About this topic
Summary The linguistic meaning of an expression is what fully competent speakers have a grasp of. It's a standing, context-invariant property belonging to an expression-type that makes it possible to use it to perform linguistic acts, e. g. to say things. Linguistic meaning, derivative semantic properties (e. g. semantic content) and linguistic acts are the proper domain of semantics.  The term 'speaker meaning' is used in at least two different senses. In the dominant Gricean sense talk of speaker meaning is talk of what the speaker intentionally communicates (e. g. 'S meant that p'). The speaker might say something and mean the same thing or say something, but mean something else. The latter sorts of cases include conversational implicatures. A similar distinction was drawn by Kripke between semantic reference and speaker reference. Speaker meaning and speaker reference belong to pragmatics. Note that it's a complete accident of English that the same word can be used to talk about a linguistic property and a speaker's act. This is not the case in most other languages. In German the contrast is between 'bedeutung' vs. 'meinen', and in many other languages to talk of speaker meaning you have to use locutions that translate as 'S had in mind' or 'S wanted to say'. There are also two other uses of 'speaker meaning'. It is sometimes used to talk about what an expression means in a speaker's idiolect (Kripkenstein used 'In the past, I meant plus with '+'' in this sense). On another use it is used to talk about what an expression means on an occasion of use (e. g. what is sometimes called utterance meaning). When Searle uses 'speaker meaning' he has this in mind. Davidson called this 'first meaning' instead. However,many question whether we need to postulate utterance meaning at all, whether there's any explanatory work for it to do. However, even if we do, it would be best to avoid calling it speaker meaning.
Key works Grice's key works are Grice 1957 and Grice 1975 both collected in Grice 1989. Kripke's distinction is spelled out in Kripke 1977. For Kripkenstein see Kripke 1982. Searle's use can be seen in Searle 1986. Davidson's view is presented in Dummett 1986. For skepticism about utterance meaning see Bach 2005 and Neale 2005 both in Szabo 2004. Also, Unnsteinsson 2014.
Introductions An important overview article on Grice's work is Neale 1992. Here are a number of introductions to the semantics/pragmatics boundary: Recanati 1998, Korta & Perry 2008, Bach 2012.
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126 found
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  1. Why Judicial Formalism is Incompatible with the Rule of Law.Matczak Marcin - manuscript
  2. "Saying 'Thank You!' and Expressing Gratitude: A Response to Schwartz".Indrek Reiland - manuscript
    This is a short response piece to Jeremy Schwartz's "Saying 'Thank You' and Meaning It", published in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2020, 98, pp. 718-731. -/- Schwartz argues against the received view that 'Thank You! is for expressing gratitude, claiming instead that it is for expressing one's judgment that gratitude is appropriate or fitting. I argue against the judgment view while defending the received one. -/- I mainly consider the objection that the judgment view is implausible since it makes ‘Thank (...)
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  3. The Quasi-Verbal Dispute Between Kripke and 'Frege-Russell'.J. P. Smit - manuscript
    Traditional descriptivism and Kripkean causalism are standardly interpreted as rival theories on a single topic. I argue that there is no such shared topic, i.e. that there is no question that they can be interpreted as giving rival answers to. The only way to make sense of the commitment to epistemic transparency that characterizes traditional descriptivism is to interpret Russell and Frege as proposing rival accounts of how to characterize a subject’s beliefs about what names refer to. My argument relies (...)
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  4. Meanings Without Species.Josh Armstrong - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    In this paper, I critically assess Mark Richard’s interesting and important development of the claim that linguistic meanings can be fruitfully analogized with biological species. I argue that linguistic meanings qua cluster of interpretative presuppositions need not and often do not display the population-level independence and reproductive isolation that is characteristic of the biological species concept. After developing these problems in some detail, I close with a discussion of their implications for the picture that Richard paints concerning the dangers of (...)
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  5. Meaning Change.Indrek Reiland - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.
    The linguistic meaning of a word in a language is what fully competent speakers of the language have a grasp of merely in virtue of their semantic competence. The meanings of words sometimes change over time. 'Meat' used to mean 'solid food', but now means 'animal flesh eaten as food'. This type of meaning change comes with change of topic, what we’re talking about. Many people interested in conceptual engineering have claimed that there is also meaning change where topic is (...)
