Semantics, Misc

English is spoken all around the world as it is chosen as the second language to speak within most of the countries. However, from the ancient history of the British to come into this South Asian region, the entrance of English as a speaking language happened. Though, after some centuries, the British went out of the mainland of India, it remains the second-largest spoken language there. Here comes another fact; many words in Standard English changed its form. So, this made (...) the dialects as much as changed that many ones refer to English in India as Indian English. In this present time, though, there are hundreds of languages chosen to speak Indian English that differ in many ways. The characters playing English roles also have a dialect changing of English in somewhat ways. Though the grammars and principal terms of English are still the same for Indian English, deviations came across the spoken language in many attributes. This paper identifies the entrance of English in India, the deviation of dialect change in Indian English with examples of characters still making way to English (Both British and Hollywood) movies with the dialects of Indian English many ways. The paper studies those ways and deviations of words in English in India that they use and call it Indian English. (shrink)

There is a common assumption in the semantics of modal auxiliaries in natural language; in utterances of MOD φ , where MOD is a modal and φ is the prejacent, context determines the particular flavor of modality expressed by the modal. Such is the standard contextualist semantics of Kratzer and related proposals. This winds up being a problem, because there is a significant class of modals which have constraints on the admissible modal flavor that are not traceable to context. For (...) example, in MUST φ , subsentential properties of φ, like the aspectual class of the predicate in the prejacent, can affect the flavor of MUST. By encoding the above assumption into the semantics, such contextualist accounts fail to be able to explain, much less to predict, this pattern. Worse yet, attempts to exploit the resources of the theory in service of an explanation run afoul of important commitments of the view, like the hypothesis that modals have a uniform semantics. Given these circumstances, these data might seem like a justification for dispensing with the uniformity hypothesis. The present paper lays out the above problem in detail. Against the pessimistic view, I argue that the the contextualist account can in fact explain and predict these patterns while preserving the uniformity hypothesis. This requires adopting an amendment to the semantics of modals based on the work of Valentine Hacquard. Aside from maintaining the contextualist paradigm and preserving uniformity, the proposal also clarifies the role of context in the interpretation of modals. As it will turn out, the role of context ought to be circumscribed in its flavor-determining role for modals. (shrink)

A long-standing tension in semantic theory concerns the reconciliation of positive gradable adjective (GA) ascriptions and comparative GA ascriptions. Vagueness-based ap- proaches derive the comparative from the positive, and face non-trivial challenges with incommensurability and non-GA comparatives. Classic degree-based approaches effectively derive the positive from the comparative, out of sync with the direction of evidence from morphology, and create some difficulties in accounting for GA scale-mates with differing thresholds (e.g., cold ∼ warm ∼ hot). We propose a new reconciliation that (...) capitalizes on recent proposals analyzing GAs as predicates of states. On our account, GAs lexically involve both a threshold property and a background state structure. Positive occurrences of GAs make use of the threshold property, while comparative occurrences make use of degrees representing elements of the background structure. Our approach preserves the virtues of classic degree-based approaches while offering a natural account of scale-mates, and without appeal to covert morphemes like POS or related devices. As we show, it is possible to inject our solution back into the classic degree-based approach, but we find reasons to prefer our states-based account. (shrink)

Linguistic outputs generated by modern machine-learning neural net AI systems seem to have the same contents—i.e., meaning, semantic value, etc.—as the corresponding human-generated utterances and texts. Building upon this essential premise, Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever's Making AI Intelligible sets for itself the task of addressing the question of how AI-generated outputs have the contents that they seem to have (henceforth, ‘the question of AI Content’). In pursuing this ambitious task, the book makes several high-level, framework observations about how a (...) meta-semantic account of the content of AI-generated outputs should proceed. (shrink)

This paper highlights a small selection of cases where crosslinguistic insights have been important to big questions in the theory of semantics and the syntax/semantics interface. The selection includes (i) the role and representation of Speaker and Addressee in the grammar; (ii) mismatches between form and interpretation motivating high-placed silent operators for functional elements; and (iii) the explanation of semantic universals, including universals pertaining to inventories, in terms of learnability and the trade-off between informativeness and simplicity.

