In this essay I will defend the thesis that proper nouns are primarily used as proper names—as atomic singular referring expressions—and different possible predicative uses of proper nouns are derived from this primary use or an already derived secondary predicative use of proper nouns. There is a general linguistic phenomenon of the derivation of new meanings from already existing meanings of an expression. This phenomenon has different manifestations and different linguistic mechanisms can be used to establish (...) derived meanings of different kinds of expressions. One prominent variation of these mechanisms was dubbed in Nunberg. (Linguist Philos 3:143–184, 1979, J Semant 12:109–132, 1995, The handbook of pragmatics. Blackwell, Oxford, 2004 meaning transfer.) In the essay I will distinguish two different sub-varieties of this mechanism: occurrent and lexical meaning transfer. Nunberg conceives of meaning transfer as a mechanism that allows us to derive a new truth-conditional meaning of an expression from an already existing truth-conditional meaning of this expression. I will argue that most predicative uses of proper nouns can be captured by the mentioned two varieties of truth-conditional meaning transfer. But there are also important exceptions like the predicative use of the proper noun ‘Alfred’ in as sentence like ‘Every Alfred that I met was a nice guy’. I will try to show that we cannot make use of truth-conditional meaning transfer to account for such uses and I will argue for a the existence of second variant of meaning transfer that I will call use-conditional meaning transfer and that allows us also to capture these derived meanings of proper nouns. Furthermore, I will try to show that the proposed explanation of multiple uses of proper nouns is superior to the view supported by defenders of a predicative view on proper names. (shrink)

This dissertation is an experiment: what happens if we treat proper names as anaphoric expressions on a par with pronouns? The first thing to notice is that a name's 'antecedent' can occur in a discourse prior to the one containing the name. An individual may be introduced and tagged with a name in one context, and then retrieved using the name in a later context. To allow for discourse crossing anaphora, in addition to the usual cross-sentential anaphora, a revision (...) of discourse semantics is in order. Essentially, we must countenance discourse referents that span contexts, and think of contexts, not as islands, but as nodes connected to each other by the discourse referents they share. Discourse semantics gives rise to a new notion of content determined by discourse reference rather than pure reference. In a space of contexts structured by shared discourse referents, discourse content becomes transmissable. For a piece of content may be sent from one context to another whenever the discourse referents bundled up in the content are held in common by the two contexts. The final step is to treat the cognitive state of an agent as just another kind of context, and so a potential recipient of discourse content. Discourse content is more fine-grained than traditional 'singular' content, and so is a better fit for our pretheoretic intuitions about communication and attitude reporting. This is illustrated by applying the theory to Frege's puzzle, a puzzle of Loar's about communication, Kripke's puzzle about belief, Geach's intentional identity and new breed of 'mixed' de re-de dicto sentence. (shrink)

In this study, Kripke's claim, that within the framework of the possible worlds argument, the identification of mental processes by being reduced to physical events doesn't have an imperative base is addressed. Theories of physicalism and identity aims to explain the mental processes in a thoroughly physical way, thus trying to reduce it to the physical one, through brain events. According to Kripke, there must be an imperativeness for the identification of mental states with physical states. According to him, however, (...) it is not possible to show that physical events necessarily reveal mental processes. According to Kripke, in order to be imperatively correct for one statement, it must be correct in all possible worlds. Kripke uses the concept of "rigid designator" to describe this situation. According to Kripke, the thesis of identity between rigid designators must be metaphysically imperative correct. This situation does not apply to mental events. So then, the aim of this article is to reveal why the thesis of identity proposed in the explanation of physical and mental situations in terms of Kripke is not valid. (shrink)

Our manuscripts of Cicero contain dozens of Greek words that are presented in some passages in Greek letters, and in others are transliterated into Latin. In a recent paper I collected the evidence for this phenomenon in connection with common nouns and adjectives, surveyed scholarship to date and posited an interpretative framework which is assumed in this study also. Key components of this framework are the use of mixed alphabets in surviving ancient documents and an awareness of the frequency with (...) which modern editors change the alphabets in the manuscripts when dealing with Greek words—hence the importance of using the apparatus critici, not just the printed text, of our editions. The earlier paper was also strict in its exclusion of words in continuous passages, and even short phrases, of Greek, since that context excludes the option of transliteration for the author. The major contention of that earlier study was that a coherent pattern of use in the manuscripts can only really be a reflection of Cicero's own considered choice of alphabets: consistently inexplicable choice may indicate that Cicero himself was indifferent to which alphabet he used for single Greek words, or that our copyists paid no attention to this aspect of their exemplars, or both. (shrink)

One of the two central suggestions put forth in Longobardi (1991, 1994) was that Romance/English differences in the syntax of proper names were parametrically connected to supposed differences in the semantics of bare (plural and mass) common nouns (BNs). The present article will pursue this line of investigation, trying to make precise such meaning differences and to understand the reason for their apparently surprising parametric association with the syntax of proper names.It will be shown that in most Romance (...) varieties BNs, unlike their English counterparts, distribute their existential and generic readings across all different contexts exactly like (Romance and English) overt indefinites. All the differences will be unified under the proposal that Romance BNs are nothing but a type of indefinites (variables, existentially or generically bound) in Kamp-Heim’s DRT sense, while English BNs are rather systematically ambiguous between this quantificational interpretation and a referential (i.e. directly kind-denoting, much in the spirit of Carlson 1977a, b) one, providing for another type of generic reading.The analysis will therefore crucially exploit and empirically support Gerstner and Krifka’s (1987) distinction between referential and quantificational genericity. On such grounds we will finally gain a conceptual understanding of the typological implication originally established in Longobardi (1991, 1994), thus confirming that the strategies of interpretation of nominals, whether proper or common nouns, are basically one and the same, though differently parametrized in different languages. This result, in turn, will shed some light on the question whether comparative semantics is possible and whether it can be singled out as a legitimate independent component of parametric theories of grammatical variation. (shrink)

Proper names are generally taken to be count nouns. This paper argues that this is mistaken and that at least in some languages, for example German, names divide into mass and count. Making use of Kayne's (2005, 2010) theory of light nouns, this paper argues that light nouns are part of (simple) names and that a mass-count distinction among light nouns explains the behavior of certain types of names in German as mass rather than count. The paper elaborates the (...) role of light nouns with new generalizations regarding their linguistic behavior in quantificational and pronominal NPs, their selection of relative pronouns in German, and a general difference in the support of plural anaphora between English and German. (shrink)

The principal question addressed is whether there is a division among common nouns which is similar to a familiar division among noun phrases that designate particular-level individuals: the one which is captured in the relevant literature as the difference between de jure rigid and not de jure rigid singular terms. In relation with the previous philosophical literature relevant to noun rigidity it is argued that the extant positions on the matter are not defended on the basis of well-founded (...) syntactic categories and proper semantic arguments. Proper ways to argue for rigidity ascriptions to nouns are described. Then, such arguments are sought for the case of rigid/non-rigid division among count common nouns. It is shown that there are plausible, albeit inconclusive, reasons to hold that among common nouns (N-bar expressions) only simple common nouns are kind designators, and that if that is the case these simple common nouns will have to be reckoned as de jure rigid designators. (shrink)

In “Is semantics possible?” Putnam connected two themes: the very possibility of semantics (as opposed to formal model theory) for natural languages and the proper semantic treatment of common nouns. Putnam observed that abstract semantic accounts are modeled on formal languages model theory: the substantial contribution is rules for logical connectives (given outside the models), whereas the lexicon (individual constants and predicates) is treated merely schematically by the models. This schematic treatment may be all that is needed for an (...) account of validity in a formal setting, but it does not help to understand how proper and common nouns function in reality (not in models). Putnam then initiated the empirical study of such nouns to indicate, (i), that the popular Frege-Carnap account of them as (“disguised” compound) predicates is empirically incorrect, and, (ii), that they offer a new paradigm for a naturalistic semantics of natural languages. We take Putnam’s program a couple of steps further. First, we investigate the semantics of common nouns and argue that they refer (to kinds), rather than apply by satisfaction/truth to a designation/denotation. Second, we point to general results about semantics as a theory whose fulcrum is the reference relation rather than satisfaction in models and validity across them. (shrink)