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  6. Rule-Following I: The Basic Issues.Indrek Reiland - forthcoming - Philosophy Compass:e12900.
    ‘Rule-following’ is a name for a cluster of phenomena where we seem both guided and “normatively” constrained by something general in performing particular actions. Understanding the phenomenon is important because of its connection to meaning, representation, and content. This article gives an overview of the philosophical discussion of rule-following with emphasis on Kripke’s skeptical paradox and recent work on possible solutions. Part I of this two-part contribution is devoted to the basic issues from Wittgenstein to Kripke. Part II will be (...)
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  7. How to Express Implicit Attitudes.Elmar Unnsteinsson - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly:1-26.
    I argue that what speakers mean or express can be determined by their implicit or unconscious states, rather than explicit or conscious states. Further, on this basis, I show that the sincerity conditions for utterances can also be fixed by implicit states. This is a surprising result which goes against common assumptions about speech acts and sincerity. Roughly, I argue that the result is implied by two plausible and independent theories of the metaphysics of speaker meaning and, further, that this (...)
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  8. Communicating with colourings.Lwenn Bussière-Caraes - 2022 - In Piotr Stalmaszczyk & Martin Hinton (eds.), Philosophical Approaches to Language and Communication (vol 2). pp. 151-170.
    A speaker can express the same thought, true under the same conditions, while using different expressions and grammatical constructions. According to Frege, these are differences in colourings. Colourings may convey additional contents; in that, they resemble Gricean conventional implicatures. Sander (2019) argues that Gricean implicatures do not subsume the category of colourings, as some colourings do not communicate their content. I show that this argument relies on a notion of communication focused on the speaker's intentions. But a notion of communicative (...)
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  9. On Some Objections to the Normativity of Meaning.Mindaugas Gilaitis - 2022 - In Stalmaszczyk Piotr & Hinton Martin (eds.), Philosophical Approaches to Language and Communication Vol 2. Peter Lang. pp. 269-289.
    The objective of this paper is twofold. First, it aims to contribute to the debate about the normativity of meaning not by means of providing and defending new arguments, but by analysing and reflecting on some of the presuppositions and seemingly irresolvable dialectical points of disagreement. Second, it seeks to achieve the first aim by critically engaging with some of the objections raised against semantic normativity by anti-normativists like Kathrin Glüer, Anandi Hattiangadi and Åsa Wikforss as well as discussing some (...)
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  10. Speaker's reference, semantic reference, sneaky reference.Eliot Michaelson - 2022 - Mind and Language 37 (5):856-875.
    According to what is perhaps the dominant picture of reference, what a referential term refers to in a context is determined by what the speaker intends for her audience to identify as the referent. I argue that this sort of broadly Gricean view entails, counterintuitively, that it is impossible to knowingly use referential terms in ways that one expects or intends to be misunderstood. Then I sketch an alternative which can better account for such opaque uses of language, or what (...)
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  11. Talking About: An Intentionalist Theory of Reference.Elmar Unnsteinsson - 2022 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Combining new insights from cognitive science and speech act theory, Unnsteinsson develops a compelling theory of singular reference which avoids well-known puzzles. The theory, Edenic intentionalism, is grounded in a mechanistic perspective on explanation in cognitive science and a new Gricean account of speaker meaning and speaker reference.
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  12. When Code Words Aren’t Coded.Patrick O'Donnell - 2020 - Social Theory and Practice 46 (4):813-845.
    According to the “standard framing” of racial appeals in political speech, politicians generally rely on coded language to communicate racial messages. Yet recent years have demonstrated that politicians often express quite explicit forms of racism in mainstream political discourse. The standard framing can explain neither why these appeals work politically nor how they work semantically. This paper moves beyond the standard framing, focusing on the politics and semantics of one type of explicit appeal, candid racial communication. The linguistic vehicles of (...)
