Quine maintained that philosophical and scientific theorizing should be conducted in an untyped language, which has just one style of variables and quantifiers. By contrast, typed languages, such as those advocated by Frege and Russell, include multiple styles of variables and matching kinds of quantification. Which form should our theories take? In this article, I argue that expressivity does not favour typed languages over untyped ones.

As a new foundational language for mathematics with its very different idea as to the status of logic, we should expect homotopy type theory to shed new light on some of the problems of philosophy which have been treated by logic. In this article, definite description, and in particular its employment within mathematics, is formulated within the type theory. Homotopy type theory has been proposed as an inherently structuralist foundational language for mathematics. Using the new formulation of definite descriptions, opportunities (...) to express ‘the structure of’ within homotopy type theory are explored, and it is shown there is little or no need for this expression. (shrink)

We present Property Theory with Curry Typing (PTCT), an intensional first-order logic for natural language semantics. PTCT permits fine-grained specifications of meaning. It also supports polymorphic types and separation types. We develop an intensional number theory within PTCT in order to represent proportional generalized quantifiers like “most.” We use the type system and our treatment of generalized quantifiers in natural language to construct a type-theoretic approach to pronominal anaphora that avoids some of the difficulties that undermine previous type-theoretic analyses of (...) this phenomenon. (shrink)

The original article has been corrected. The article is published with Open Access but was missing Open Access information. This has been added.

Various questions arise in semantic analysis concerning the nature of types. These questions include whether we need types in a semantic theory, and if so, whether some version of simple type theory (STT, Church 1940) is adequate or whether a richer more flexible theory is required to capture our semantic intuitions. Propositions and propositional attitudes can be represented in an essentially untyped first-order language, provided a sufficiently rich language of terms is adopted. In the absence of rigid typing, care needs (...) to be taken to avoid the paradoxes, for example by constraining what kinds of expressions are to be interpreted as propositions (Turner 1992). But the notion of type is ontologically appealing. In some respects, STT seems overly restrictive for natural language semantics. For this reason it is appropriate to consider a system of types that is more flexible than STT, such as a Curry-style typing (Curry & Feys 1958). Care then has to be taken to avoid the logical paradoxes. Here we show how such an account, based on the Property Theory with Curry Types (PTCT, Fox & Lappin 2005), can be formalised within Typed Predicate Logic (TPL, Turner 2009). This presentation provides a clear distinction between the classes of types that are being used to (i) avoid paradoxes (ii) allow predicative polymorphic types. TPL itself provides a means of expressing PTCT in a uniform language. (shrink)

One of the key intentions of fresh expressions of church is to reach the kind of people inherited church find it hard to reach. Psychological type profiling of church congregations has demonstrated that Anglican churches have particular difficulty in reaching those whose Jungian judging preference is for thinking rather than for feeling. Studies that have explored the psychological type profile of participants within fresh expressions suggest that they do not significantly differ from inherited congregations in terms of reaching thinking types. (...) Two previous studies, however, have reported higher proportions of thinking types attending cathedral carol services. The present study among 441 individuals attending the Holly Bough service in Liverpool Cathedral also found a higher proportion of thinking types among the participants. These findings suggest that cathedral carol services may be functioning as fresh expressions of church in a significant way.Contribution: Situated within the science of cathedral studies, rooted in psychological type theory, and drawing on data from 441 attendees at the Holly Bough service, this study demonstrates that cathedral services at Christmas are more successful than either inherited church or fresh expressions of church in reaching thinking types. (shrink)

