《语词和对象》之三
§3. The Interanimation of Sentences
§3. 句子之间的互动
（小结：奎因在这一节里重申了他的理论和经验之间的联系的整体主义观点。与经验刺激发生直接联系的句子是观察层面的句子。但大多数句子并不能与经验发生直接联系，而必须与其他句子一起面对经验。由于奎因强调理论与经验之间的联系，所以他仍是一个经验主义者；但另一方面，由于他强调理论与经验联系的整体主义方式，这使他，作为一个经验主义者，更好地解释了我们的理论是如何越出观察的层面的，更好地解释了哪些看上去与经验没有关系的句子与经验之间千丝万缕的联系。因此他是一个更好也更彻底的经验主义者。）
‘Ouch’ was a one-word sentence. ‘Red’ and ‘Square’, when used in isolation in the ways lately imagined, are likewise best looked upon as sentences. Most sentences are longer. But even a longer sentence may still be learned as a single unit, like ‘Ouch’, ‘Red’, and ‘Square’, by a direct conditioning of the whole utterance to some sensory stimulation. Characteristically Humean problems, of how we acquire various ideas, may often be by-passed by representing the words in question simply as fragments of sentences which were learned as wholes.
‘Ouch’是一个独词句。‘Red’和‘Square’，当像上一节所想像的那样被独立使用时，最好也被看成句子。大多数句子是较长的。但即使是较长的句子，也可以像‘Ouch’、‘Red’和 ‘Square’那样，通过建立整个句子和某些感觉刺激之间的直接的条件作用，被当作一个整体而学会。休谟关于我们如何能获得各种各样的观念的问题，我们通常都可以绕过，而把考虑中的词径直看成作为整体而学会的句子中的片断。
Not that all or most sentences are learned as wholes. Most sentences are built up rather from learned parts, by analogy with the way in which those parts have previously been seen to occur in other sentences which may or may not have been learned as wholes. What sentences are got by such analogical synthesis, and what ones are got directly, is a question of each individual’s own forgotten history.
并不是所有或大多数句子都是作为整体而学会的。大多数句子都是由已经学会的组成部分构造而成的，方法是与这些部分在先前学会（或者作为整体而学会，或者不是作为整体而学会）的其他句子中的出现方式相类比。至于哪些句子实际上是由类比综合法而学会的，哪些句子是作为一个整体而直接学会的，这对每一个学习者来说都已经是遗忘了的历史了。
It is evident how new sentences may be built from old materials and volunteered on appropriate occasions simply by virtue of the analogies. Having been directly conditioned to the appropriate use of ‘Foot’ (or ‘This is my foot’) as a sentence, and ‘Hand’ likewise, and ‘My foot hurts’ as a whole, the child might conceivably utter ‘My hand hurts’ on an appropriate occasion, though unaided by previous experience with that actual sentence.
新句子可以通过类比从旧材料中构造出来并在适当的场合下被运用，这一点是很明显的。假定一个小孩已经通过直接的条件作用学会了‘Foot’或者‘This is my foot’（“这是我的脚”），同时也学会了‘Hand’（“这是我的手”），另外还学会了作为一个整体的‘My foot hurts’（“我的脚受伤了”），那么不难设想，他可能会在适当的场合发出‘My hand hurts’ （“我的手受伤了”），尽管他以前并没有用过这个句子。
But think of how little we would be able to say if our learning of sentences were strictly limited to those two modes: (1) learning sentences as wholes by a direct conditioning of them to appropriate non-verbal stimulations, and (2) producing further sentences from the foregoing ones by analogical substitution as in the preceding paragraph. The sentences afforded by mode (1) are such that each has its particular range of admissible stimulatory occasions, independently of wider context. The sentences added by (2) are more of the same sort—learned faster thanks to (2), but no less capable of being learned in mode (1). Speech thus confined would be strikingly like bare reporting of sense data.