Attention plays a central role in the production of conscious experience (CE): there cannot be CE without some form of attention. Equally important for the production of CE are the cognitive processes that feed and pilot attention. These processes are performed by the self. The self provides the input for attentional processing. CE arises when attention processes the input provided by the self. Any research intended to analyze how CE is produced, including the CE of linguistic meaning (LM), must take (...) into account the operations performed by attention and the self. The awareness of the role played for CE production by attention and the self opens a new perspective for semantic studies. From this perspective, LMs can be seen as condensed instructions on the operations that attention and self must perform in order to produce the relevant CEs. Consequently, LMs can be analysed in terms of these operations. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to present and defend an inferentialist account of the meaning of fictional names on the basis of Sellars-Brandom’s inferentialist semantics and a Brandomian anaphoric theory of reference. On this inferentialist account, the meaning of a fictional name is constituted by the relevant language norms which provide the correctness conditions for its use. In addition, the Brandomian anaphoric theory of reference allows us to understand reference in terms of anaphoric word-word relations, rather than substantial word-world (...) relations. In this paper I argue that this inferentialist account has many important merits over its rival theories. One important merit is that it explains why we can use fictional names to make true statements, even if they lack bearers. As a consequence, this theory allows us to use fictional names without committing ourselves to an implausible ontology of fictional entities. Another important merit is that it provides a uniform semantic account of fictional names across different types of statements in which fictional names are involved. (shrink)

How to account for metaphor has long been a contentious issue within pragmatics. Revisiting this debate, Wilson & Carston (2019) analyse Grice’s oft-discussed exclusion of metaphor as an empirically unjustified use of cut-off points on the empirical continuum of language and link it a tension between his underlying focus on formalisation contrary to their aim of maximising pragmatics’ empirical scope. In spite of the latter, Relevance Theory’s various own models fail to account for essential characteristics of metaphor caused by certain (...) non-propositional effects eluding its grasp and subsequently excluded. Rather than solving this with new tools, as Wilson & Carston propose, this paper seeks to examine the aforementioned tension and its link to the use of cut-off points they criticised. I will argue that Relevance Theory, too, uses cut-off points, highlighting their nature as the effect of a shared approach vis-à-vis formalisation rather than an individual flaw of Grice’s: Both exclude certain empirical effects of language in pursuance of a unified theory of communication organised around the notion of intention and grounded in teleological assumptions external to language. Drawing on Derrida’s analogous critique of Austin’s pragmatics, I will illustrate the paradoxical nature of such cut-off points and possible ways forward. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss a puzzle involving accommodation. The puzzle is based on three assumptions. The first assumption is that accommodation takes place after an utterance. The second assumption is that accommodation can make a difference to the truth-value of an utterance even if the utterance is not about the future. The third assumption is that something that takes place after an utterance cannot make a difference to the truth-value of the utterance unless the (...) utterance is about the future. Since these assumptions are jointly inconsistent, one of them must be false. The question is which one we ought to reject. The majority of the discussion is devoted to discussing each of the options, and the tentative conclusion is that the most plausible strategy is to reject the third thesis. That amounts to saying that something that takes place after an utterance can make a difference to the truth-value of the utterance even if the utterance is not about the future. (shrink)