Common nouns enter into modern predicate logic only as parts of predicates, While in lesniewski's 'ontology' they are classified together with proper nouns as 'names'. A system of natural deduction rules is presented which sharply separates proper from common nouns, Within which lesniewski's calculus is contained as a logic solely of common nouns, Together with copula, Identity predicate, Definite article, And quantifiers 'any', 'every', 'some' and 'no'. The fragment developed is closer to the natural syntax of english than (...) either frege's or lesniewski's languages, Enabling these to be seen as complementary rather than competing, As approximations to syntactically more complex languages. (shrink)

We investigate the morphosyntax of qualitative binominal constructions (QBCs) in a Southern Italo-Romance language from the Apulian town of San Marco in Lamis. QBCs are complex noun phrases like ‘a jewelN1 of a villageN2’, appearing here prepositionally (with the preposition də, ‘of’, allowing definites, indefinites, and demonstratives) and non-prepositionally (only allowing definites with definite articles and not proper names). We propose that in the latter, a categorial match in the determiner layer, which we call ‘match D’, relates N1 (...) and N2. N1 is embedded as a noun, allowing for: 1) the recursive DP strategy of non-prepositional genitives, and 2) the extension of this mechanism to QBCs. This leads to the impossibility of syntactic extraction, which we connect to the concept of phase. With non-denominal N1s, N1’s article is treated as a head-agreeing adjectival linker, forming a constituent with the modifier but agreeing with the head. A phrase is interpreted as a QBC if N1 and N2 share the same number features and if the features of N1 do not allow for it to be interpreted as the possessum of N2 . We also discuss external agreement with the construction, presenting data supporting the relevance of the [+HUMAN] feature for agreement relations. (forthcoming, Italian Journal of Linguistics). (shrink)

The standard versions of predicativism are committed to the following two theses: proper names are count nouns in all their occurrences, and names do not refer to objects but express name-bearing properties. The main motivation for predicativism is to provide a uniform explanation of referential names and predicative names. According to predicativism, predicative names are fundamental and referential names are explained by appealing to a null determiner functioning like “the” or “that.” This paper has two goals. The first is (...) to reject the predicativists’ explanation of the two types of names. I present three syntactic counterexamples to the predicativists’ account of referential names: incorporation, modification, and measure phrase uses. The second goal is to present a novel strategy to explain the two types of names. I propose that referential names are fundamental but that there are null morphemes available for transforming a name into a count noun (and possibly into other syntactic categories). (shrink)

This paper takes issue with the predicativist’s identification of proper names and common count nouns. Although Predicativism emerges precisely to account for certain syntactic facts about proper names, namely, that they behave like common count nouns on occasions, it seems clear that proper names and common count nouns have different properties, and this undermines the thesis that proper names are in fact just common count nouns. The predicativist’s strategy to bridge these differences is to postulate an (...) unpronounced determiner to go with names when they appear to function as singular terms, making them effectively a concealed determiner phrase. In this paper I revisit these differences and argue that the predicativist’s strategy is not well justified and worse, it does not help make proper names and common count nouns unified; rather, it makes proper names exceptional as count nouns. I also discuss the referentialist’s take on names qua predicates and make some suggestions about how the syntactic difference between proper names and count nouns should be understood. (shrink)

The predicate view on proper names opts for a uniform semantic representation of proper nouns like ‘Alfred’ as predicates on the level of logical form. Early defences of this view can be found in Sloat (Language, vol. 45, pp. 26–30, 1969) and Burge (J. Philos. 70: 425–439, 1973), but there is an increasing more recent interest in this view on proper names. My paper aims to provide a reconstruction and critique of Burge’s main argument for the predicate (...) view on proper names, which is still used by several current philosophers in defence of this view. I have called this argument the unification argument. I will present a stepwise interpretation and reconstruction of this argument, consider several possible responses to it and defend a specific response to it in detail. (shrink)

This paper presents a variable-free analysis of relational nouns in Glue Semantics, within a Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) architecture. Relational nouns and resumptive pronouns are bound using the usual binding mechanisms of LFG. Special attention is paid to the bound readings of relational nouns, how these interact with genitives and obliques, and their behaviour with respect to scope, crossover and reconstruction. I consider a puzzle that arises regarding relational nouns and resumptive pronouns, given that relational nouns can have bound readings (...) and resumptive pronouns are just a specific instance of bound pronouns. The puzzle is why is it impossible for bound implicit arguments of relational nouns to be resumptive? The puzzle is highlighted by a well-known variety of variable-free semantics, where pronouns and relational noun phrases are identical both in category and (base) type. I show that the puzzle also arises for an established variable-based theory. I present an analysis of resumptive pronouns that crucially treats resumptives in terms of the resource logic linear logic that underlies Glue Semantics: a resumptive pronoun is a perfectly ordinary pronoun that constitutes a surplus resource; this surplus resource requires the presence of a resumptive-licensing resource consumer, a manager resource. Manager resources properly distinguish between resumptive pronouns and bound relational nouns based on differences between them at the level of semantic structure. The resumptive puzzle is thus solved. The paper closes by considering the solution in light of the hypothesis of direct compositionality. It is argued that a directly compositional version of the theory is possible, although perhaps not desirable. The implications for direct compositionality are considered. (shrink)

In this essay I use my Non-Monotonic account of “Only Proper Noun” sentences to challenge the Standard Views on the Downard Monotonicity of “Few N” Quantifier sentences. I also review the history of the L. Horn – J.D. Atlas Debate on ‘Only Proper Noun’ sentences and its implications for quantifier noun phrases like “Few N”, and I assess the promise of L. Horn’s Pragmatic Theory of Negative Polarity Item Licensing.

While proper names in argument positions have received a lot of attention, this cannot be said about proper names in the naming construction, as in “Call me Al”. I argue that in a number of more or less familiar languages the syntax of naming constructions is such that proper names there have to be analyzed as predicates, whose content mentions the name itself (cf. “quotation theories”). If proper names can enter syntax as predicates, then in argument (...) positions they should have a complex structure, consisting of a determiner and its restriction, like common nouns (cf. “definite description theories of proper names”). Further consideration of the compositional semantics of proper names in the naming construction also shows that they have another argument slot, that of the naming convention. As a result, we will be able to account for the indexicality of proper names in argument positions and provide compositional semantics of complex and modified proper names (e.g., the famous detective Sherlock Holmes ). (shrink)

Overview The debate over the semantics of proper names has, of late, heated up, focusing on the relative merits of referentialism and predicativism. Referentialists maintain that the semantic function of proper names is to designate individuals. They hold that a proper name, as it occurs in a sentence in a context of use, refers to a specific individual that is its referent and has just that individual as its semantic content, its contribution to the proposition expressed by (...) the sentence. Furthermore, a proper name contributes its referent to the proposition expressed by virtue of mechanisms of direct reference to individuals, not by virtue of expressing properties. Predicativists embrace an opposing view according to which proper names are just a special kind of common noun. Their semantic function is to designate properties of individuals. A proper name, as it occurs in a sentence in a context of use, expresses a property, and that property is its contribution to the proposition expr .. (shrink)

Abstract:There is evidence that children learn both proper names and count nouns from the outset of lexical development. Furthermore, children's first proper names are typically words for people, whereas their first count nouns are commonly terms for other objects, including artifacts. I argue that these facts represent a challenge for two well‐known theoretical accounts of object word learning. I defend an alternative account, which credits young children with conceptual resources to acquire words for both individual objects and object (...) categories, and conceptual biases to construe some objects (notably people) as individuals in their own right and most other objects as instances of their category. (shrink)

There is evidence that children learn both proper names and count nouns from the outset of lexical development. Furthermore, children's first proper names are typically words for people, whereas their first count nouns are commonly terms for other objects, including artifacts. I argue that these facts represent a challenge for two well-known theoretical accounts of object word learning. I defend an alternative account, which credits young children with conceptual resources to acquire words for both individual objects and object (...) categories, and conceptual biases to construe some objects (notably people) as individuals in their own right and most other objects as instances of their category. (shrink)