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  13. Mind the Gap: Expressing affect with hyperbole and hyperbolic compounds.Mihaela Popa-Wyatt - 2020 - John Benjamins.
    Hyperbole is traditionally understood as exaggeration. Instead, in this paper, we shall define it not just in terms of its form, but in terms of its effects and its purpose. Specifically, we characterize its form as a shift of magnitude along a scale of measurement. In terms of its effect, it uses this magnitude shift to make the target property more salient. The purpose of hyperbole is to express with colour and force that the target property is either greater or (...)
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  14. Semantic Verbs Are Intensional Transitives.Justin D’Ambrosio - 2019 - Mind 128 (509):213-248.
    In this paper I show that we have strong empirical and theoretical reasons to treat the verbs we use in our semantic theorizing—particularly ‘refers to ’, ‘applies to ’, and ‘is true of ’—as intensional transitive verbs. Stating our semantic theories with intensional vocabulary allows us to partially reconcile two competing approaches to the nature and subject-matter of semantics: the Chomskian approach, on which semantics is non-relational, internalistic, and concerns the psychology of language users, and the Lewisian approach, on which (...)
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  15. Against the speaker-intention theory of demonstratives.Christopher Gauker - 2019 - Linguistics and Philosophy 42 (2):109-129.
    It is commonly supposed that an utterance of a demonstrative, such as “that”, refers to a given object only if the speaker intends to refer to that object. This paper poses three challenges to this theory. First, the theory threatens to beg the question by defining the content of the speaker’s intention in terms of reference. Second, the theory makes psychologically implausible demands on the speaker. Third, the theory entails that there can be no demonstratives in thought.
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  16. Mistakes About Conventions and Meanings.Cosmo Grant - 2019 - Topoi 40 (1):71-85.
    The Standard View is that, other things equal, speakers’ judgments about the meanings of sentences of their language are correct. After all, we make the meanings, so how wrong can we be about them? The Standard View underlies the Elicitation Method, a typical method in semantic fieldwork, according to which we should work out the truth-conditions of a sentence by eliciting speakers’ judgments about its truth-value in different situations. I put pressure on the Standard View and therefore on the Elicitation (...)
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  17. Reference As Action - Space and Time in Later Wittgenstein.Enakshi Mitra - 2019 - Shimla, India: Indian Institute of Advanced Studies.
    This work projects the later Wittgenstein as dissolving the unwanted cleavage between reference and description through a uniquely original route that also outgrows the traditional dichotomy between the descriptive and non-descriptive theories of reference. Following a nuanced track of arguments, the author argues that the supposed primacy of reference vis-à-vis the optional and indeterminate character of description (or meaning) virtually feeds on a containment model of space and time. Objects or referents lie smugly encased in neat space-time boundaries that serve (...)
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  18. What Determines the Reference of Names? What Determines the Objects of Thought.Jessica Pepp - 2019 - Erkenntnis 84 (4):741-759.
    It is fairly widely accepted that Saul Kripke, Keith Donnellan, and others showed in the 1960s–1980s that proper names, in particular uses by speakers, can refer to things free of anything like the epistemic requirements posited by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. This paper separates two aspects of the Frege–Russell view of name reference: the metaphysical thesis that names in particular uses refer to things in virtue of speakers thinking of those things and the epistemic thesis that thinking of things (...)
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  19. Embedding irony and the semantics/pragmatics distinction.Mihaela Popa-Wyatt - 2019 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (6):674-699.
    This paper argues that we need to re-think the semantics/pragmatics distinction in the light of new evidence from embedding of irony. This raises a new version of the old problem of ‘embedded implicatures’. I argue that embedded irony isn’t fully explained by solutions proposed for other embedded implicatures. I first consider two strategies: weak pragmatics and strong pragmatics. These explain embedded irony as truth-conditional content. However, by trying to shoehorn irony into said-content, they raise problems of their own. I conclude (...)
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  20. Silencing without Convention.Elmar Unnsteinsson - 2019 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (2):573-598.