但是，如果我们学习句子的模式被严格限制在下面两种：（1）通过与合适的非言语刺激建立条件作用而学会作为整体的句子，（2）通过上一段中的类比替换从已经学会的句子中产生新句子，那么想一下吧，我们能说的将会是多么地少！模式（1）所提供的句子是那样一些句子，其中每一个都对应着独立于更广大语境的特定的刺激场合。模式（2）只是增添了更多的这样的句子，它们其实也完全可以通过模式（1）而学会，模式（2）的作用只在于能使我们学得更快。如此受限的话语将惊人地类似于对感觉材料的纯粹报道。
（陈译：通过方式（2）所增添的句子更是如此，……）
（翟评：The sentences added by (2) are more of the same sort=The sentences added by (2) are more sentences of the same sort provided by (1)）
The objective pull described in §2 would indeed be there. The stimulations eliciting ‘It is square’ would indeed take in the odd lot of suitably circumstanced skew projections that social pressure requires. Yet the effect of this objective pull by itself is superficial: a mere warping of the pigeonholes; a gerrymandering, in the public interest, of the range of stimulations which each report embraces. Our idiom would remain very much the inadequate sort of idiom imagined in §1: the fancifully fancyless medium of unvarnished news. As there remarked, there would be no access to the past, beyond the negligible yield of an occasional memory trace of an unconceptualized stimulation.
§2中所描述的客观的拉力确实是存在的。迫于社会压力，引发‘It is square’的刺激确实包括了（适当情况下的）零星的倾斜投影。但是客观的拉力本身只有现象层面的效应：它只涉及到对现象的分类；从社会的角度对每个报告所涵盖的刺激范围进行再调整。我们的话语在很大程度上仍属于§1所想像的那种不充分的话语：一种想像出来的本身却毫无想像力的对未被污染的信息加以报道的媒介。正如在那一节里所评论的，这种媒介无法通达于过去，微不足道的例外只是对未被概念化的刺激的偶尔的记忆痕迹。
（陈译：如前所述，它无法通往过去，对未经概念把握的刺激不会留下些许偶有的记忆的遗迹。）
（翟评：beyond=except）
What more is needed in order to capitalize the riches of past experience is hinted in the remark (§1) that actual memories are mostly traces not of past sensation but of past conceptualization. We cannot rest with a running conceptualization of the unsullied stream of experience; what we need is a sullying of the stream. Association of sentences is wanted not just with non-verbal stimulation, but with other sentences, if we are to exploit finished conceptualization and not just repeat them.
为了能利用过去的丰富经验，我们还需要别的手段，这一点在前面§1里曾有暗示：实际的记忆多半不是对过去感觉的记忆，而是对过去的概念化过程的记忆。我们不能安于对未被污染的经验之流做重复的概念化处理；我们要敢于搅浑经验之流。如果我们要想利用已经完成的概念化过程而不只是重复它们，那么我们就不仅要让句子与非言语刺激发生联系，而且要让句子之间也发生联系。
Mode (2) above is already, in a way, an associating of sentences with sentences; but only in too restrained a way. Further interverbal associations are required which provide for the use of new sentences without tying them, even derivatively, to an fixed ranges of non-verbal stimuli.
上面的模式（2）在某种意义上已经是句子与句子发生联系了，只是联系的方式太受限制了。需要进一步的联系方式以引进新的句子，这些新引进的句子不必与固定范围的非言语刺激相对应，哪怕是在衍生的意义上。
The most obvious case of the verbal stimulation of verbal response is interrogation. It was already remarked in §2 the ‘Red’ as a one-word sentence usually needs a question for its elicitation. The question may be simply ‘What color is this?’. In this case the stimulus eliciting ‘Red’ is a compound one: the red light assails the eye and the question the ear. Or the question may be ‘What color will you have?’ or ‘what color did it use to be?’. In such a case the stimulus eliciting ‘Red’ is the verbal one unaccompanied by red light; though its power to elicit ‘ Red’ depends, of course, on an earlier association of ‘Red’ with red light.