The Millian view that the meaning of a proper name is simply its referent has long been popular among philosophers of language. It might even be deemed the orthodox view, despite its well-known difficulties. Fregean and Russellian alternatives, though widely discussed, are much less popular. The Predicate View has not even been taken seriously, at least until fairly recently, but finally, it is receiving the attention it deserves. It says that a name expresses the property of bearing that name. (...) Despite its apparent shortcomings, it has a distinct virtue: It straightforwardly reckons with the fact that proper names generally have multiple bearers and are sometimes used to ascribe the property of bearing a name rather than to refer to a particular bearer of the name. It holds that proper names are much the same as common nouns, both semantically and syntactically, with only superficial differences. They both can be quantified and modified. The main difference, at least in English, is that when used to refer a proper name, unlike a common noun, is not preceded by the definite article. The Predicate View accounts for manifestly predicative uses, but to be vindicated, it needs to do justice to the fact that the main use of proper names is to refer. (shrink)

I argue that predicativism, the view that proper names are predicates, is a viable theory of the semantics of proper names given a certain hypothesis about the grammar of definiteness. Extant versions of predicativism hold that a singular name in argument position constitutes the predicative component of a covert definite description. I show that these versions cannot accommodate semantic and typological data, specifically: syntactic and semantic disparities between bare and non-bare occurrences of such names in English, the distinctive (...) modal rigidity displayed by names, as opposed to common noun definite descriptions, and cross-linguistic data that feature seemingly distinct determiners for names in argument position. I propose that predicativism needs to embrace a view of definite marking as complex, consisting of a definite article and a bindable, familiarity-tracking constituent, which I call _index_. I show that this view is empirically motivated and typologically attested. The resulting version of predicativism can accommodate elegantly the observed semantic data when coupled with language-specific morpho-phonological generalizations. I finally address criticisms of and alternatives to my version of predicativism. (shrink)

Editors and writers on the prosody of Plautus and Terence disagree about the prosody of the final -a in the nominative and vocative of proper names taken from the Greek First Declension. The fact that they are often quoted as examples of syllaba anceps either at the diaeresis of longer iambic lines or at loci Iacobsohniani would seem to imply that they normally scan as Latin First Declension nouns with short -a in the nominative and vocative singular. So R. (...) Kauer in the commentary of his edition of Terence's Andria on line 301 writes ‘die griechischen Eigennamen auf -a —Sosia, Byrria, Chaerea, Phaedria usw.—haben bei Terenz stets kurzes -a’. (shrink)

Editors and writers on the prosody of Plautus and Terence disagree about the prosody of the final -a in the nominative and vocative of proper names taken from the Greek First Declension. The fact that they are often quoted as examples of syllaba anceps either at the diaeresis of longer iambic lines or at loci Iacobsohniani would seem to imply that they normally scan as Latin First Declension nouns with short -a in the nominative and vocative singular. So R. (...) Kauer in the commentary of his edition of Terence's Andria on line 301 writes ‘die griechischen Eigennamen auf -a —Sosia, Byrria, Chaerea, Phaedria usw.—haben bei Terenz stets kurzes -a’. (shrink)

Frege analyzed the grammatical subject-term 'S' in quantified subject-predicate sentences, 'q S are P', as being logically predicative. This is in contrast to Aristotelian Logic, according to which it is a logical subject-term, like the proper name 'a' in 'a is P' – albeit a plural one, designating many particulars. I show that Frege's arguments for his analysis are unsound, and explain how he was misled to his position by the mathematical concept of function. If common nouns in this (...) grammatical subject position are indeed logical subject-terms, this should require a thorough reevaluation of the adequacy of Frege's Predicate Calculus as a tool for the analysis of the logic and semantics of natural language. (shrink)

In this paper I provide novel arguments for the predicative approach to proper names, which claims that argument proper names are definite descriptions containing a naming predicate . I first argue that modified proper names, such as the incomparable Maria Callas or the other Francis Bacon cannot be handled on the hypothesis that argument proper names have no internal structure and uniformly denote entities. I then discuss cases like every Adolf, which would normally be interpreted as (...) every individual named Adolf and show that the predicative approach to proper names can straightforwardly account for the distribution of a detectable naming component in proper names. Finally, I address the issue of proper names used as common nouns and plural proper names and demonstrate that they do not form a homogenous group yet can be clearly distinguished on both syntactic and semantic grounds from proper names involving a detectable naming component. (shrink)

Anil Gupta's slightly revised 1977 Pittsburgh doctoral dissertation is not a linguistic investigation of common nouns. There is no thorough attempt to organize and explain data about common nouns in natural languages. Gupta's goal is to develop and to defend formal modal languages and logics useful for the representation and defense of metaphysical theses on topics such as the structure of individuals, sorts or kinds, substances, and essences. He does, however, develop the special features of his formal syntax and semantics (...) on the basis of two theses about common nouns in our natural languages. Geach's work suggests the first thesis that properly expressed identity statements are of the form: b is the same K as c, where K is a common noun. Because the individual variables bound by quantifiers must be capable of being terms of an identity relation, this first thesis leads Gupta to require quantifiers to link individual variables with common noun expressions. Thus in his formal languages we can only express: "every K is _____" or "some K is _____" where K is syntactically part of the quantifier. We can call this "sortal quantification." Hence, "Every K is P" and "Some K is P" are not even expressible as "If anything is K then it is P" or "Something is K and P," let alone equivalent to such ill-formed expressions in his languages. Gupta's book is a useful introduction to the syntax and semantics for languages with this non-standard sortal quantification for those already familiar with the syntax and formal semantics of first order extensional and modal languages with standard quantifiers. Those unfamiliar with standard formal languages and model structure semantics will find Gupta's provocative metaphysical theories and conjectures inaccessible. (shrink)

This paper is about the semantic analysis of referentially opaque verbs like seek and owe that give rise to nonspecific readings. It is argued that Montague's categorization (based on earlier work by Quine) of opaque verbs as properties of quantifiers runs into two serious difficulties: the first problem is that it does not work with opaque verbs like resemble that resist any lexical decomposition of the seek ap try to find kind; the second one is that it wrongly predicts de (...) dicto (i.e. narrow scope) readings due to quantified noun phrases in the object positions of such verbs. It is shown that both difficulties can be overcome by an analysis of opaque verbs as operating on properties. This is a strongly modified version of a paper entitled lsquoDo We Bear Attitudes towards Quantifiers?rsquo that I have presented at conferences in Gosen (Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft), Ithaca (SALT I), and Konstanz (Lexikon). I owe a special debt to Hans Kamp and Arnim von Stechow for shaping my views on the subject of this paper during the past ten years or so. Comments from and discussions with the following friends and colleagues have also led to considerable improvements: Heinrich Beck, Steve Berman, David Dowty, Veerle van Geenhoven, Fritz Hamm, Irene Heim, Wolfgang Klein, Angelika Kratzer, Michael Morreau, Barbara Partee, Mats Rooth, Roger Schwarzschild, Wolfgang Sternefeld, Emil Weydert, Henk Zeevat, and three referees. (shrink)

Quoique le nom propre n’ait guère fait l’objet d’une véritable exploration de la part de Gustave Guillaume (pour qui le nom propre n’est d’ailleurs pas rigoureusement délimité), on peut distinguer deux états successifs de la théorie psychomécanique. Dans un premier temps, il est défini comme un « asémantème », un mot sans signification, qui dénote sans connoter, d’où l’annulation de la transition langue/discours dont l’article est l’outil. Mais il est plus tard conçu comme un nom dont la compréhension est maximale (...) et, partant, dont l’extension est minimale, ce qui explique différemment l’absence de détermination dont il fait l’objet. Après Guillaume, un linguiste comme Walter Hirtle replace dans le cadre de la dichotomie langue/discours la distinction opérée par d’autres entre proper noun (fait de langue) et proper name (fait de discours). (shrink)

This paper embeds a theory of proper names in a general approach to singular reference based on type‐free property theory. It is proposed that a proper name “N” is a sortal common noun whose meaning is essentially tied to the linguistic type “N”. Moreover, “N” can be singularly referring insofar as it is elliptical for a definite description of the form the “N” Following Montague, the meaning of a definite description is taken to be a property of (...) properties. The proposed theory fulfils the major desiderata stemming from Kripke's works on proper names. (shrink)

Among Greek grammarians a distinction is recognized between a class of nouns capable of referring to several nouns and a class referring to just one proper name. This distinction is very poorly (and problematically) attested in the works of Latin grammarians. This paper explores and discusses some connections so far overlooked, and tries to correct some misinterpretations. In the light of the distinction of proper vs. common epithets, the controversial phrase mediae potestatis is elucidated, by stressing that it (...) refers to the ‘semantic incompleteness’ of the adjective. Finally, the assumption that the concept of ‘adjective’ was not known within Latin grammatical tradition before the fourth century is revised. We bring forward evidence against this assumption implying an early ‘linguistic’ tradition with respect to the adjective which was to some degree independent from the well-known ‘rhetorical’ doctrine on epithets. (shrink)

This paper embeds a theory of proper names in a general approach to singular reference based on type‐free property theory. It is proposed that a proper name “N” is a sortal common noun whose meaning is essentially tied to the linguistic type “N”. Moreover, “N” can be singularly referring insofar as it is elliptical for a definite description of the form the “N” Following Montague, the meaning of a definite description is taken to be a property of (...) properties. The proposed theory fulfils the major desiderata stemming from Kripke's works on proper names. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: How Does a Name Refer? The Description Theory How Does a Name Refer? The Causal‐historical Theory How Does a Name Mean? The Description Theory How Does a Name Mean? The Cluster Theory Kripke's Critique of the Description and Cluster Theories of Names Rigid Designation How Does a Name Mean? Direct Reference.