    Silencing is usually explained in terms of conventionalism about the nature of speech acts. More recently, theorists have tried to develop intentionalist theories of the phenomenon. I argue, however, that if intentionalists are to accommodate the conventionalists' main insight, namely that silencing can be so extreme as to render certain types of speech act completely unavailable to victims, they must take two assumptions on board. First, it must be possible that speakers' communicative intentions are opaque to the speakers themselves. Secondly, (...)
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  21. The edenic theory of reference.Elmar Unnsteinsson - 2019 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (3):276-308.
    I argue for a theory of the optimal function of the speech act of referring, called the edenic theory. First, the act of singular reference is defined directly in terms of Gricean communicative intentions. Second, I propose a doxastic constraint on the optimal performance of such acts, stating, roughly, that the speaker must not have any relevant false beliefs about the identity or distinctness of the intended object. In uttering a singular term on an occasion, on this theory, one represents (...)
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  22. Moral Twin Earth, Reference and Disagreements.Heimir Geirsson - 2018 - Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy 53:53-57.
    Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons have written a number of articles where they use their Moral Twin Earth thought experiment to attack the new moral realism. The new moral realism is based on advances made in the philosophy of language that allows us to introduce synthetic definitions of moral terms. The Moral Twin Earth thought experiment relies in crucial ways on the use of intuitions. Specifically, it relies on the intuitions that were Earthers and Twin Earthers to meet, they would (...)
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  23. Speaker’s Reference, Semantic Reference, and Intuition.Richard G. Heck - 2018 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 9 (2):251-269.
    Some years ago, Machery, Mallon, Nichols, and Stich reported the results of experiments that reveal, they claim, cross-cultural differences in speaker’s ‘intuitions’ about Kripke’s famous Gödel–Schmidt case. Several authors have suggested, however, that the question they asked their subjects is ambiguous between speaker’s reference and semantic reference. Machery and colleagues have since made a number of replies. It is argued here that these are ineffective. The larger lesson, however, concerns the role that first-order philosophy should, and more importantly should not, (...)
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  24. Стратегії, тактики та прийоми мовленнєвої діяльності як компонент моделювання дискурс-портрета мовної особистості.Svitlana Kuranova - 2018 - Language: Classic – Modern – Postmodern 4:33-47.
    У статті розглянуто стратегії, тактики та прийоми, які використовує мовна особистість. Дослідження їх є одним з етапів моделювання дискурс-портрета мовної особистості, що узагальнює дані стосовно прагматичної, семантичної, сигматичної та синтактичної координат розгортання дискурсу. На прикладі аналізу есе О. Забужко «Ціна ВінніПуха» продемонстровано процедуру дослідження стратегій, тактик та прийомів мовленнєвої діяльності. Визначено лінійні та ієрархічні стратегії, тактики та прийоми на рівні кожної з координат.
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  25. Speaker Meaning and the Interpretation and Construction of Executive Orders.Harold Anthony Lloyd - 2018 - Wake Forest Journal of Law and Policy 8 (2):319-361.
    This Article explores the interpretation and construction of executive orders using as examples President Trump’s two executive orders captioned “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States” (the “Two Executive Orders”). President Trump issued the Two Executive Orders in the context of (among other things) Candidate Trump’s statements such as: “Islam hates us,” and “[W]e can’t allow people coming into this country who have this hatred.” President Trump subsequently provided further context including his tweet about the second (...)
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  26. Referential Intentions: A Response to Buchanan and Peet.Elmar Unnsteinsson - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (3):610-615.
    Buchanan (2014) argues for a Gricean solution to well-known counterexamples to direct reference theories of content. Peet (2016) develops a way to change the counterexample so that it seems to speak against Buchanan’s own proposal. I argue that both theorists fail to notice a significant distinction between the kinds of cases at issue. Those appearing to count against direct reference theory must be described such that speakers have false beliefs about the identity of the object to which they intend to (...)
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  27. Українське усне мовлення сучасної молоді України та зарубіжжя: нестійкі норми вимови.Maria Druzhynets - 2017 - Language: Classic – Modern – Postmodern 3:219-227.