Slurs are pejorative expressions that derogate individuals or groups on the basis of their gender, race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation and so forth. In the constantly growing literature on slurs, it has become customary to appeal to so-called “neutral counterparts” for explaining the extension and truth-conditional content of slurring terms. More precisely, it is commonly assumed that every slur shares its extension and literal content with a non-evaluative counterpart term. I think this assumption is unwarranted and, in this paper, I (...) shall present two arguments against it. (i) A careful comparison of slurs with complex or thick group-referencing pejoratives lacking neutral counterparts shows that these are in fact very hard to distinguish. (ii) Slurs lack the referential stability of their alleged neutral counterparts, which suggests that they are not coreferential. Developing (ii) will involve introducing a new concept which I regard as essential for understanding how slurs behave in natural language: referential flexibility. I shall support my claims by looking at historical and current ways in which slurs and other pejorative terms are used, and I shall argue that both etymological data and new empirical data support the conclusion that the assumption of neutral counterparts not only is unwarranted but obscures our understanding of what slurs are, and what speakers do with them. (shrink)

Acceptable analyticities, i.e. contradictions or tautologies, constitute problematic evidence for the idea that language includes a deductive system. In recent discussion, two accounts have been presented in the literature to explain the available evidence. According to one of the accounts, grammatical analyticities are accessible to the system but a pragmatic strengthening repair mechanism can apply and prevent the structures from being actually interpreted as contradictions or tautologies. The proposed data, however, leaves it open whether other versions of the meaning modulation (...) operation are required. Novel evidence we present argues that a loosening version of the repair mechanism must be available. Our observation concerns acceptable lexical contradictions that cannot be rescued if only a strengthening version of the pragmatic strategy is available. (shrink)

Reism or concretism are the labels for a position in ontology and semantics that is represented by various philosophers. As Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz and Jan Woleński have shown, there are two dimensions with which the abstract expression of reism can be made concrete: The ontological dimension of reism says that only things exist; the semantic dimension of reism says that all concepts must be reduced to concrete terms in order to be meaningful. In this paper we argue for the following two (...) theses: (1) Arthur Schopenhauer has advocated a reistic philosophy of language which says that all concepts must ultimately be based on concrete intuition in order to be meaningful. (2) In his semantics, Schopenhauer developed a theory of logic diagrams that can be interpreted by modern means in order to concretize the abstract position of reism. Thus we are not only enhancing Jan Woleński’s list of well-known reists, but we are also adding a diagrammatic dimension to concretism, represented by Schopenhauer. (shrink)

Objective. Conceptualization of the definition of space as a semantic unit of language consciousness. -/- Materials & Methods. A structural-ontological approach is used in the work, the methodology of which has been tested and applied in order to analyze the subject matter area of psychology, psycholinguistics and other social sciences, as well as in interdisciplinary studies of complex systems. Mathematical representations of space as a set of parallel series of events (Alexandrov) were used as the initial theoretical basis of the (...) structural-ontological analysis. In this case, understanding of an event was considered in the context of the definition adopted in computer science – a change in the object properties registered by the observer. -/- Results. The negative nature of space realizes itself in the subject-object structure, the components interaction of which is characterized by a change – a key property of the system under study. Observer’s registration of changes is accompanied by spatial focusing (situational concretization of the field of changes) and relating of its results with the field of potentially distinguishable changes (subjective knowledge about «changing world»). The indicated correlation performs the function of space identification in terms of recognizing its properties and their subjective significance, depending on the features of the observer`s motivational sphere. As a result, the correction of the actual affective dynamics of the observer is carried out, which structures the current perception of space according to principle of the semantic fractal. Fractalization is a formation of such a subjective perception of space, which supposes the establishment of semantic accordance between the situational field of changes, on the one hand, and the worldview, as well as the motivational characteristics of the observer, on the other. -/- Conclusions. Performed structural-ontological analysis of the system formed by the interaction of the perceptual function of the psyche and the semantic field of the language made it possible to conceptualize the space as a field of changes potentially distinguishable by the observer, structurally organized according to the principle of the semantic fractal. The compositional features of the fractalization process consist in fact that the semantic fractal of space is relevant to the product of the difference between the situational field of changes and the field of potentially distinguishable changes, adjusted by the current configuration of the observer`s value-needs hierarchy and reduced by his actual affective dynamics. (shrink)