Current textbooks in formal semantics are all versions of, or introductions to, the same paradigm in semantic theory: Montague Grammar. Knowledge of Meaning is based on different assumptions and a different history. It provides the only introduction to truth- theoretic semantics for natural languages, fully integrating semantic theory into the modern Chomskyan program in linguistic theory and connecting linguistic semantics to research elsewhere in cognitive psychology and philosophy. As such, it better fits into a modern graduate or undergraduate program in (...) linguistics, cognitive science, or philosophy. Furthermore, since the technical tools it employs are much simpler to teach and to master, Knowledge of Meaning can be taught by someone who is not primarily a semanticist. Linguistic semantics cannot be studied as a stand-alone subject but only as part of cognitive psychology, the authors assert. It is the study of a particular human cognitive competence governing the meanings of words and phrases. Larson and Segal argue that speakers have unconscious knowledge of the semantic rules of their language, and they present concrete, empirically motivated proposals about a formal theory of this competence based on the work of Alfred Tarski and Donald Davidson. The theory is extended to a wide range of constructions occurring in natural language, including predicates, proper nouns, pronouns and demonstratives, quantifiers, definite descriptions, anaphoric expressions, clausal complements, and adverbs. Knowledge of Meaning gives equal weight to philosophical, empirical, and formal discussions. It addresses not only the empirical issues of linguistic semantics but also its fundamental conceptual questions, including the relation of truth to meaning and the methodology of semantic theorizing. Numerous exercises are included in the book. (shrink)

Almost entirely ignored in the linguistic theorising on names and descriptions is a hybrid form of expression which, like definite descriptions, begin with 'the' but which, like proper names, are capitalised and seem to lack descriptive content. These are expressions such as the following, 'the Holy Roman Empire', 'the Mississippi River', or 'the Space Needle'. Such capitalised descriptions are ubiquitous in natural language, but to which linguistic categories do they belong? Are they simply proper names? Or are they (...) definite descriptions with unique orthography? Or are they something else entirely? This paper assesses two obvious assimilation strategies: (i) assimilation to proper names and (ii) assimilation to definite descriptions. It is argued that both of these strategies face major difficulties. The primary goal is to lay the groundwork for a linguistic analysis of capitalised descriptions. Yet, the hope is that clearing the ground on capitalised descriptions may reveal useful insights for the on-going research into the semantics and syntax of their lower-case or 'the'-less relatives. (shrink)

Welcome to the 25th volume 1st issue of Cumhuriyet Theology Journal. With this issue, we are excited and happy to be 25 years old. Cumhuriyet Theology Journal has gained a rapid momentum with its format and publishing principles, and managed to attract the attention of the world of science. With the Isnad Citation System developed within the Cumhuriyet Theology Journal and the work-shops held in 2018 and 2019, a number of decisions were taken to increase the publication quality of Theology (...) Field Journals and many of them were implemented. The third workshop was carried out virtual on 26 December 2020 under the name of "Social Sciences Academic Publishing Workshop III" in cooperation with Atatürk High Insti-tution of Culture, Language and History and Sivas Cumhuriyet University. The theme of the workshop was determined as "Refereed Journal Publishing". Preparations for our 4th workshop have begun. In this sense, our journal continues its mission of being both a new ecole and a school with an effort to increase the quality of academic publishing. Moreover, we have also announced the preliminary review form and the review form for the blind review process. We examine Turkish and English titles, summaries, and keywords to make sure that they correspond to the field’s terminology. Furthermore, we require proper nouns and concepts/terms to be written in the reference style of TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam. We also particularly require for the articles to use the Isnad Citation Style. To improve the academic quality of the journal, we have also checked the article up for plagiarism. The articles that are marked with a result above %15 are returned to the authors with a plagiarism report. It might be right to note here that we have been getting more attention from scholarly world day by day with our mission and standards. The journal has received 93 articles between January 1- March 1, 2021 from the academic world. All articles went through the pre-review process to check the referencing and transliteration style before testing them using a plagiarism checker. We then have forwarded the articles that successfully passed the plagiarism check to our reviewers. Following this process, we have been able to offer to you 25 articles three of which are in English at this issue. We are delighted to offer you the various ranges of themes and topics with this new issue. We sincerely thank the contributors for their submission, the editorial and review board, and particularly to the assistant editors, Dr. Mehmet Çetin, Dr. Ayşe Mine Akar, Dr. Necati İşler, Res. Asst. Maruf Çakır, Res. Asst. Esma Güneş, Res. Asst. Bayram Ünce, Res. Asst. Sena Kaplan, Res. Asst. Gülistan Aktaş, Res. Asst. Hamit Demir, Res. Asst. Merve Yetim, Res. Asst. Rukiye Göğen, Res. Asst. Ömer Faruk Özbek, Res. Asst. Salime Bera Kemikli, Res. Asst. Naim Yaman, Res. Asst. Sema Tombul, Res. Asst. Nurgül Akdoğan, Res. Asst. İlknur Bahadır, Res. Asst. Adil Koyuncu and the editors of the language revie process Prof. Dr. Ömer Faruk Yavuz, Prof. Dr. Savaş Kocabaş (Arabic), Dr. Miyase Yavuz Altıntaş, Assoc. Prof. Zuhal Ağılkaya Şahin, Dr. Metin Güven, Dr. Kenan Tekin, Dr. Hakime Reyyan Yaşar, Dr. Meryem Berrin Bulut and Dr. Elif Hilal Karaman (English) and statistics editor Assoc. Prof. Murat Akyıldız. For the next issue, which will be published on December 15, 2021 we announce the acceptance of the articles from July 1 to September 1 by our editorial board. We wish you convenience in your studies. (shrink)

W. H. Walsh argued that historians used colligatory terms to describe historical change, and defined such terms as those which relate a group of events by a common idea or value. The colligatory term identifies a general relationship among singular events. Events give concrete expression to the ideas shared by the people who initiated them. Thus, colligatory terms, such as "French Revolution," are always singular proper nouns, rather than general classifications. However, in addition to common ideas, colligatory terms are (...) used to describe the form of the historical change. Terms like "revolution" and "renaissance" do convey meaning when applied generally. Colligatory terms, then, can relate formal structures as well as dispositional. attitudes, and can function both as general classifications and as singular entities. (shrink)

To apply oneself to Derrida's comprehension of “law,” to probe the connections between Derrida and law, raises a seemingly insurmountable challenge for anyone wishing to elucidate what the conjunction masks as it brings not‐together the inscription of a proper noun in the French language and that of a noun in the English language. To be sure, one cannot speak of a history, but only of histories. Derrida acknowledged that the word “law” can point to significance as it (...) issues “from morality, from legality or from politics, even from nature”. Derrida's lesson in the dismantling of positivism's hegemonic distortions is powerful. The first manifestation of Derrida's positivism pertains to his distinction between law and justice. (shrink)

The present study analyzed the vocabulary profile of the News on the Web corpus, which contained 12 billion words from online newspapers and magazines in 20 countries to determine the vocabulary knowledge needed to reasonably understand online newspaper and magazine articles. The results showed that, in general, knowledge of the most frequent 4,000 word families in the British National Corpus/Corpus of Contemporary American English wordlist plus proper nouns, marginal words, transparent compounds and acronyms was necessary to gain 95% coverage (...) for the NOW corpus. However, when it came to the 98% coverage, online newspaper and magazine articles from different countries had relatively distinct lexical demands. In-depth analyses were carried out and the findings offered comprehensive insights into the issue. Implications for teaching and learning were also provided. (shrink)