    Статтю присвячено українському усному мовленню на синхронному рівні, зокрема ви-мовним особливостям української мови. На основі соцопитування зроблено спробу виявлення, аналізу та опису девіацій, що виникають у результаті порушення нестійких норм орфоепії, зокрема вимови шиплячих перед свистячим і навпаки, а також передньоязикового [д] перед ними залежно від сфери діяльності респондентів, країни проживання (Україна, Канада, Молдова, Придністровська Молдавська Республіка). Виокремлено стійкі та слабкі норми вимови, вказано важливі вимовні проблеми та їх органічність, що засвідчена історією.
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  28. Конструкції з предикативними формами на -но, -то в сучасному адміністративно-канцелярському підстилі.Olena Lavrinets - 2017 - Language: Classic – Modern – Postmodern 3:191-201.
    У статті з’ясовано статус конструкцій із предикативними формами на но, то в парадигмі пасиву, їхні структурні особливості, специфіку функціонування та співвідношення з іншими типами пасивних конструкцій в адміністративно-канцелярському підстилі сучасної української мови.
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  29. Нобелівська лекція як віддзеркалення світогляду лауреата.Larysa Pavlenko - 2017 - Language: Classic – Modern – Postmodern 3:104-111.
    Статтю присвячено дослідженню змістової складової такого специфічного мовленнєвого жанру як Нобелівська лекція. Увагу зосереджено на проблемно-тематичних характеристиках англомовних лекцій, які були прочитані лауреатами в галузі літератури. Проаналізовано чинники, що впливають на зміст лекції. Встановлено взаємозв’язок між темою доповіді та офіційним обґрунтуванням нагороди членами Шведської академії.
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  30. A Gricean Theory of Malaprops.Elmar Unnsteinsson - 2017 - Mind and Language 32 (4):446-462.
    Gricean intentionalists hold that what a speaker says and means by a linguistic utterance is determined by the speaker's communicative intention. On this view, one cannot really say anything without meaning it as well. Conventionalists argue, however, that malapropisms provide powerful counterexamples to this claim. I present two arguments against the conventionalist and sketch a new Gricean theory of speech errors, called the misarticulation theory. On this view, malapropisms are understood as a special case of mispronunciation. I argue that the (...)
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  31. Conventions’ Revenge: Davidson, Derangement, and Dormativity.Elisabeth Camp - 2016 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (1):113-138.
    Davidson advocates a radical and powerful form of anti-conventionalism, on which the scope of a semantic theory is restricted to the most local of contexts: a particular utterance by a particular speaker. I argue that this hyper-localism undercuts the explanatory grounds for his assumption that semantic meaning is systematic, which is central, among other things, to his holism. More importantly, it threatens to undercut the distinction between word meaning and speaker’s meaning, which he takes to be essential to semantics. I (...)
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  32. Culture, Language and Thought: Field Studies on Colour Concepts.Arnold Groh - 2016 - Journal of Cognition and Culture 16 (1-2):83–106.
    In a series of studies the assumption of a lack of colour concepts in indigenous societies, as proposed by Berlin & Kay (1969) and others, was examined. The research took place in the form of minimally invasive field encounters with indigenous subjects in South East Asia and in India, as well as in West, Central, and South Africa. Subjects were screened for colour blindness with Ishihara- and Pflüger-Trident-Test. Standardised colour tablets had to be designated in the indigenous languages; these terms (...)
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  33. Coordinating with Language.Jessica Keiser - 2016 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 16 (2):229-245.
    Linguistic meaning is determined by use. But given the fact that any given expression can be used in a variety of ways, this claim marks where metasemantic inquiry begins rather than where it ends. It sets an agenda for the metasemantic project: to distinguish in a principled and explanatory way those uses that determine linguistic meaning from those that do not. The prevailing view (along with its various refi nements), which privileges assertion, suffers from being at once overly liberal and (...)
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  34. The Lying Test.Eliot Michaelson - 2016 - Mind and Language 31 (4):470-499.
    As an empirical inquiry into the nature of meaning, semantics must rely on data. Unfortunately, the primary data to which philosophers and linguists have traditionally appealed—judgments on the truth and falsity of sentences—have long been known to vary widely between competent speakers in a number of interesting cases. The present article constitutes an experiment in how to obtain some more consistent data for the enterprise of semantics. Specifically, it argues from some widely accepted Gricean premises to the conclusion that judgments (...)
