongly disagree with that assessment!  
>  The proposition that I clearly have/understand for this is something 
>  along the lines of:
>     What a short book this/that is!
>  I.e., it's like a predicate nominal with a zero copula.  Added to that is 
>  some predicate/modal of AMAZEMENT, coded via intonation.  Intonation is, 
>  of course, just as good a coding form as is a structural zero, or some 
>  overt predicate piece.
>  	-- Doris Payne

To be clear, when I said "What a short book!" did not express a
proposition, I meant that it did not have the semantics one associates
with sentences. I did not mean that it does not express/convey any
information -- it is clearly used to convey information about the
speakers attitude (as you say, amazement) and so on. But I don't think
it expresses a PROPOSITION. (In fact, I'm not sure that "What a short
book this/that is!" expresses a proposition either).

Similarly, I don't think exclamation "ARGHHHHH!"  (e.g. when I drop
something on my foot) expresses a proposition (of course, it conveys
the information that "that hurt", but this is something
different). Similary, if I call out "Sam!", I may convey the
information that I want to talk to Sam, but this does not mean that
the semantics of "Sam" is the proposition "I want to talk to Sam".

There is some issue about the semantics/pragmatics distinction here,
perhaps. 

>  Intonation is, 
>  of course, just as good a coding form as is a structural zero, or some 
>  overt predicate piece.

Indeed, but it is not a piece of coding that forms part of the
SYNTAX. Of course, I could be wrong in asserting that "What a short
book" has the syntax and semantics of an NP (albeit not a normal NP,
because of the "What"), but showing this would need to be syntactic and
semantic (e.g. one would look for these phrases embedding as
complements of verbs that take propositional objects, and so on. I
don't think there is such evidence).

Doug Arnold