This book collects twenty-five of the author's essays, each of which addresses a descriptive or a foundational issue that arises at the interface between linguistic semantics and pragmatics, on the one hand, and the philosophy of language, on the other. Arranged into three interconnected parts (I. Matters of Meaning and Truth; II. Matters of Meaning and Force; III. Knowledge Matters), the essays suggest that some key topics in the above-mentioned fields have often been approached in ways that considerably underestimate their (...) empirical or conceptual complexity, and attempt to delineate perspectives from which, and conditions under which, an improved understanding of those topics could be sought. (shrink)

I argue that the semantics of sentences expressing future contingent propositions is best viewed as being based on a clear distinction between a time at which a proposition is true and a time at which a state of affairs that makes it true gets actualized. That a prediction is true here and now means that its truth-maker gets actualized later. This is not to say that if a contingent proposition p concerning the future is true at t, it acquires the (...) truth-value true at t only retrospectively, at a later moment. Nor must this be seen as suggesting that it is a settled, unpreventable fact at t that p is true at t. It just means that the reason for its present truth is something that happens later on: the future happens to evolve in such a way as to make a truth-maker of p obtain. In this case, then, it can be said that at t, p is truth-maker indeterminate, or that it has an indeterminate truth-maker. I develop a formal semantics based on this analysis in the follow-up article ‘A Formal Framework for Future Contingents’. Here, I lay down the conceptual framework and indicate Boethius and Abelard as precursors of the view I wish to defend. (shrink)

I argue that disposition ascriptions—claims like ‘the glass is fragile’—are semantically equivalent to possibility claims: they are true when the given object manifests the disposition in at least one of the relevant possible worlds.

Semantics, Metasemantics, Aboutness. By Simchen Ori.

The Tarskian notion of truth-in-a-model is the paradigm formal capture of our pre-theoretical notion of truth for semantic purposes. But what exactly makes Tarski’s construction so well suited for semantics is seldom discussed. In my Semantics, Metasemantics, Aboutness (OUP 2017) I articulate a certain requirement on the successful formal modeling of truth for semantics – “locality-per-reference” – against a background discussion of metasemantics and its relation to truth-conditional semantics. It is a requirement on any formal capture of sentential truth vis-à-vis (...) the interpretation of singular terms and it is clearly met by the Tarskian notion. In this paper another such requirement is articulated – “locality-per-application” – which is an additional requirement on the formal capture of sentential truth, this time vis-à-vis the interpretation of predicates. This second requirement is also clearly met by the Tarskian notion. The two requirements taken together offer a fuller answer than has been hitherto available to the question what makes Tarski's notion of truth-in-a-model especially well suited for semantics. (shrink)

У статті з’ясовано специфіку морфологічного вираження суб’єктної синтаксеми в пасивних конструкціях сучасного адміністративно-канцелярського мовлення. Проаналізовано асинкретизм (суб’єкт дії) та синкретизм (суб’єкт-інструмент, суб’єкт-інструмент-час, суб’єктінструмент-об’єкт, суб’єкт-простір) семантики орудного відмінка субстантива та прийменниково-іменникового словосполучення. Матеріалом для дослідження слугували навчальні посібники та довідники з офіційно-ділового мовлення, датовані першими десятиліттями ХХІ ст.

A prevailing thought is that generics have a covert modal operator at logical form. I claim that if this is right, the covert generic modality is a weak necessity modal. In this paper, I pr...

У статті проаналізовано лексемний і семний склад мікрополя «повага», а також його системну організацію в українській мові. Компоненти значення, що функціонують у мікрополі, відбиваають семантику поваги, пошани щодо об’єкта почуття, яким для лексико-семантичного поля «патріотизм» виступають Батьківщина, власний народ, його закони, традиції, історія тощо.