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  35. An assessment of the argument from convention.Andrei Moldovan - 2016 - Discusiones Filosóficas 17 (28):15 - 34.
    This paper focuses on what is known in the literature on the semantics and pragmatics of definite descriptions as “the argument from convention”. This argument purports to show that referential uses of definite descriptions are a semantic phenomenon. A key premise of the argument is that none of the pragmatic alternatives (any one of a variety of Gricean accounts of referential uses) is successful. I argue that no good reason is offered to support this claim. I conclude that the argument (...)
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  36. Plural Reference and Reference to a Plurality. Linguistic Facts and Semantic Analyses.Friederike Moltmann - 2016 - In Massimiliano Carrara, Alexandra Arapinis & Friederike Moltmann (eds.), Unity and Plurality. Logic, Philosophy, and Semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 93-120.
    This paper defends 'plural reference', the view that definite plurals refer to several individuals at once, and it explores how the view can account for a range of phenomena that have been discussed in the linguistic literature.
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  37. Confusion is Corruptive Belief in False Identity.Elmar Unnsteinsson - 2016 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (2):204-227.
    Speakers are confused about identity if they mistake one thing for two or two things for one. I present two plausible models of confusion, the Frege model and the Millikan model. I show how a prominent objection to Fregean models fails and argue that confusion consists in having false implicit beliefs involving the identity relation. Further, I argue that confused identity has characteristic corruptive effects on singular cognition and on the proper function of singular terms in linguistic communication.
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  38. Sentence Understanding: Knowledge of Meaning and the Rational-Intentional Explanation of Linguistic Communication.Lars Dänzer - 2015 - Münster: Mentis.
    What is it to understand a sentence of a language? This question lies at the very heart of philosophy of language due to its intimate connections with two other issues: the nature of linguistic meaning and the workings of linguistic communication. This book presents a systematic attempt to explicate the concept of sentence understanding, guided by two questions: What exactly is the role played by states of sentence understanding in enabling linguistic communication? And what do such states have to be (...)
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  39. Experimental investigations of ambiguity: the case of most.Hadas Kotek, Yasutada Sudo & Martin Hackl - 2015 - Natural Language Semantics 23 (2):119-156.
    In the study of natural language quantification, much recent attention has been devoted to the investigation of verification procedures associated with the proportional quantifier most. The aim of these studies is to go beyond the traditional characterization of the semantics of most, which is confined to explicating its truth-functional and presuppositional content as well as its combinatorial properties, as these aspects underdetermine the correct analysis of most. The present paper contributes to this effort by presenting new experimental evidence in support (...)
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  40. Representation without Thought: Confusion, Reference, and Communication.Elmar Unnsteinsson - 2015 - Dissertation, Cuny Graduate Center
    I develop and argue for a novel theory of the mental state of identity confusion. I also argue that this mental state can corrupt the proper function of singular terms in linguistic communication. Finally, I propose a theory according to which identity confusion should be treated as a the source of a new sort of linguistic performance error, similar to malapropism, slips of the tongue, and so-called intentional obfuscation (inducing false belief by manipulating language in specific ways). -/- Going into (...)
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  41. Horwich on Natural and Non-Natural Meaning.Steffen Borge - 2014 - Acta Analytica 29 (2):229-253.
    Paul Horwich’s Use Theory of Meaning (UTM) depends on his rejection of Paul Grice’s distinction between natural and non-natural meaning and his Univocality of Meaning Thesis, as he wishes to deflate the meaning-relation to usage. Horwich’s programme of deflating the meaning-relation (i.e. how words, sentences, etc., acquire meaning) to some basic regularity of usage cannot be carried through if the meaning-relation depends on the minds of users. Here, I first give a somewhat detailed account of the distinction between natural and (...)
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  42. Compositionality and Sandbag Semantics.Elmar Geir Unnsteinsson - 2014 - Synthese 191 (14):3329-3350.