In order to introduce the text description of this class will show seven keywords, they represent In order to understand the general process for the seven. Need to mention is that the author published in Chinese script - title "Gadamer's philosophy of the seven key" - and this content is not the same. In fact, only one in that the use of key words in this speech mentioned the four key words will be used the next article. 1 Linguistics as (...) high as the United States in the "real management and methods," a book in the last third of the contents of the specified language is "the universal medium of interpretation of experience." It is in this medium, things are understood, understanding and interpretation to occur. It is the fundamental and the first thing on a switch, it makes things possible, without it, understanding must not occur. It is in this medium, the real management there, although in terms of the real incidence of management and is not limited to this medium. Sprachlichkeit is up to the universal language of the United States to name the first of of a proper noun. history of as language, history is a popular media, and history is also rising to become "a hermeneutical principle." To understand history, which must be traced back to Heidegger, "and there is time," the first six parts, entitled "Timing and historical nature." This title has been out of correct revelation, history is the study of this structure there is some a result of this there is the same as in the past and the present one there, it was possible there through his plans and will itself which extend to the future. Dilthey on Heidegger benefit of this term and its historical significance, but that裡Dilthey, the basic processes of life, and in Heidegger, the basic process is still alive there in the past and future Among the visual field. It is a learning process rather than the life there is a process, there is a process rather than the life philosophy of life regardless of the process. Dilthey and Gadamer and Heidegger places of historical analysis for the premise. 3 by the historical role of awareness up to the United States, this keyword has not appeared in from Schleiermacher, Dilthey, or Heidegger that裡. But Heidegger once spoke to the author, the concept represented by the word directly from Dilthey and future. Indeed, the word and the "fusion of" two persons都benefit from Hegel and Dilthey, Heidegger than In order to impact. At the same time, for the resumption of encounter with the text of the history of this effort directly, the recall In order to Heidegger and Qike fruit. Up to the United States shows that it is essential that "the existence of the structure." That is to say, it is usually associated with the text coming from a tradition, crushed In order to present before the sight. 4 hermeneutics into the cycle and see in understanding the structure and the first cycle between hermeneutics, there is a close link. Hermeneutics and the cycle regardless of such a concept, not only from a part of the overall future understanding, understanding from the part of the overall future. This is a logical contradiction, but it depicts In order to understand the kind of work does not have the way to recovery. This is to see What are the relationship? Up with the United States use this word in the former understanding of the meaning of a person he can understand any part of the text and context before, must have a pre-understanding. When Schleiermacher hermeneutics for the cycle to take a more formalistic point of view, he also participate in an objective and subjective look for. In order to reject the United States is up for the subjective, and he describes, in understanding the text, our understanding of a person but a different meaning, and this sense of ownership in a situation with a theme of the event . Heidegger the hermeneutic circle and put the world on their own understanding of the context in which the world is time and the existence of the world, in order to In order to reinvent the meaning of hermeneutic circle. It exists in the time being and is expected to forward to the future, it is a person exists in the world of all possibilities of a personal meaning. Gadamer Heidegger and then one more step beyond, he is defined as the cycle of hermeneutics and the interpretation of the traditional sports were a correlation between the movement. Heidegger's masterpiece裡tradition and not important, but those for the traditional and the interpretation of the relationship between text, up to the U.S. In order to play an important role in the analysis. Up to the United States, brought into the discussion In order to "complete expectation" that the key concept, it is subject to the historical role of awareness of the operation of the core. In this part of the contents of the directory for the present review is to show to some of the major associated. 5 authority and tradition up to the United States on the authority of the traditional view is that from his understanding and the hermeneutic circle before the concept developed in the future. Enlightenment for the suspect an effort made ​​to switch the authority of the United States to see coming up is one-sided, because the authority is naturally found in the leading field in a PhD, the referee, professors and experts. Recognize these people for a topic you know even in the natural and appropriate. So regardless of up to his brother's wife is not a legitimate authority and legitimate authority, and authority as a concept to see the future is appropriate. Similarly, our traditional understanding among the living, and we should explore a more deeper with our traditional relationship. Traditional German text is Űberlieferung, incurs passed along . Once again, as a fair decision without dialogue and is not legal to see, up to the United States against this anti-traditional views of the Enlightenment. 6 Depending on the domain of integration sight philosophy of integration is another sign up to the United States is not to find elsewhere. Basically, the text of the encounter with a sight In order to involve the integration of text and interpreter of the visual field of sight. And a man's own awareness is a fusion of traditional with the product. "That is convenient to get a sight of their own, but also requires a fusion of traditional with." In order for each dialogue also involves a fusion of sight. It is a wildcard description of the terminology. 7 Dialogue dialogue leading up to the U.S. interpretation of the theme of philosophy, relying on a life of his ideal, he as such a show of openness. Schleiermacher as high as the United States in general, is a talented rapper. However, the need for a fruitful dialogue open to others point of view, and the need to recognize that he or she may be right. In a true dialogue, both sides都want to talk more close to the truth regardless of management topics, which are more important than winning. Finally, the dialogue is a basic hermeneutical tool, a means to understand, so we coming close to the theme of the issue, but ready to change our point of view. An introductory section explains that the lecture will present seven key terms, representing seven aspects of the universal process of understanding. It is noted that a published lecture in Chinese by this author under the title "Seven Key Terms in the Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer "is not the same as this, and indeed only one of the terms in that lecture is used in this one, although four of them are used in tomorrow's lecture. An introductory section explains that the lecture will present seven key terms, representing seven aspects of the universal process of understanding. It is noted that a published lecture in Chinese by this author under the title "Seven Key Terms in the Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer" is not the same as this, and indeed only one of the terms in that lecture is used in this one, although four of them are used in tomorrow's lecture. 1. Sprachlichkeit-Linguisticality As Gadamer notes in the final third of Truth and Method, language is the "universal medium of hermeneutical experience." It is the medium in which things are understood, the medium in which understanding and interpretation take place. It is fundamental and prior to everything. It makes things possible, and without it understanding cannot take place at all. It is the medium in which truth happens, although there is more than this to the happening of truth. Sprachlichkeit is the term Gadamer uses to name the "universal priority" of language. 2. Geschichtlichkeit-Historicity Like language, history is a universal medium, and historicity is raised to the status of "a hermeneutical principle. "To understand historicity, one has to go back to the six sections of Heidegger's Being and Time that carry the heading" Temporality and Historicity. "Already this title correctly suggests that historicity is a consequence of the ontological structure of Dasein as a being that lives with a past and a present, and also extends itself into the future through projecting possible being. Heidegger is indebted to Dilthey for the term and sense of historicity, but in Dilthey the basic process is life, whereas in Heidegger, the basic process is being-in-the-world in horizons of past and future. It is an ontological process rather than a life process, a process of being rather than the vitalism of life in life-philosophy. Gadamer presupposes Dilthey's and Heidegger's analysis of Geschichtlichkeit . 3. das wirkungsgeschichtliche Bewusstsein-the Historically Effected Consciousness This is a key term in Gadamer that does not appear in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, or Heidegger. Heidegger once remarked to the author that the idea that this term represents is straight out of Dilthey. Certainly it and the "fusion of horizons" are more indebted to Hegel and Dilthey than to Heidegger. At the same time, the effort to restore the historical immediacy of encounter with a text recalls Heidegger and Kierkegaard. Gadamer argues that the essence of it is " the structure of experience. "That is to say, it shatters the present horizon, usually with a text from tradition. 4. Hermeneutische Zirkel and Vorurteil-Prejudice and the Hermeneutical Circle There is an intimate connection between the fore-structure of understanding and the hermeneutical circle. The hermeneutical circle refers to the idea that one understands the part from the whole, but also the whole from the parts. This is a logical contradiction, but it describes the back and forth way that understanding works. What has this to do with prejudices ? Gadamer uses this word as synonymous with pre-understanding, and one has to have a prior understanding before one can understand any part of a text or situation. While Schleiermacher took a more formalistic view of the hermeneutical circle, he also looked at the objective and subjective sides. Gadamer rejects the subjective side and explains that in understanding a text we are not understanding a person but a meaning that resides in a situation and a subject-matter. Heidegger revolutionized the meaning of the hermeneutical circle by placing it in the context of an understanding of self and world that is temporal and existential. It exists in time and anticipates a future, and it is the personal sense of one's possibilities for being in the world. Gadamer took a step beyond Heidegger by defining the hermeneutical circle as the interplay between the movement of tradition and that of the interpreter. Tradition plays little role in Heidegger's masterwork, but it and the interpreter's relation to the text loom large in Gadamer's analysis. The discussion brings in the key concept in Gadamer of the "anticipation of completion" which is central to the working of historically effected consciousness. A review of the table of contents for the section is presented to show some of the major relationships. 5. Autorität und Tradition-Authority and Tradition Gadamer's views with regard to authority and tradition grow out of his concepts of preunderstanding and the hermeneutical circle. The effort by the Enlightenment to discredit all authority seemed one-sided to Gadamer because authority is naturally accorded to doctors, judges, professors, and other experts in a field. To acknowledge that they know more about a subject than you do is natural and appropriate. So Gadamer speaks of legitimate authority and illegitimate authority, but authority as a concept seems appropriate. Likewise, tradition inhabits our understanding, and we should seek an ever deeper relationship to our tradition. The German word for tradition is Űberlieferung, that which is handed down. Again, Gadamer takes up arms against the Enlightenment prejudice against tradition as illegitimate without dialogue or a fair trial. 6. Horizontverschmelzung-Fusion of Horizons The "fusion of horizons "is another trademark of Gadamerian philosophy. It is not found elsewhere. Basically, the encounter with the text involves a fusion of horizons, that of the text and that of the interpreter. Also one's own consciousness is a product of a fusion of horizons with the tradition. "Even to acquire one's own horizon requires a fusion of horizons with the tradition." Every conversation, too, involves a fusion of horizons. It is an all-purpose term. 7. Conversation Conversation is a leitmotif of Gadamer's hermeneutical philosophy, an ideal he lived by, an openness he exemplified. Schleiermacher was a gifted conversationalist, as was Gadamer. But a fruitful conversation requires openness to the viewpoint of the other person, and the acknowledgement that he or she could be right. In a true conversation both partners want to come closer to the truth about a matter, and that is more important than winning. Ultimately, conversation is a basic hermeneutical tool, a means of reaching understanding, so we approach a subject with questions, but ready to change our point of view. (shrink)