Due to extensive product differentiation and the personalized aesthetic needs of consumers, modern enterprises need different expressions of information to attract consumers’ interest and improve their purchase intention. This study draws from the elaboration likelihood model, anchoring theory, and media richness theory to explore how the expression of advertised information can be effectively matched to the product type to enhance consumers’ purchase intention. The mediating effect of information-processing fluency and moderating effect of consumers’ personal involvement on this relationship is (...) also explored. Data from experiments and questionnaires involving 1,292 participants were analyzed. The results show that direct expression of advertised information is more suitable for advertising search products, while metaphorical expressions of advertised information are more suitable for advertising experience products. These combinations of product type and expression of advertised information can effectively improve consumers’ purchase intention. Meanwhile, the main combined effect of the product type and expression of advertised information is mediated by consumers’ information-processing fluency, and moderated by consumers’ personal involvement positively. (shrink)

Airway mucin secretion is important pathophysiologically and as a model of polarized epithelial regulated exocytosis. We find the trafficking protein, SNAP23, selectively expressed in secretory cells compared with ciliated and basal cells of airway epithelium by immunohistochemistry and FACS, suggesting that SNAP23 functions in regulated but not constitutive epithelial secretion. Heterozygous SNAP23 deletant mutant mice show spontaneous accumulation of intracellular mucin, indicating a defect in baseline secretion. However mucins are released from perfused tracheas of mutant and wild-type mice at the (...) same rate, suggesting that increased intracellular stores balance reduced release efficiency to yield a fully compensated baseline steady state. In contrast, acute stimulated release of intracellular mucin from mutant mice is impaired whether measured by a static imaging assay 5 min after exposure to the secretagogue ATP or by kinetic analysis of mucins released from perfused tracheas during the first 10 min of ATP exposure. Together, these data indicate that increased intracellular stores cannot fully compensate for the defect in release efficiency during intense stimulation. The lungs of mutant mice develop normally and clear bacteria and instilled polystyrene beads comparable to WT mice, consistent with these functions depending on baseline secretion that is fully compensated. (shrink)

I argue that imperatives express contents that are both cognitively and semantically related to, but nevertheless distinct from, modal propositions. Imperatives, on this analysis, semantically encode features of planning that are modally specified. Uttering an imperative amounts to tokening this feature in discourse, and thereby proffering it for adoption by the audience. This analysis deals smoothly with the problems afflicting Portner's Dynamic Pragmatic account and Kaufmann's Modal account. It also suggests an appealing reorientation of clause-type theorizing, in which the cognitive (...) act of updating on a typed sentence plays a central role in theorizing about both its semantics and role in discourse. (shrink)

John Searle's Speech Acts made a highly original contribution to work in the philosophy of language. Expression and Meaning is a direct successor, concerned to develop and refine the account presented in Searle's earlier work, and to extend its application to other modes of discourse such as metaphor, fiction, reference, and indirect speech arts. Searle also presents a rational taxonomy of types of speech acts and explores the relation between the meanings of sentences and the contexts of their utterance. (...) The book points forward to a larger theme implicit in these problems - the basis certain features of speech have in the intentionality of mind, and even more generally, the relation of the philosophy of language to the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

A BSTRACT. We present Property Theory with Curry Typing, an intensional first-order logic for natural language semantics. PTCT permits fine-grained specifications of meaning. It also supports polymorphic types and separation types.1 We develop an intensional number theory within PTCT in order to represent proportional generalized quantifiers like most. We use the type system and our treatment of generalized quantifiers in natural language to construct a typetheoretic approach to pronominal anaphora that avoids some of the difficulties that undermine previous type-theoretic analyses (...) of this phenomenon. (shrink)

John Searle's Speech Acts made a highly original contribution to work in the philosophy of language. Expression and Meaning is a direct successor, concerned to develop and refine the account presented in Searle's earlier work, and to extend its application to other modes of discourse such as metaphor, fiction, reference, and indirect speech arts. Searle also presents a rational taxonomy of types of speech acts and explores the relation between the meanings of sentences and the contexts of their utterance. (...) The book points forward to a larger theme implicit in these problems - the basis certain features of speech have in the intentionality of mind, and even more generally, the relation of the philosophy of language to the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes how Wittgenstein explicitly addresses the possibility of distinguishing between word types, and not only in the form of presentation of examples. Wittgenstein might be using the terms “kind of word” and “part of speech” in a quite unusual way. The author focuses on just one language, thus no longer being concerned with the possibility of developing diverse new languages without limit. It is not surprising that in the natural languages very many more word types than did “the (...) logicians,” above all Frege, Russell, and the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, particularly if one does not limit one's interest in language to the expression of a “judgeable content.”. Wittgenstein hints that the classification of words or sentences by their ways of usage on one hand and by their belonging to different types on the other, is a result of two different standpoints on the classification of elements of language. (shrink)

