Summary |
Scope is a broad phenomenon, meaning (roughly) the extent or range to which some syntactic element or semantic operator applies. It includes, but is not limited to, the scope of words, the scope of connectives, the scope of quantifiers, the scope of modifiers (whether or not individual words), the scope of propositional attitudes, and the scope of quantifier-like expressions such as all manner of descriptions. It can also be used, in the absence of a separate category for it, to discussions of the scope of certain pragmatic phenomena, such as presupposition and implicatures of various types. A major topic of discussion under this general heading is scopal ambiguity in natural language, which exists whenever and wherever a semantic (or pragmatic) phenomenon can be read in multiple ways differing in scope, some wider and some narrower. The issue also comes up in philosophical areas such as practical or instrumental reasoning, |