Relativists about knowledge ascriptions think that whether a particular use of a knowledge-ascribing sentence, e.g., “Keith knows that the bank is open” is true depends on the epistemic standards at play in the assessor’s context—viz., the context in which the knowledge ascription is being as- sessed for truth or falsity. Given that the very same knowledge-ascription can be assessed for truth or falsity from indefinitely many perspectives, relativism has a striking consequence. When I ascribe knowledge to someone (e.g., when I (...) say that, at a particular time, “Keith knows that the bank is open”), what I’ve said does not get a truth-value absolutely, but only relatively. If this semantic thesis about the word “knows” and its cognates is true, what implications would this have for epistemology, the philosophical theory of knowledge? e present aim will be to engage with this mostly unexplored question, and then to consider how the epistemological conclusions drawn might bear on the plausibility of a relativist semantics for “knows”. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to address the controversial issues of whether we have a fixed set of ontological categories and if they have some epistemic value at all. Which are our ontological categories? What determines them? Do they play a role in cognition? If so, which? What do they force to presuppose regarding our world-view? If they constitute a limit to possible knowledge, up to what point is science possible? Does their study make of philosophy a science? Departing (...) from the novelty –but no exclusively- of considering distinctions to be the subject matter of thought and language -that is, of reference and meaning- the author arrives at a radical novel conception of the ontological categories. The observations and arguments presented in it constitute a strong case against established and well-rooted tenets, if not paradigms, of contemporary philosophy, beyond ontology and epistemology. The entailing conclusions, open the door to a revival of the discipline and the importance of its studies, as the science of the constitutive elements of knowledge of a non-empirical nature. (shrink)

У статті проаналізовано місце паронімічної атракції в словотворчій практиці І. Павлюка. Наголошено на стилістичних особливостях функціювання новотворів-атрактантів. На основі лексико-стилістичного аналізу засвідчено розширення меж сполучуваності неологізмів-атрактантів та узуальних слів до паронімічних гнізд. Із застосуванням методу компонентного аналізу описано семантику складних слів, утворених за допомогою компонентів-атрактантів.

First, I briefly recapitulate the main points of Rosen’s article, namely, that the word “Being” does not adequately signify the paradoxical unification of subject and object and that the Klein bottle can serve as a more appropriate sign -vehicle than the word. I then propose to apply his insight more widely; however, in order to do that, it is first necessary to identify infra- and exostructures of language, including culture, category structure, logic, metaphor, semantics, syntax, concept, and sign vehicles, that (...) preserve the status quo and keep subject and object disjunct. After analyzing those infra/exostructures, I engage a complementary process of integrating them, coagula, in order to spark ideas for innovating ways in which more of those facets of language can embrace paradox. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a grammatical account of scalar implicatures. In particular, I submit new evidence in favor of the contextual blindness principle, assumed in recent versions of the grammatical account. I argue that mismatching scalar implicatures can be generated even when the restrictor of the universal quantifier in a universal alternative is contextually known to be empty. The crucial evidence consists of a hitherto unnoticed oddness asymmetry between formally analogous existential sentences with reference failure NPs. I conclude that (...) the generation of mismatching scalar implicatures does not require contextual access. (shrink)

Metasemantics is the metaphysics of semantic endowment: it asks how expressions become endowed with their semantic significance. Assuming that semantics is of the usual truth-conditional sort, metasemantics asks after the determinants of expressions’ distinctive contributions to truth-conditions. There are two widely divergent general approaches to the metasemantic project. Some theories – “productivist” ones such as causal theories or intention-based theories – emphasize conditions of production or employment of the items semantically endowed. Other metasemantic theories – “interpretationist” ones – emphasize conditions (...) of interpretive consumption or reception of such items. The book aims to articulate a set of considerations that favour metasemantic productivism over metasemantic interpretationism, to reconcile a general productivist metasemantic approach with contemporary truth-conditional semantics, and to apply the approach to more specialized case studies in the philosophy of language broadly construed. Finally, a major concern in contemporary philosophy of language after Quine is semantic indeterminacy, the worry that there is no fact of the matter as to the semantic significance of our words. The book articulates a distinctly metasemantic strategy to counter the worry. It is shown how the present approach delivers a more successful response to semantic indeterminacy than extant alternatives, a response that emphasizes the priority of reference over truth, which is both intuitively compelling and theoretically motivated. (shrink)