of type theory has been used successfully to formalize large parts of constructive mathematics, such as the theory of generalized recursive definitions [NPS90, ML79]. Moreover, it is also employed extensively as a framework for the development of high-level programming languages, in virtue of its combination of expressive strength and desirable proof-theoretic properties [NPS90, Str91]. In addition to simple types A, B, . . . and their terms x : A b(x) : B, the theory also has dependent types x : (...) A B(x), which are regarded as indexed families of types. There are simple type forming operations A × B and A → B, as well as operations on dependent types, including in particular the sum x:A B(x) and product x:A B(x) types (see the appendix for details). The Curry-Howard interpretation of the operations A × B and A → B is as propositional conjunction and.. (shrink)

The paper is a critical discussion of the rich and insightful final chapter of Mitchell Green’s Self-Expression . There, Green seeks to elucidate the compelling, but inchoate intuition that when we’re fully and most expertly expressing ourselves, we can ‘push out’ from within not just our inner representations, but also the ways that we feel. I question, first, whether this type of ‘qualitative expression’ is really distinct from the other expressive forms that Green explores, and also whether it’s (...) genuinely ‘expressive’. I then scrutinize the nature of the ‘qualitative congruences’ that lie at the heart of Green’s theory; and I wonder whether they can play the role Green claims they can in providing a novel account of artistic expression. (shrink)

In part 4 of Meaning, Expression, and Thought, Davis rejects what he calls Fregean ideational theories, according to which the meaning of an expression is an idea; and then presents his own account, which states that, e.g., the meaning of 'Primzahl' in German is the property of meaning prime number. Before casting doubt on the latter ontology of meanings, I come to Frege's defence by pointing out that he was not an advocate of the position Davis named after (...) him because Fregean senses are not lexical meanings and Fregean thoughts are not types of mental events. (shrink)

Ordinarily when someone tells us something about her beliefs, desires or intentions, we presume she is right. According to standard views, this deferential trust is justified on the basis of certain epistemic properties of her assertion. In this paper, I offer a non-epistemic account of deference. I first motivate the account by noting two asymmetries between the kind of deference we show psychological self-ascriptions and the kind we grant to epistemic experts more generally. I then propose a novel agency-based account (...) of deference. Drawing on recent work on self-knowledge, I argue that a person normally has a distinctive type of cognitive agency; specifically she is able to constitute her psychological attitudes by making judgments about what they ought to be. I then argue that a speaker expresses this agentive authority when she self-ascribes a psychological attitude and this is what justifies deferentially trusting what she says. Because the notion of expression plays a central role in this account, I contrast it with recent neo-expressivist theories. (shrink)

In the domain of ontology design as well as in Knowledge Representation, modeling universals is a challenging problem.Most approaches that have addressed this problem rely on Description Logics (DLs) but many difficulties remain, due to under-constrained representation which reduces the inferences that can be drawn and further causes problems in expressiveness. In mathematical logic and program checking, type theories have proved to be appealing but, so far they have not been applied in the formalization of ontologies. To bridge this gap, (...) we present in this paper a theory for representing ontologies in a dependently typed framework which relies on strong formal foundations including both a constructive logic and a functional type system. The language of this theory defines in a precise way what ontological primitives such as classes, relations, properties, etc., and thereof roles, are. The first part of the paper details how these primitives are defined and used within the theory. In a second part, we focus on the formalization of the role primitive. A review of significant role properties leads to the specification of a role profile and most of the remaining work details through numerous examples, how the proposed theory is able to fully satisfy this profile. It is demonstrated that dependent types can model several non-trivial aspects of roles including a formal solution for generalization hierarchies, identity criteria for roles and other contributions. A discussion is given on how the theory is able to cope with many of the constraints inherent in a good role representation. (shrink)