    It is a common view that radical contextualism about linguistic meaning is incompatible with a compositional explanation of linguistic comprehension. Recently, some philosophers of language have proposed theories of 'pragmatic' compositionality challenging this assumption. This paper takes a close look at a prominent proposal of this kind due to François Recanati. The objective is to give a plausible formulation of the view. The major results are threefold. First, a basic distinction that contextualists make between mandatory and optional pragmatic processes needs (...)
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  43. Fictional Realism and Negative Existentials.Tatjana von Solodkoff - 2014 - In Manuel García-Carpintero & Genoveva Martí (eds.), Empty Representations: Reference and Non-Existence. Oxford University Press. pp. 333-352.
    In this paper I confront what I take to be the crucial challenge for fictional realism, i.e. the view that fictional characters exist. This is the problem of accounting for the intuition that corresponding negative existentials such as ‘Sherlock Holmes does not exist’ are true (when, given fictional realism, taken literally they seem false). I advance a novel and detailed form of the response according to which we take them to mean variants of such claims as: there is no concrete (...)
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  44. Meaning, Expression and Extremely Strong Evidence: A Reinforced Critique of Davis' Account of Speaker Meaning.Dan Zeman - 2014 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 3 (3):218-224.
    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.
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  45. The Lure of Linguistification.Kent Bach - 2013 - In Carlo Penco & Filippo Domaneschi (eds.), What Is Said and What Is Not: The Semantics/Pragmatics Interface. CSLI.
    Think of linguistification by analogy with personification: attributing linguistic properties to nonlinguistic phenomena. For my purposes, it also includes attributing nonlinguistic properties to linguistic items, i.e., treating nonlinguistic properties as linguistic. Linguistification is widespread. It has reached epidemic proportions. It needs to be eradicated. That’s important because the process of communication is not simply a matter of one person putting a thought into words and another decoding them back into the same thought. Much of what a speaker means cannot be (...)
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  46. Reference, Understanding, and Communication.Ray Buchanan - 2013 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (1):55-70.
    Brian Loar [1976] observed that, even in the simplest of cases, such as an utterance of (1): ‘He is a stockbroker’, a speaker's audience might misunderstand her utterance even if they correctly identify the referent of the relevant singular term, and understand what is being predicated of it. Numerous theorists, including Bezuidenhout [1997], Heck [1995], Paul [1999], and Récanati [1993, 1995], have used Loar's observation to argue against direct reference accounts of assertoric content and communication, maintaining that, even in these (...)
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  47. A New Source of Data About Singular Thought.Mihnea D. I. Capraru - 2013 - Philosophia 41 (4):1159-1172.
    Philosophers have justified extant theories of singular thought in at least three ways: they have invoked wide-ranging theories motivated by data from other philosophical areas, they have elicited direct intuitions about which thoughts are singular, and they have subjected propositional attitude reports to tests such as Russellian substitution and Quinean exportation. In these ways, however, we haven’t yet been able to tell what it takes to have singular thoughts, nor have we been able to tell which of our thoughts they (...)
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  48. Situated Utterances and Discourse Relations.Ernest Lepore, Una Stojnic & Matthew Stone - 2013 - In Proceedings of the 10 th International Conference on Computational Semantics. Potsdam: IWCS. pp. 390 – 396.
    Utterances in situated activity are about the world. Theories and systems normally capture this by assuming references must be resolved to real-world entities in utterance understanding. We describe a number of puzzles and problems for this approach, and propose an alternative semantic representation using discourse relations that link utterances to the nonlinguistic context to capture the context-dependent interpretation of situated utterances. Our approach promises better empirical coverage and more straightforward system building. Substantiating these advantages is work in progress.
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  49. Speaker's reference and anaphoric pronouns.Karen S. Lewis - 2013 - Philosophical Perspectives 27 (1):404-437.
  50. Reference through Mental Files : Indexicals and Definite Descriptions.François Recanati - 2013 - In Carlo Penco & Filippo Domaneschi (eds.), What Is Said and What Is Not. Stanford. pp. 159-173.
    Accounts for referential communication (and especially communication by means of definite descriptions and indexicals) in the mental file framework.
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