Welcome to the 25th volume 2nd issue of Cumhuriyet Theology Journal. With this issue, we are excited and happy to be 25 years old. Cumhuriyet Theology Journal has gained a rapid momentum with its format and publishing principles, and managed to attract the attention of the world of science. With the Isnad Citation System developed within the Cumhuriyet Theology Journal and the work-shops held in 2018, 2019 and 2020, a number of decisions were taken to increase the publi-cation quality of (...) Theology Field Journals and many of them were implemented. The fourth workshop was carried out virtual on 25-27 December 2021 under the name of "Turkey Editors' Workshop - 4" by Sivas Cumhuriyet University and participation of the representatives of stakeholder universities, institutions and organizations. (https://editorlercalistayi.com/) The theme of the workshop was determined as "Scientific Book and Journal Publish-ing in Universities: Current Situation – Problems – Needs – Solution Proposals – Sample Practices". Preparations for our 5th workshop have begun. In this sense, our journal contin-ues its mission of being both a new ecole and a school with an effort to increase the quality of academic publishing. Moreover, we have also announced the preliminary review form and the review form for the blind review process. We examine Turkish and English titles, summaries, and keywords to make sure that they correspond to the field’s terminology. Furthermore, we require proper nouns and concepts/terms to be written in the reference style of TDV Ency-clopaedia of Islam. We also particularly require for the articles to use the Isnad Citation Style. To improve the academic quality of the journal, we have also checked the article up for plagiarism. The articles that are marked with a result above %15 are returned to the authors with a plagiarism report. It might be right to note here that we have been getting more attention from scholar-ly world day by day with our mission and standards. The journal has received 81 articles between July 1- August 31, 2021 from the academic world. All articles went through the pre-review process to check the referencing and transliteration style before testing them using a plagiarism checker. We then have forwarded the articles that successfully passed the plagia-rism check to our reviewers. Following this process, we have been able to offer to you 21 articles one of which are in Arabic at this issue. We are delighted to offer you the various ranges of themes and topics with this new issue. We sincerely thank the contributors for their submission, the editorial and review board, and particularly to the assistant editors, Dr. Mehmet Çetin, Dr. Ayşe Mine Akar, Dr. Necati İşler, Res. Asst. Maruf Çakır, Res. Asst. Esma Güneş, Res. Asst. Bayram Ünce, Res. Asst. Sena Kaplan, Res. Asst. Gülistan Kızıleniş, Res. Asst. Hamit Demir, Res. Asst. Merve Yetim, Res. Asst. Rukiye Göğen, Res. Asst. Ömer Faruk Özbek, Res. Asst. Salime Bera Kemikli, Res. Asst. Naim Yaman, Res. Asst. Sema Tombul, Res. Asst. Nurgül Akdoğan, Res. Asst. İlknur Bahadır, Res. Asst. Adil Koyuncu, Res. Asst. Yakup Esenboğa, Res. Asst. Abdurrahman Poyraz and the editors of the language revie process Prof. Dr. Ömer Faruk Yavuz, Prof. Dr. Savaş Kocabaş (Arabic), Dr. Miyase Yavuz Altıntaş, Assoc. Prof. Zuhal Ağılkaya Şahin, Dr. Metin Güven, Dr. Kenan Tekin, Dr. Hakime Reyyan Yaşar, Dr. Meryem Berrin Bulut and Dr. Elif Hilal Karaman (English), Dr. Fatümetül Zehra Güldaş and statistics editor Assoc. Prof. Murat Akyıldız. For the next issue, which will be published on June 15, 2022 we announce the ac-ceptance of the articles from January 1 to February 28 by our editorial board. We wish you convenience in your studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 417-418 [Access article in PDF] Heidi M. Ravven and Lenn E. Goodman, editors. Jewish Themes in Spinoza's Philosophy. Albany: The State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 290. Cloth, $78.50. Paper, $26.95.The current anthology presents an important contribution to the study of Spinoza's relation to Jewish philosophy as well as to contemporary scholarship of Spinoza's metaphysics and political (...) theory.In the opening essay, Lenn Goodman takes upon himself the ambitious task of evaluating Spinoza's positions as to several central disputes throughout the history of philosophy. In this rich and extensive essay Goodman argues that Spinoza's radical rationalism makes him pursue syntheses between traditionally opposed poles. Lee Rice's article, "Love of God in Spinoza," carefully analyzes Spinoza's concept of love and suggests the existence of three kinds of love parallel to the three kinds of knowledge. Warren Montag addresses the unresolved issue of Spinoza's relation to the Kabbalah. Montag sides with Deleuze against the association of Spinozism with the Neo-Platonic theory of emanation, arguing that unlike the Neo-Platonists and Kabbalists, Spinoza's view of God rules out any hierarchy, and does not assume a descent from primal simplicity into complexity. Edwin Curley contributes a beautiful reading of the story of Job and of Maimonides' interpretation of the story. Curley follows Maimonides' discussion of the various positions regarding the question of divine providence and his attempt to identify the speeches of the characters of the book of Job with each of these positions. Following a sensitive consideration of various attempts to [End Page 417] recover Maimonides' own rather concealed view about providence, Curley concludes that "[W]hatever you think Maimonides' final word on Job is, our examination of him certainly supports [Spinoza's] claim that [Maimonides] reads Scripture in terms of Platonic or Aristotelian speculations" (170).Warren Zev Harvey's essay addresses Spinoza's most neglected work, the Compendium of the Grammar of the Hebrew Language. Apart from providing an outline of Spinoza's work as a Hebrew grammarian ("a noun-intoxicated grammarian") and pointing out some of Spinoza's more eccentric views about the nature of the Hebrew language, Harvey makes a compelling case for the importance of the book for the study of Spinoza's metaphysics. He points out a fascinating analogy which Spinoza draws between the parts of speech: (proper) noun, adjectives, and participles, and Spinoza's key metaphysical terms: substance, attributes, and modes. (Think about the weighty implications of this analogy for Curley's interpretation of the substance-mode relation.) According to Harvey, Spinoza's claim that all Hebrew words are derived from nouns is a linguistic parallel to Spinoza's pivotal metaphysical doctrine which makes all things be in the substance (or God). Kenneth Seeskin's article discusses the views of Maimonides and Spinoza on the question of creation and God's relation to the world. Seeskin reconstructs an interesting critical dialogue between these two philosophers. According to Seeskin, both philosophers held that an effect must be similar to its cause. Maimonides' commitment to Negative Theology and to the denial of any common measure between God and finite things forced him to deny causal or explanatory relation between God and the world. What Maimonides can suggest instead is rather to prove that the emergence of the world ex nihilo and according to the divine will, is possible, and even likely given certain astronomical facts of medieval science. Thus, Maimonides would hold that "although we have grounds for believing that creation occurred, we will never be in a position to say how" (120). For Spinoza, such a view constitutes nothing but a "sanctuary of ignorance." Thus, according to Seeskin, Spinoza affirms a clear causal relation between God and the world of finite things insofar as God is said to explain the world. While I tend to agree with most aspects of this analysis, it is important to note that Spinoza also claims that "between the finite and infinite there is no relation" (Letter 54). This... (shrink)