Often those attempting to resolve the answering machine paradox appeal to Kaplan's claim that the objects of semantic evaluation are expression-types evaluated with respect to indices, instead of utterances, as part of their solution. This article argues that Dylan Dodd and Paula Sweeney exemplify the kind of mistakes theorists make in applying such expression-based semantic theories in that they conflate what is asserted with semantic content, and they take their approach to utterance interpretation as having semantic significance. In (...) light of these mistakes, we learn two things. First, we learn how expression-based semantic theorists can avoid making these kinds of mistakes. Second, we learn how the limits of expression-based semantics can contribute to what we should expect a semantic theory to explain regarding how semantics fits into a more general theory of linguistic communication and linguistic understanding. (shrink)

We formulate a Curry-typed logic with fine-grained intensionality within Turner’s typed predicate logic. This allows for an elegant presentation of a theory that corresponds to Fox and Lappin’s property theory with curry typing, but without the need for a federation of languages. We then consider how the fine-grained intensionality of this theory can be given an operational interpretation. This interpretation suggests itself as expressions in the theory can be viewed as terms in the untyped lambda-calculus, which provides a model of (...) computation. (shrink)

Following Yik and Russell (1999) a judgement paradigm was used to examine to what extent differential accuracy of recognition of facial expressions allows evaluation of the well-foundedness of different theoretical views on emotional expression. Observers judged photos showing facial expressions of seven emotions on the basis of: (1) discrete emotion categories; (2) social message types; (3) appraisal results; or (4) action tendencies, and rated their confidence in making choices. Emotion categories and appraisals were judged significantly more accurately and confidently (...) than messages or action tendencies. These results do not support claims of primacy for message or action tendency views of facial expression. Based on a componential model of emotion it is suggested that judges can infer components from categories and vice versa. (shrink)

We present diverse evidence for the claim of Pullum and Rawlins (2007) that expressives behave differently from descriptives in constructions that enforce a particular kind of semantic identity between elements. Our data are drawn from a wide variety of languages and construction types, and they point uniformly to a basic linguistic distinction between descriptive content and expressive content (Kaplan 1999; Potts 2007).

It is plausible to think that our knowledge of linguistic types can bejustified by what we know about the tokens of these types. But one then hasto explain what it is about the relation a type bears to its tokens that makespossible the move from knowledge of the concrete to knowledge of theabstract. I argue that the standard solution to this difficulty, that the relevant relation is instantiation and that the transition is inductive generalization, is inadequate. I propose an alternative, (...) according to which tokens are representations of the type they belong to. I also defend this view against the charge that it cannot account for the systematic ambiguity of expressions like ‘word’ or ‘sentence’, and the objection that it leads to an implausible form of Platonism. (shrink)

This article argues that what Grice termed ‘particularized conversational implicatures’ can be divided into two types. In some cases, it is possible to reconstruct the inference from the explicit content of the utterance to the implicature without employing a premise to the effect that that the speaker expressed that content (by means of an utterance). I call these ‘material implicatures’. Those whose reconstruction relies on a premise about the speaker's verbal behaviour, by contrast, I call ‘behavioural implicatures’. After showing that (...) the division is theoretically significant, I ask whether current pragmatic theory is able to accommodate it. I conclude that, while (neo)-Gricean pragmatics cannot do so straightforwardly, the distinction is already implicit in Relevance Theory. The article ends by considering the question of whether, in the light of previous discussion, speaker meaning really is always an instance of non-natural meaning. (shrink)