In this paper, I dwell on a particular distinction introduced by Ilhan Inan—the distinction between ostensible and inostensible use of our language. The distinction applies to singular terms, such as proper names and definite descriptions, or to general terms like concepts and to the ways in which we refer to objects in the world by using such terms. Inan introduces the distinction primarily as an epistemic one but in his earlier writings (1997: 49) he leaves some room for it to (...) have some semantic significance i.e., the view that in certain intensional de re contexts whether a term occurring in a sentence is ostensible or inostensible may have a bearing on the semantic content of the sentence. However, in his later writings e.g., The Philosophy of Curiosity, he appears to abandon his earlier thoughts regarding the semantic significance of his distinction. He says: “the ostensible/inostensible distinction is basically an epistemic one.... It is an epistemic distinction that has no semantic significance” (2012: 65). I argue that there are indeed such intensional contexts in which the distinction has some semantic significance, i.e., whether a term is ostensible or inostensible has in fact a bearing on what proposition is expressed by the sentence in which the term occurs. (shrink)

This paper is aimed to analyze some grounds bridging the explanatory gap in philosophy of mind and linguistic sign theory. It's noted that the etymological ties between the notions of “consciousness", “cognition", “sign" are emphasized in the works on cognitive linguistics. This connection rises from the understanding of the symbolic nature of consciousness and the sign of semiosis as the key cognitive process. On the one hand, it is impossible to realize the communication procedures, knowledge, understanding, decisionmaking, orientation and even (...) navigation without the process of signification. On the other hand, the human mind has its unique ability to produce the meaning apart from the “signal markings" available to other living beings. The ontology of this ability should be considered as a part of the complex problem of consciousness which includes the mind-body problem, the free will problem, image memory, narrative worlds, introspection, etc. In this paper, special attention is paid to the ontological and epistemological aspects of linguistic sign within the context of the bio-semiotic approach. The author argues that the linguistic nature of consciousness is inseparably connected with the ontological properties of consciousness. The author makes an attempt to prove the link between the mind-body problem and the problem of the explanatory gap in the ontology of linguistic sign. The analysis is focused on the following question: Is it possible that the rank of random names could cause the behavior of the organism in changing environment? (shrink)

Some Trinitarians, such as Thomas Aquinas, wish to claim that God is mereologically simple; that is, God has no parts distinct from Himself. In this paper, I present Simple Trinitarianism, a view that takes God to be simple but, diverging from Aquinas, does not identify the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with anything in our ontology. Nonetheless, Simple Trinitarians would like Trinitarian sentences to be true; thus, they must give a non-standard semantics for those sentences. I will focus on one (...) possible semantics a Simple Trinitarian may give: taking Trinitarian claims to be translatable into feature-placing sentences, which posit property instantiation without requiring commitment to any objects that instantiate those properties. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I develop a new theory for distinguishing between analytic and synthetic truths. Despite being a somewhat new combination of views, each individual view in the theory is firmly grounded in a number of earlier theories given throughout the Analytic tradition. For this reason, Chapter 1 gives an introduction to the theories of various Positivists and Wittgensteinians, Quine, and Kripke from a contemporary perspective. Chapter 2 provides an explication and evaluation of the work which began the contemporary discussion (...) on the analytic/synthetic distinction, Paul Boghossian’s distinctions between epistemic/metaphysical analyticity and the analytic theories of the a priori/necessity. Chapter 3 introduces the work of the most important theorist of metaphysical analyticity, Gillian Russell. Here, I work toward a compromise between Boghossian and Russell which involves advocating for epistemic and metaphysical analyticity via a principle which connects implicit definitions and reference-determination. -/- Given that I defend epistemic and metaphysical analyticity—and that Boghossian thinks a defense of epistemic analyticity yields a defense of the analytic theory of the a priori—Chapter 4 turns to a discussion of the analytic theory of necessity. Here, I argue that Russell’s basic problem for the analytic theory of necessity is the most troubling for the proponent of this view, but that there are still potential avenues open for solving it. Finally, in Chapter 5, I bring the earlier chapters together to try to show that, while they do not directly argue for a traditional theory of analyticity, they do undermine various arguments against such a theory. (shrink)