引发言语发应的最明显的言语刺激是发问。在§2里我们曾经指出，要引发独词句‘Red’，通常需要一个问句。问句可以只是‘What color is this?’（“这是什么颜色？”）在这种情况下，引发‘Red’的刺激是个复合刺激：袭击眼睛的红光和袭击耳朵的问话。问句也可以是‘What color will you have?’（“你将会看到什么颜色？”）或‘what color did it use to be?’（“这曾经是什么颜色？”）在这种情况下，引发‘Red’的刺激就只是言语刺激，而没有伴随红光；当然言语刺激所以能引发‘Red’，还是要依赖先前在‘Red’和红光之间建立起来的联系。
The opposite dependence is also common: the power of a non-verbal stimulus to elicit a given sentence commonly depends on earlier associations of sentences with sentences. And if fact it is cases of this kind that best illustrate how language transcends the confines of essentially phenomenalistic reporting. Thus someone mixes the contents of two test tubes, observes a green tint, and says ‘There is copper in it.’ Here the sentence is elicited by a non-verbal stimulus, but the stimulus depends for its efficacy upon an earlier network of associations of words with words; viz., one’s learning of chemical theory. Here we have a good glimpse of our workaday conceptual scheme as a going concern. Here, as at the crude stage of (1) and (2), the sentence is elicited by a non-verbal stimulus; but here, in contrast to that crude stage, the verbal network of an articulate theory has intervened to link the stimulus with the response.
相反的依赖关系也是常见的：非言语刺激所以能引发某个句子，要依赖于先前在句子之间建立起来的联系。事实上，这种情形最能让我们认清语言是怎样决定性地超越现象主义报道模式的。例如，某人将两个试管中的溶液加以混合并看到了绿色，然后他说：‘There is copper in it.’（“里面有铜。”）在这里，句子是由非言语刺激引发的，但是这个刺激之所以能发挥效用，却要依赖先前的由语词和语词相互联系而形成的网络，即要依赖他对化学理论的掌握。在这里，我们可以看到，我们的日常概念系统是在不断发展着的。在这里，正像在模式（1）和（2）这样的原始阶段一样，句子是由非言语刺激而引发的；但是，与那些原始阶段不一样的是，有一个理论的言语网络插进来在刺激和反应之间起了联结作用。
The intervening theory is composed of sentences associated with one another in multifarious ways not easily reconstructed even in conjecture. There are so-called logical connections, and there are so-called causal ones; but any such interconnections of sentences must finally be due to the conditioning of sentences as responses to sentences as stimuli. If some of the connections count more particularly as logical or as causal, they do so only by reference to so-called logical or causal laws which in turn are sentences within the theory. The theory as a whole—a chapter of chemistry, in this case, plus relevant adjuncts from logic and elsewhere—is a fabric of sentences variously associated to one another and to non-verbal stimuli by the mechanism of conditioned response.
插入的理论是由多种方式相互联系的句子所组成的，但这些联系的方式却不易重构出来（即使是在猜想中也不易重构出来）。其中有些联系是所谓的逻辑联系，有些联系是所谓的因果联系；但任何这样的相互联系最终都是由于句子之间的条件作用，其中一些句子作为刺激，另一些句子作为反应。如果某些联系被特别地作为逻辑联系或因果联系提出来，那么也只是相对于所谓的逻辑规律或因果规律而言的，而逻辑规律和因果规律也不外是理论内部的其他一些句子。作为整体的理论（在我们的例子中，是化学中的一章加上来自逻辑和别处的附加语句）是一个由句子组成的编织物，通过条件作用的机制，一方面在内部发生各种各样的联系，另一方面在外部与非言语刺激发生联系。
（陈译：作为整体的理论（这里指化学的一个章节加上来自逻辑和他处的一些辅助理论）是由许多句子组成的一个编织物，这些句子以各种方式相互联系，并通过条件反应机制而与非言语刺激相联系。）
（翟评：条件作用机制不只作用于言语反应和非言语刺激之间，也作用于言语反应与言语刺激之间。）
Theory may be deliberate, as in a chapter on chemistry, or it may be second nature, as is the immemorial doctrine of ordinary enduring middle-sized physical objects. In either case, theory causes a sharing, by sentences, of sensory supports. In an arch, an overhead block is supported immediately by other overhead blocks, and ultimately by all the base blocks collectively and none individually; and so it is with sentences, when theoretically fitted. The contact of block to block is the association of sentence to sentence, and the base blocks are sentences conditioned in the modes (1) and (2) to non-verbal stimuli. Perhaps we should think of the arch as tottering on an earthquake; thus even a base block is supported, now and again, only by the other base blocks via the arch.