Mendler, N.P., Inductive types and type constraints in the second-order lambda calculus, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 51 159–172. We add to the second-order lambda calculus the type constructors μ and ν, which give the least and greatest solutions to positively defined type expressions. Strong normalizability of typed terms is shown using Girard's candidat de réductibilité method. Using the same structure built for that proof, we prove a necessary and sufficient condition for determining when a collection of equational type (...) constraints admit the typing of only strongly normalizable terms. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that there is an inductive and a non-inductive argument from position to know, and will characterise the latter as an argument from authority because of providing content-independent reasons. I will also argue that both types of argument should be doubt-preserving: testimony cannot justify a stronger cognitive attitude in the arguer than the expert herself expresses when she testifies. Failure to appreciate this point undercuts Mizrahi’s claim that arguments from expert opinion are weak.

This article explores the importance of mental expression in understanding the phenomenon of inner speech. Most accounts of inner speech assume from the outset the common idea that the expressions of a subject (e.g., a smile) and their mental states (e.g., joy) are two different types of items somehow related to each other. This relational view of expression is challenged in this article. Firstly, it is argued that relational views of expression cannot explain some features of inner (...) speech. Secondly, a non-relational view of expression is developed, according to which mental states are patterns of expressive behavior. Thirdly, it is argued that only from the framework of non-relational expressivism is it possible to explain the main features of inner speech. Finally, it is concluded that non-relational expressivism emerges as a prominent contender among contemporary views of the mind, as it provides the only account of inner speech that can fully explain the phenomenon. (shrink)

Type-logical semantics studies linguistic meaning with the help of the theory of types. The latter originated with Russell as an answer to the paradoxes, but has the additional virtue that it is very close to ordinary language. In fact, type theory is so much more similar to language than predicate logic is, that adopting it as a vehicle of representation can overcome the mismatches between grammatical form and predicate logical form that were observed by Frege and Russell. The grammatical forms (...) of ordinary language sentences consequently may be taken to be much less misleading than logicians in the first half of the 20th century often thought them to be. This was realized by Richard Montague, who used the theory of types to translate fragments of ordinary language into a logical language. Semantics is commonly divided into lexical semantics, which studies the meaning of words, and compositional semantics, which studies the way in which complex phrases obtain a meaning from their constituents. The strength of type-logical semantics lies with the latter, but type-logical theories can be combined with many competing hypotheses about lexical meaning, provided these hypotheses are expressed using the language of type theory. (shrink)

It is often said that in a purely formal perspective, intuitionistic logic has no obvious advantage to deal with the liar-type paradoxes. In this paper, we will argue that the standard intuitionistic natural deduction systems are vulnerable to the liar-type paradoxes in the sense that the acceptance of the liar-type sentences results in inference to absurdity (⊥). The result shows that the restriction of the Double Negation Elimination (DNE) fails to block the inference to ⊥. It is, however, not the (...) problem of the intuitionistic approaches to the liar-type paradoxes but the lack of expressive power of the standard intuitionistic natural deduction system. We introduce a meta-level negation for a given system and a meta-level absurdity, ⋏, to the intuitionistic system. We shall show that in the system, the inference to ⊥ is not given without the assumption that the system is complete. Moreover, we consider the Double Meta-Level Negation Elimination rules (DMNE) which implicitly assume the completeness of the system. Then, the restriction of DMNE can rule out the inference to ⊥. (shrink)