This article explicates Xunzi’s three types of cognitive delusions in Xunzi’s Zhengming Pian. The followings are my conclusions: first, general names such as “a white horse,” “a horse,” “a thief,” and “a man” are thought of as proper nouns because the classic Chinese theory of language concerned pragmatics rather than semantics. Second, classic Chinese epistemology does not address conceptual knowledge or knowledge based on argumentation distinguished from the art of description.Third, Gongsun Long believes in an extreme form of one-name-one-thingism. (...) Fourth, Neo-Moists’ theory of inference is based on intensional contexts. Fifth, Hui Shi’s position presupposes the art of knowing objects before any verbal expression and suggests the arbitrariness in the expressions of known objects. Sixth, Xunzi’s logic and semantics are extensional. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 136-140. In early 2011, Cow Heavy Books published The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature , a compendium of catalog 'blurbs' for non-existent desired or ideal texts. Along with Erinrose Mager, I edited the project, in a process that was more like curation as it mainly entailed asking a range of contemporary writers, theorists, and text-makers to send us an entry. What resulted was a creative/critical hybrid anthology, a small book in which each page opens (...) to a new iteration of textual desire. These texts explore the material possibilities of the book. Somewhat parallel to the call of N. Katherine Hayles who, in her book Writing Machines , urges literary theorists to take up the practice of Medium Specific Analysis (to account for the way the medium in which it is presented conditions or at least bears on a literary text). I see in the imagined works of The Official Catalog a call for the innovative writers of today to become Medium-Responsive. This would mean thinking through the specific (materially constrained) possibilities offered by the media in which texts are presented, and in thinking of the literary text as a kind of art in the greater context of other arts and the book as a medium situated within the context of many other media. In doing so, the contemporary writer refutes the chorus of critics who lament the death of the book by consistently reinvigorating literary innovation. The following are selections from The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature that show possible paths for (thinking about) new writing that engages with its medium. —Ben Segal, Editor THE CUBE Even the most radical non-linear texts have tended to exploit or subvert only the sequential possibilities of print—from the continuous loop of Joyce's Finnegans Wake to the shuffled cards of Marc Saporta's Composition No. 1 —but The Cube takes such multiplicities to an entirely new level. Set in a grid, the book's words can be read conventionally, across the page, as well as down each column—with either route making complete grammatical sense. But they can also be read as stacked strata and mined like lexical core samples through the layered pages of the book. Each path tells the same story from a different perspective (the narrative, naturally, hinges on the potential outcomes of a throw of cubed dice). By opening up the z-axis to reading in this way, The Cube recognizes the book as a three-dimensional sculptural space. Taking its lead from Armand Schwerner's (If Personal) and Raymond Queneau's Cent mille milliards de poèmes , The Cube reads like a experiment by Christian Bök precision printed by Emily McVarish. Craig Dworkin is the editor, most recently, of The Consequence of Innovation: 21st Century Poetics (Roof Books, 2008), The Sound of Poetry/The Poetry of Sound , with Marjorie Perloff (U. Chicago Press, 2009), and Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing , with Kenneth Goldsmith (Northwestern UP, 2010). He teaches at the University of Utah. HE GOES In He Goes , we read notes, letters and e-mails from a scholar father to his novelist daughter. We read of the father's musings on Beckett, on Pinter, on Anne Frank; his description of a woman hanging laundry from a line. We read about his journey toward dying, followed by a brief, third person account of his death, and his obituary. Then a long series of blank pages that demand to be read in real time, non-sentence by non-sentence, blank page by blank page. Finally—and it is here that this peculiar little book begins to soar—the dead father writes to his as-of-yet-still-living daughter. He does not write from death. He does not write from life. The words unprint, unstamp, unkindle. Still, they require no translation. The father "writes" (for lack of a better word) about the serendipitous, the commonplace; he recommends another book. He jokes. He asks his daughter how her stomach is. He says forget about presence in absence, darling; screw words as memorial and the guys in garbage cans and loss as redemption and I can't go on I must go on. He goes, "Love, Fodder." He goes, "incidentally." He goes, "I thought you might like to know." Elizabeth Graver is the author of a story collection, Have You Seen Me? , and three novels: Unravelling ; The Honey Thief ; and Awake . Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories , Best American Essays , and Prize Stories: the O. Henry Awards . She teaches at Boston College. THE PAPER ARCHIVIST A stunning package and a triumph of imagination, The Paper Archivist at times looks to be less a book than an abstract expressionist painting. Softly bound, its contents unfold to a single sheet of uneven thickness and texture—a canvas splattered with colored lines, stickers, broken sentences, and nonsense pictographs. But by following the directions to fold, dip, smell, rub, scratch, and tear the sheet according to the contingencies of the weather and using only the objects at hand, the reader slowly brings the forces hidden in the noise into a glorious sculptural convergence, processing a different story and shape each time. This is the rare book that continues to stir, whirl, and pop on every new reading. Sean Higgins blogs at BOMBlog where he is responsible for the column Volumes and Territories, as well as Ghost Island , a fledgling collaborative intellectual collective. THE SLOW BOOK The Slow Book , written by an anonymous author at the dawn of literacy, on a minor planet (otherwise notable only as the source of that exceptionally hardy, not very tasty grain called “shef” sowed on hostile planets as an early step to colonization), and encoded into a series of punctures on a strip of copper coiled inside a clever device, something between a player piano and an old-fashioned film projector, is being released into print, as was the author’s intention, at a rate of one word per century (local time). Each word is, across the Forty Galaxies, agreed to be uncannily apt for the century in which it appears—even “of,” in a century during which the highest value was attached to fidelity, whether to ideals, worlds, or romantic love; even “the,” which governed two centuries, one extraordinarily materialistic, during which advances in propulsion and navigation accelerated the exchange of exceptional objects between the remotest planets of the Forty, and one in which the central concern, both of philosophers and the common man, was whether, in an age of rapidly proliferating hypothetical worlds, anyone or anything concretely existed at all. Even those words published long before interstellar contact can be seen in retrospect to have transgalactic pertinence. As a result, attempts to abstract the machine from its publishers, Hobson & Hui, in order to “predict the future” for insight or gain by “fast- forwarding” the copper strip have been many and ingenious. While, in centuries of skepticism (“maybe”), or of unrest (“go”) the book has been nearly forgotten, in others it seems to haunt every thought, every deed, despite the fact that the subject of The Slow Book is still unclear. So far only a few sentences exist in print; everyone knows them, can quote them, offer the standard exegeses and assorted heresies; yet certainties are the stuff of adolescence; mature readers are forced to acknowledge that these sentences are probably only a preamble to the main argument. They contain no proper nouns, nor can we identify any definite theme. There is even disagreement about their tone, whether coolly ironic, as some insist, or ardent. The appearance of an unusual grammatical case, sometimes called the future pluperfect continuous, used to describe events that at some future point will have always been true (but are not yet)—hitherto known to appear only in the synthetic dogmas of the Thanatographical Society, and in certain highly circumscribed religious contexts—has suggested to some scholars that the Slow Book was originally intended for ritual use, but the proximity of the usage to a term designating a small hand plow that, as Pott and Mielcke have convincingly shown, would have borne a distinctly obscene double meaning in its culture of origin in the author’s time, argues otherwise. It is likewise unclear whether the situation that seems to be—with teasing incompleteness—sketched out in these few lines is intended as an illustration of general principles, a case study, a dramatic scene, or an extended metaphor. In short, we have no idea what The Slow Book is about. In our own time, we believe that it is almost certainly a work of fiction, but that may be because we live in the century of “if”. In each age, perhaps, we see the book we most need to read. Some have dared to suggest that the metal strip is blank until, with millennial fanfare, it advances into its new position, that no ur-text exists, that the book itself is brought into being—written—by our need. But that is exactly the sort of thing we would believe, in 7645. Shelley Jackson is the author of the story collection The Melancholy of Anatomy , the novel Half Life , and hypertexts including Patchwork Girl . The recipient of a Howard Foundation grant, a Pushcart Prize, and the 2006 James Tiptree Jr Award, she has also written and illustrated several children's books, including The Old Woman and the Wave ; Sophia, the Alchemist's Dog ; and Mimi's Dada Catifesto . Her stories and essays have appeared in Conjunctions , McSweeney's , The Paris Review , and Cabinet Magazine . In 2004 she launched her project SKIN , a story published in tattoos on 2095 volunteers. THE BOOK OF SOUNDS The Book of Sounds is just that: a book of sounds made when letters are construed in new ways to bring forth out of the alphabet new forms of speech. A book meant to be read out loud, The Book of Sounds is not unlike Laurie Anderson's O Superman or Brian Eno's Music for Airports in its attempt to make music out of the most primary and simplest of methods. It breaks language down to its barest bones and makes out of the page a drum that has never before been beaten upon. Peter Markus is the author of a novel, Bob, or Man on Boat (Dzanc Books) as well as two books of short fiction, Good, Brother and The Singing Fish , both of which were published by Calamari Press. A new collection of stories, We Make Mud , is now available from Dzanc Books. PARADISE OF THE BLIND by Celan Solen Although the reclusive Celan Solen published his first and only book in 1963—paying out-of-pocket for a limited edition of the slim collection No One May Have the Same Knowledge Again —he remained in American obscurity for almost three decades. In 1992 a micro-press in Istanbul brought out No One in Turkish. A German translation followed in 1995. Soon it became clear in literary circles Solen was a world-class (if highly unclassifiable) artist—lyrical, dense, enigmatic—who could undo the conventional short story in 397 words by inventing impossible worlds housed in impossible whirls (in “Small Sadnesses,” a single chartreuse tree frog in Borneo unknowingly holds time together by its very presence in the universe, while each letter of its tale refers, not to itself, but to the one preceding it in the alphabet). By his disappearance last year, Solen was considered master by a generation of writers and critics (except, alas, for those gentlemen in the Swedish Academy). Imagine, then, that generation’s delight at the discovery, locked away in the author’s safe-deposit box, of his second and final composition. Had Lynch’s Lost Highway been book instead of film, and had it been penned by Beckett at his least certain, revised by Barthelme at his most formally deranged, and typeset by Derrida at his most semiotically catastrophic, the result might have been something like Paradise of the Blind : interlacing narratives of a man composed of borrowed organs (whose most cheerless and difficult to locate, god, could only have been invented by an empty heart), a nonexistent medieval painting blamed for the ruin of future hope, and the spread of a philosophy that holds earth a mistake constantly recurring in the dream of a fish lying on the floor of the Atlantic (if the fish wakes, our world winks off)—all contained in a text packed with typed-over passages, torn postcards, poems that can be deciphered only when held up to a mirror, pages ornamented with trompe-l'œil paperclips and coffee stains and buzzing houseflies, some busy with illegible runes that dissolve when exposed to light, three that smell like roses or lemons (depending on whether a man or woman is reading), two that stain with the bloody fingerprints of the those who handle them, one that ignites when brushed with breath, thirteen sewn from baby skin, one that moans when touched, and one that screams—yet all without mass, unimaginable, and invisible. Lance Olsen is author of more than 20 books of and about innovative fiction, including, most recently, the novels Calendar of Regrets (2010) and Head in Flames (2009). He teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. SUPERSTRUCTURE! by Barbara D'Albi As soon as I opened the third drawer of Barbara D'Albi's wooden novel, everything became hopeless. Now in Ithaca, there was no going back. And it wasn't just the intricate series of shelves, hinged doors and locked drawers which D'Albi layered into the book, no, lo, I was constructed anew by the story. Who else but D'Albi to imagine a God who becomes a carpenter and gets killed?! And makes it good! You want stories? D'Albi is a skyscraper, built with planes and levers. Momentarily I wondered where I could shelve this book, and then I thought: no matter; I couldn't put it down. Adam Robinson lives in Baltimore, where he runs Publishing Genius. He is the author of Adam Robison and Other Poems and Say, Poem. 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RésuméCette brève étude tente de montrer comment la théorie peircienne de ľindividuation donne naissance à la première analyse moderne du nom propre. A travers une triple caractérisation, à la fois sémanique , pragmatique et sémiotique du nom propre, Peirce fournit en effet la première description véritablement éclairante des conditions sous lesquelles devient possible la désignation ?individus dans le langage, nous offrant un exemple particulièrement suggestif de ce qu'on peut concevoir comme universaux de langage.SummaryThis brief study is an attempt to show (...) how Peirce's theory of individuation gives rise to the first modern analysis of the proper noun. Through a triple characterization – semantic , pragmatic and semiotic – of the proper noun, Peirce provides the first truly enlightening description of the conditions in which it becomes possible to designate individuals in language, which gives us a particularly suggestive example of what can be understood as universals of language. (shrink)