理论可能是精心构造的（如某个化学理论），也可能是第二天性（如关于中等尺度的持存的物理对象的悠久学说）。无论是哪一种情况，感觉支持都会在理论中的句子中得到扩散。在一个拱形建筑中，某个顶砖的直接支撑物是其他的顶砖，而最终则由底砖所支撑，但并不是由某一块底砖所支撑，而是为全部底砖集体支撑；胜任理论的句子就相当于顶砖。砖与砖之间的接触相当于句子与句子之间的联系，底砖相当于通过模式（1）和（2）与非言语刺激建立起条件作用的句子。也许我们还应该考虑拱形建筑遭遇地震时的摇晃；因此，即使是底砖，也会不时地通过整个建筑而被其他底砖所支撑。
Our example ‘There is copper in it’ is an overhead block, along with ‘Copper oxide is green’ and others. One of the base blocks is perhaps the sentence ‘The stuff has gone green’, a sentence directly conditioned to the sensory stimulation got from the test tube.
我们的例子‘There is copper in it’（“这里有铜”）就是一块顶砖，算做顶砖的还有‘Copper oxide is green’（“氧化铜是绿色的”）和其他句子。而‘The stuff has gone green’（“东西变绿了”）这样的句子则可以算做底砖，它与得自试管的感觉刺激之间是一种直接的条件作用关系。
In the series of sentence-to-sentence associations ultimately linking ‘The stuff has gone green’ with ‘There was copper in it’, all steps but the last are evidently unspoken, but more are just skipped as the theory becomes second nature. Such skipping, which exceeds the arch analogy, seems a basically humdrum affair: a transitivity of conditioning.
最终将‘The stuff has gone green’ （“东西变绿了”）和‘There was copper in it’ （“这里有铜”）联结起来的一系列的句子与句子之间的联系，除了最后的这一步外，其他的联系显然是未曾明言的。随着理论变成了第二天性，这些环环相扣的联系甚至干脆被省略掉了。这样的做法越出了拱形建筑物的类比，但基本原因却寻常得不值一提：条件作用具有传递性。
Another point that exceeds the arch analogy is the difference between occasion sentences like ‘There was copper in it’, true anew for each of various experimental occasions (§9), and eternal sentences like ‘Copper oxide is green’, true for good (§40). The occasion sentence is elicited from the practicing chemist time and again. The eternal sentence may well be elicited from him just once, in his youth, by the university examiner. The eternal ones tend most of all to drop out under the transitivity of conditioning, leaving no trace except implicitly in the patterning of conditioning of residual sentences.