Alfred Schutz’s theory of the social world, often neglected in philosophy, has the potential to capture the interplay of identity and difference which shapes our action, interaction, and experience in everyday life. Compared to still dominant identity-based models such as that of Jürgen Habermas, who assumes a coordination of meaning built on the idealisation of stable rules, Schutz’s theory is an important step forward. However, his central notion of a “type” runs into a difficulty which requires constructive criticism. Against the (...) background of Schutz’s theory of meaning inspired by Bergson and Husserl, his idea of types “taken for granted until further notice” is shown to express a primacy of identity which, in the final analysis, leads into the implausible scenario of ‘ubiquitous tunnel vision’. This makes it necessary to go beyond Schutz and assume an inherently motivated tendency towards difference in meaning termed ‘spontaneity’. Where spontaneity and the opposed tendency towards identity of meaning work together in the application of types, they enable embodied subjects to interact with the world and with each other in the routine yet flexible and sometimes innovative ways which we all know. (shrink)

We describe an infinitary logic for metric structures which is analogous to Lω1,ω. We show that this logic is capable of expressing several concepts from analysis that cannot be expressed in finitary continuous logic. Using topological methods, we prove an omitting types theorem for countable fragments of our infinitary logic. We use omitting types to prove a two-cardinal theorem, which yields a strengthening of a result of Ben Yaacov and Iovino concerning separable quotients of Banach spaces.

A successor relation between theories T und T₁ express that T₁, the successor of T, has justifiably superseded T. In physics, for instance, Newton's theory of gravitation has superseded Kepler's laws and, in turn, Einstein's theory has become the successor of Newton's. By now there is no agreement on how a general concept of successor relation would have to be construed. In the present paper attention is drawn to two types of such relations, one deductive the other confirmatory. It seems (...) that what most people are looking for is the deductive type of relation. However, a deductive successor relation has to be justified by showing that if it holds then another, confirmatory relation holds, saying roughly that the actual empirical success of the deducing theory is at least as good as the corresponding success of the deduced theory. Under certain restrictions such a justification is given in the paper. (shrink)

Belief in destiny is one of the principles of faith. Although the belief in fate is not explicitly mentioned in the Qur’an, there are many verses that indicate this belief. There are many hadiths about fate that have reached us from the Prophet. Although there are schools that deny destiny, Ahl al-Sunnah schools Ash‘aris and Maturidis accept the existence of belief in destiny. The definitions of destiny of these schools are expressed with words that can be used interchangeably. However, fate (...) should not be evaluated in a single category. It also has varieties. If destiny is perceived as only one kind of Forced destiny, it is inevitable to cause misunderstandings. Forced fate; it is destiny that does not give freedom to beings; It happens with the knowledge, will, power and creation of Allah. Some destinies of inanimate substances, plants, animals and humans are of this type. Jabr and responsibility are incompatible. Although some actions take place in their own bodies, people are not responsible for their forced destiny. Man is a freely created being within certain limits. The ability of intellect, will, power, and carrying out actions has been granted to them. By using them, a person performs his acts of will, and as a result, he becomes responsible for his actions. Having free will and freedom distinguishes humans from other living things. Where there is no human freedom, there is no responsibility. Human life is not uniform, it is in a state of constant change and transformation. In addition to these two types of fate, there is also a type of fate that turns into willful fate, although it was forced in the beginning. In addition to this, there are some actions that start with the will of man and later turn into forced fate. There are also types of disability that we have examined in connection with the belief in destiny and its types. Allah has sent humans to the world to be tested. Illness and disability are also part of the test. Diseases; they may be due to genetic, environmental factors, and food-related. Congenital diseases and disabilities can sometimes cause the world test to be difficult. The biological rules set by Allah are also valid for humans. Genetic hereditary diseases and disabilities occur when the genes carried by the parents are passed on to the child. While some genes are recessive, some genes are dominant. Genes that cause hereditary diseases and disabilities show an uneven distribution depending on their geographical habitats, sharing the same environment in the historical process, and the extent of intermingling of their lineages through marriages. While recessive genes can be passed on from generation to generation, dominant genes that cause death generally do not have the opportunity to pass on to the next generation. In today’s context, the diagnosis of genetic diseases and disabilities is attainable, enabling the implementation of necessary precautions accordingly; furthermore, partial or even complete treatment opportunities can be available depending on the circumstances. In this respect, all of the congenital diseases and disabilities due to genes are a forced fate that is not in the hands of man. As for those diseases and disabilities for which treatment opportunities exist, they fall under the category of fate that transitions from forced fate to willful destiny. Some genetic diseases and disabilities of people may appear in later ages. However, non-genetic diseases and disabilities are also facts of life. Every individual can become ill and experience disability during certain periods of their life. Diseases and disabilities can occur with a number of factors that do not depend on an individual's will, actions, or behaviors. Such diseases are also within the scope of forced fate. A person can also be disabled due to one’s own mistakes and negligence. However, it is a behavior befitting a Muslim to be treated in cases of all kinds of diseases and disabilities. The treatment of diseases for which there is a cure is a willed destiny. Diseases and obstacles that cannot be cured are forced fate. (shrink)