There may be two and a half bagels on the table. When there are two and a half, it is false that there are exactly two. As obvious as these claims are, they can’t be accounted for on the most straightforward and familiar views of counting and the semantics of number words. I develop a view on which counting is a type of measuring. In particular, counting involves a specific measure function. I then analyze that function and show how it (...) can account for the cases in which counting is sensitive to partiality, e.g. partial bagels. (shrink)

Does vagueness underlie the mass/count distinction? My answer is no. I motivate this answer in two ways. First, I argue against Chierchia’s recent attempt to explain the distinction in terms of vagueness. Second, I give a more general argument that no such account will succeed.

The philosophy of linguistics is a rich philosophical domain which encompasses various disciplines. One of the aims of this thesis is to unite theoretical linguistics, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science and the ontology of language. Each part of the research presented here targets separate but related goals with the unified aim of bringing greater clarity to the foundations of linguistics from a philosophical perspective. Part I is devoted to the methodology of linguistics in terms of scientific modelling. (...) I argue against both the Conceptualist and Platonist interpretations of linguistic theory by means of three grades of mathematical involvement for linguistic grammars. Part II explores the specific models of syntactic and semantics by an analogy with the harder sciences. In Part III, I develop a novel account of linguistic ontology and in the process comment on the type-token distinction, the role and connection with mathematics and the nature of linguistic objects. In this research, I offer a structural realist interpretation of linguistic methodology with a nuanced structuralist picture for its ontology. This proposal is informed by historical and current work in theoretical linguistics as well as philosophical views on ontology, scientific modelling and mathematics. (shrink)

This chapter examines the “externalist” claim that semantics should include theorizing about representational relations among linguistic expressions and (purported) aspects of the world. After disentangling our main topic from other strands in the larger set of externalist-internalist debates, arguments both for and against this claim are discussed. It is argued, among other things, that the fortunes of this externalist claim are bound up with contentious issues concerning the semantics-pragmatics border.

Under the name of ‘Basic Blindspot Theorem’, Paul Saka has proposed in the special issue on mind and paradox of this journal a Gödelian argument to the effect that no cognitive system can be complete and correct. We show that while the argument is successful as regards mechanical and formal systems, it may fail with respect to minds, so contributing to draw a boundary between the former and the latter. The existence of such a boundary may lend support to Saka’s (...) general thesis that paradoxes are mind-dependent. (shrink)

Negli ultimi quindici anni la letteratura filosofico-linguistica ha registrato un rinnovato interesse per i meccanismi di implicatura, specialmente del tipo scalare. In buona parte, l’interesse stato suscitato dall’emergere di una prospettiva grammaticale, secondo la quale i fenomeni di implicatura scalare sarebbero conseguenza di un meccanismo interpretativo incassato nella logica delle lingue naturali, e quindi riferibile al componente semantico dell’architettura cognitiva umana. L’obiettivo di questo testo fornire una presentazione di alcuni tra gli argomenti che hanno motivato l’emergere della prospettiva grammaticale. Inizieremo, (...) con una descrizione del fenomeno di implicatura scalare, sostanzialmente condivisa dai fautori delle diverse prospettive. Quindi, approfondiremo la nostra comprensione del fenomeno, pre- sentando alcuni punti fermi della prospettiva pragmaticista, e mostrandone i punti di debolezza individuati dai fautori della prospettiva grammaticale. Infine, presenteremo la prospettiva grammaticale, presentando da una parte i vantaggi che questo approccio presenta rispetto alla prospettiva pragmaticista, e dall’altra discutendo le sfide che attendono questa nuova prospettiva. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the idea that certain sentences suffer from what is generally called semantic unspecificity: their meaning is determinate, but their truth conditions are not. While there tends to be agreement on the idea that semantic unspecificity differs from phenomena such as ambiguity and vagueness, some theorists have defended an account which traces it to indexicality, broadly construed. Some authors have tried to vindicate the distinction between unspecificity and indexicality and, in this paper, I pursue the same (...) cause, but with a critical stance towards previously employed strategies. I urge that the central argument employed by Sainsbury to trace this difference fails suitably to set unspecificity apart from indexicality and I propose a new argument, which helps to trace this distinction more perspicuously. The argument is based on embeddings of indexical and unspecific expressions within modal operators and on the ways in which the truth conditions of utterances of the resulting, complex expressions are thereby affected. (shrink)