另外一个越出拱形建筑物类比的地方是像‘There was copper in it’ （“这里有铜”）这样的场合句(§9)和像‘Copper oxide is green’ （“氧化铜是绿色的”）这样的永恒句(§40)之间的区别，前者的真值与实验场合有关，后者的真值是永恒的，不随场合而变化。场合句会不时地从正在做实验的化学家的口中发出。而永恒句可能只是在他年轻的时候回答大学考官的发问而从他的口中说出一次。因为条件作用的传递性，大多数永恒句都从句子联系的链条中脱落了，它们只是起作终端句子的条件作用的缺省配置的作用。
（翟评：true for good这个说法是不严谨的，应为true or false for good。）
What comes of the association of sentences with sentences is a vast verbal structure which, primarily as a whole, is multifariously linked to non-verbal stimulation. These links attach to separate sentences (for each person), but the same sentences are so bound up in turn with one another and with further sentences that the non-verbal attachments themselves may stretch or give way under strain. In an obvious way this structure of interconnected sentences is a single connected fabric including all sciences and indeed everything we ever say about the world; for the logical truths at least, and no doubt many commonplace sentences too, are germane to all topics and thus provide connection. However, some middle-sized scrap of theory usually will embody all the connections that are likely to affect our adjudication of a given sentence.
句子之间发生联系的结果是形成了一个庞大的语言结构，它基本上是以一个整体与非言语刺激发生各种各样的链接的。非言语刺激直接链接的是单独的句子，至于哪些非言语刺激链接于哪些句子是因人而异的。但由于这些句子之间是相互约束的，而且进一步地与更加深层的句子发生联系，所以非言语刺激能不断向纵深扩展或者在压力下停止扩展。很明显，在某种意义上，这个由相互联系的句子所所组成的结构是一个单一的织造物，包括了所有的科学，甚至包括了我们关于这个世界的任何信念；至少，逻辑真理，以及许多常识信念是关乎所有主题的，因此它们提供了各主题间的联系。但是，从实践的角度看，某个中等规模的理论往往就足以体现影响我们对某个句子进行判断的所有联系了。
（陈译：因为至少逻辑真理，还有许多更常见的句子都是与一切题目相关的，从而要考虑到种种联系。然而有的不大不小的一点点理论却往往要把可能影响我们对某个句子的判断的一切关系囊括进来。）
（翟评：奎因在这里对他在“经验论的两个教条”一文中所表述的极端的整体主义进行了再评价。如果在字眼上较真，极端的整体主义仍是站得住脚的，因为毕竟逻辑以及像“有因就有果”这样的常识对理论和经验之间的联系是不可缺少的，从而是渗透于整个理论中的，也即提供了各种理论联系的纽带，各种理论通过逻辑的联系而成了一个整体。但是从实践的角度看，就没有必要这样墨守成规了。一个中等规模的理论本身就足以与经验发生各种各样的联系了。）
The firmness of association to non-verbal stimuli, the power of such association to withstand the contrary pull of a body of theory, grades off from one sentence to another. Roughly imaginable sequences of nerve hits can confirm us in the statement that there is a brick house on Elm Street, beyond the power of secondary associations to add or detract. Even where the conditioning to non-verbal stimulation is so firm, however, there is no telling to what extent it is original and to what extent it results from a shortcutting, by transitivity of conditioning, of old connections of sentences with sentences. Beneath the uniformity that unites us in communication there is a chaotic personal diversity of connections, and, for each of us, the connections continue to evolve. No two of us learn our language alike, nor, in a sense, does any finish learning it while he lives.
句子对非言语刺激的联系的牢固性，以及这种联系抗拒来自理论的相反的拉力的能力，只是一个程度问题。我们大概可以想像，某个神经刺激的序列可以使我们坚信：榆树街上有个砖屋子，这个刺激与这个句子之间的联系并不受这个句子与其他句子之间的次级联系的影响。即使在句子和非言语刺激的联系非常牢固的情形里，我们也无法分清，哪些联系是原发的，而哪些联系是得之于在先的句子和句子之间可传递的条件作用，从而只是一串联系的缩略式。在我们交流的终端所出现的那种一致性的背后，是个体联系方式的纷乱的杂多性；对于每一个人来说，这种联系都处于不断的演进之。没有任何两个人学习语言的过程是一样的；同样地，在某种意义上，也没有任何两个人能在有生之年完成这个过程。