John Searle's Speech Acts made a highly original contribution to work in the philosophy of language. Expression and Meaning is a direct successor, concerned to develop and refine the account presented in Searle's earlier work, and to extend its application to other modes of discourse such as metaphor, fiction, reference, and indirect speech arts. Searle also presents a rational taxonomy of types of speech acts and explores the relation between the meanings of sentences and the contexts of their utterance. (...) The book points forward to a larger theme implicit in these problems - the basis certain features of speech have in the intentionality of mind, and even more generally, the relation of the philosophy of language to the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

It is plausible to think that our knowledge of linguistic types can bejustified by what we know about the tokens of these types. But one then hasto explain what it is about the relation a type bears to its tokens that makespossible the move from knowledge of the concrete to knowledge of theabstract. I argue that the standard solution to this difficulty, that the relevant relation is instantiation and that the transition is inductive generalization, is inadequate. I propose an alternative, (...) according to which tokens are representations of the type they belong to. I also defend this view against the charge that it cannot account for the systematic ambiguity of expressions like ‘word’ or ‘sentence’, and the objection that it leads to an implausible form of Platonism. (shrink)

How can we prove that some fragment of a given logic has the power to define precisely all structural properties that satisfy some characteristic semantic preservation condition? This issue is a fundamental one for classical model theory and applications in non-classical settings alike. While methods differ greatly, and while the classical methods can usually not be matched for instance in the setting of finite model theory, this note surveys some interesting commonality revolving around the use and availability of tractable representatives (...) in the relevant model classes. The construction of models in which simple invariants like partial types based on some weak fragment control all the relevant structural properties, may be seen at the heart of such questions. We highlight some constructions involving degrees of acyclicity and saturation that can be achieved in finite model constructions, and discuss their uses towards expressive completeness w.r.t. bisimulation based equivalences in hypergraphs and relational structures. The emphasis is on the combinatorial challenges in such more constructive approaches that work in non-classical settings and especially in finite model theory. One new result concerns expressive completeness w.r.t. guarded negation bisimulation, a back-and-forth equivalence involving local homomorphisms. (shrink)

We investigate some relations between omitting types of a countable theory and some notions defined in terms of the real line, such as for example the ideal of meager subsets ofR. We also try to express connections between the logical structure of a theory and the existence of its countable models omitting certain families of types.It is well known that assuming MA we can omit (...) able to omit shrink)

While individuals interact, they coordinate their feelings and emotions. They also coordinate several kinds of expression while interacting, like facial expressions and gestures. Inspired by Karl Bühler’s Organon model and Henri Bergson’s description of remembering experiences, we explore interpersonal coordination during a collaborative remembering task between two people. We present a case study of one dyad employing videography to identify and distinguish two types of spontaneous interpersonal coordination. In a later stage, separate interviews of both participants are analyzed to (...) establish whether content, freely remembered, is related to the previously observed coordination. The data describes that expressive-affective coordination during interaction is directly linked to the subjective organization of experience in individual remembering. We discuss these results, emphasizing the intersubjective aspects of lived experience and their relationship to expressive and representational aspects of coordination and remembering. (shrink)