This is a review of Jean Curthoys and Victor H. Dudman, VICTOR DUDMAN'S GRAMMAR AND SEMANTICS (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

According to the Principle of Conditional Non-Contradiction (CNC), conditionals of the form “If p, q” and “If p, not q” cannot both be true, unless p is inconsistent. This principle is widely regarded as an adequacy constraint on any semantics that attributes truth conditions to conditionals. Gibbard has presented an example of a pair of conditionals that, in the context he describes, appear to violate CNC. He concluded from this that conditionals lack truth conditions. We argue that this conclusion is (...) rash by proposing a new diagnosis of what is going on in Gibbard’s argument. We also provide empirical evidence in support of our proposal. (shrink)

In this paper I describe how the authors involved in the scalar implicatures debate develop only partially co-extensional theories of scalar implicatures starting from a common range of core facts. I consider three components of the scalar implicature mechanism: the exhaustivity operator, the alternatives generation and the avoid-contradiction procedures.

In this book an introduction to the grammatical view of the scalar implicature phenomenon is presented. A detailed overview is offered concerning the embeddability of the exhaustivity operator, and the contextual dependance of the alternatives generation process. The theoretical implications of the grammatical view with respect to the abductive character of the scalar implicature are also discussed. A pragmatic account of the assertive content is proposed in correlation with a blindness-based account of the semantic content carried by scalar sentences, in (...) order to ensure that the information globally conveyed by the latter is sometimes different from the semantic content automatically generated. -/- . (shrink)

This book contains an advanced debate on the nature of scalar implicatures, one of the most popular topics in philosophical linguistics over the past 20 years. Leading authorities in the study of the semantics–pragmatics interface have contributed chapters from a range of perspectives; they address the crucial components of scalar implicatures, including the exhaustivity operator, alternatives and contextual optionality. The book offers an up-to-date presentation of the phenomenon of scalar implicatures in a way that will help readers to orient themselves (...) within the vast literature on the topic. It will be of great interest to students and researchers of semantics, cognitive science, psychology and philosophy of language. (shrink)

In this article some phenomena of linguistic context-dependence are investigated from the perspective of regarding context as being constituted by the assumptions of individual discourse participants.

Robert Stalnaker explores the contexts in which speech takes place, the ways we represent them, and the roles they play in explaining the interpretation and dynamics of speech. His central thesis is the autonomy of pragmatics: the independence of theory about structure and function of discourse from theory about mechanisms serving those functions.

This short paper follows up on the exchange between Ray Buchanan and Wayne Davis concerning the theory of speaker meaning put forward by Davis in previous work. I briefly present Davis' main tenets, Buchanan's objections, Davis' replies, and then offer a new case that enforces the problem raised by Buchanan to Davis' theory for speaker meaning.

An argument for Trivialism, the view that natural languages are logically inconsistent, is provided that does not rely on contentious empirical assumptions about natural language terms such as “and” or “or.” Further, the view is defended against an important objection recently mounted against it by Thomas Hofweber.