Some proponents of higher education English as a medium of instruction have suggested listening to English lectures provides students the opportunity to incidentally acquire unknown words. A case study was designed to examine this assumption. First, the lexical profiles of 27 Introduction to English Language Teaching first-year undergraduate course lectures were computed to determine how many words students need to know for comprehension. Then an incoming year-1 undergraduate student with an English vocabulary size of 7,500 word families and mastery of (...) the most frequent 3,000 word families listened to these lectures across 13.5 weeks with the purpose of measuring incidental acquisition gains of three aspects of word knowledge for ten targeted words. Lastly, the student’s perceptions about listening to EMI lectures and potentials for this listening inducing incidental acquisition of word knowledge were gathered through a semi-structured interview. The lexical profiling of the entire corpus showed students need knowledge of the most frequent 4,000 English word families plus proper nouns and marginal words for 98% lexical coverage; however, some lectures present students with a more substantial lexical burden than the lectures overall. The student made the most gains in receptive meaning, followed by receptive form, and finally productive meaning. Content analysis of the interview transcript found seven themes representing the student’s perception about listening to EMI lectures and their potential for inducing incidental vocabulary acquisition. While the student found listening to the EMI lectures challenging, he perceived the process as useful in preparing for university studies and a career as a secondary English teacher. The student perceived attention, topic, existing vocabulary knowledge, lecturer’s native language, and lack of interaction with the lecturer to have moderated incidental learning of vocabulary through listening to English lectures. These results indicate a need to confirm whether incoming students’ vocabulary knowledge meet the lexical demands of the EMI lectures given in the Macau context. Furthermore, pedagogical training on teacher talk strategies and orientation training for incoming students should both be provided to ensure students are receiving high quality instruction. (shrink)

Aksumite elites electively identified themselves as “black” in relation to the paler integument of other Mediterranean peoples. Prior to the fourth century CE, the proper noun Aithiopía referred to the area of northern Sudan. Aksum, however, deliberately appropriated the Greek term for its own geopolitical purposes, partly as a way to write itself both into the grand narratives of Graeco-Roman history, where “Ethiopians” recurrently figure as morally “blameless,” as well as—with their conversion to Christianity—into Old and New Testamental (...) eschatologies that consistently position “Ethiopians” as first in the sight of God. This process of self-definition—achieved under the formative gaze of Hellenic, Roman, and Levantine Others—ultimately allowed ‘Ityȯpyā to become a key, if nonetheless still liminal and rogue, player in the post-Constantinian politico-religious arena, in such a way that both economic and cultural capital accrued to the benefit of Aksum. (shrink)