Representational Semantics
Dissertation, The University of Rochester (
1985)
Copy
BIBTEX
Abstract
I present and defend an original semantic theory which assigns representatives to expressions, in addition to referents. The theory is nominalistic--i.e., it avoids reference to possible worlds and other abstract entities--and yet is strong enough, I claim, to serve as a theory of meaning. More precisely, it provides a means for interpreting, in a nominalistically acceptable manner, the non-extensional linguistic contexts in which the "meanings" of expressions are supposed to play a semantic role. ;The intuitive ancestry of the theory can be traced back to an analysis of meaning first proposed by Nelson Goodman and later expanded by Rolf Eberle. I construct a precise formal semantics which embodies the basic ideas of these earlier proposals, and apply this theory to the interpretation of a language which contains one primitive non-extensional predicate--"about". In addition, I furnish a rigorous axiomatic treatment of this language, and demonstrate formally the soundness and completeness of this axiomatic theory relative to the semantics