A small proportion of clinical strains of Candida albicans undergo white–opaque switching. Until recently it was not clear why, since most strains carry the genes differentially expressed in the unique opaque phase. The answer to this enigma lies in the mating process. The majority of C. albicans strains are heterozygous for the mating type locus MTL (a/α) and cannot undergo white–opaque switching. However, when these cells undergo homozygosis at the mating type locus (i.e., become a/a or α/α), they can switch, (...) and they must switch in order to mate. Even though the newly identified stages of mating mimic those of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the process differs in its dependency on switching, and the effects switching has on gene regulation. This unique feature of C. albicans mating appears to be intimately intertwined with its pathogenesis. The unique, newly discovered dependencies of switching on homozygosis at the MTL locus and of mating on switching are, therefore, reviewed within the context of pathogenesis. BioEssays 26:10–20, 2004. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This study investigates how typological and metaphorical construal differences may affect the use and frequency of temporal expressions in English and Spanish. More precisely, we explore whether there are any differences between English, a satellite-framed language, and Spanish, a verb-framed language, in the use of certain temporal linguistic expressions that include a spatial, deictic component (Deictic Time), a purely temporal relation between two events (Sequential Time) or the expression of the duration of an event (Duration). To achieve this, we (...) perform two different types of analysis. First, we conduct an informational gain or loss analysis (Verkerk, 2013) of 1,650 of English-to-Spanish translations extracted from parallel corpora. Secondly, we compare the frequency of 33 English and 27 Spanish temporal expressions in two similar written online corpora (EnTenTen and EsTenTen, respectively) and a television news spoken corpus (NewsScape). Our results suggest that English uses “deictic directional expressions” (explicitly stating the spatial location of the temporal event,, e.g., back in those days/in the future ahead) much more frequently than Spanish, to the extent that directional information is normally excluded in English-to-Spanish translations. Also, sequential expressions (such as before that/later than) and duration expressions (during the whole day) are much more frequent in Spanish. These usage differences, explained by the variability in motion typology and metaphoric construal, open up the interesting question of how these differences in linguistic usage could affect the conceptualization of time of English and Spanish speakers. (shrink)

In this paper I defend an account of the nature of propositional content according to which the proposition expressed by a declarative sentence is a certain type of action a speaker performs in uttering that sentence. On this view, the semantic contents of proper names turn out to be types of reference acts. By carefully individuating these types, it is possible to provide new solutions to Frege’s puzzles about names in identity- and belief-sentences.

In this article I contrast in two ways those conceptions of semantic theory deriving from Richard Montague's Intensional Logic (IL) and later developments with conceptions that stick pretty closely to a far weaker semantic apparatus for human first languages. IL is a higher-order language incorporating the simple theory of types. As such, it endows predicates with a reference. Its intensional features yield a conception of propositional identity (namely necessary equivalence) that has seemed to many to be too coarse to be (...) acceptable. In the most usual expositions, it takes the object of linguistic explication to be the sentence in a context, as in Kaplan, 1977. This last has led to recent speculations about 'shifted' contexts. IL may be contrasted with a more linguistically (representationally) bound conception of propositions and interpretation of their predicational and functional parts, and with the explication, not of sentences in contexts, but of potential utterances, relative to the antecedent referential intentions of their speakers. We may then advance, as an empirical hypothesis about all human languages, that contexts never shift, and propose that apparent counterexamples stem from the misconstrual of linguistically coded anaphoric relations, relations that are wanted independently anyway. Donald Davidson's posthumous volume Truth and Predication mounts a sustained criticism of the notion of predicate reference. This criticism is not decisive. However, it may put the ball in the other court, insofar as it asks for a justification of what IL takes as given. Elaborations of IL using structured propositions, recently defended in King, 2007, recognize the problem of predicate reference, and the correlative issue of the 'unity of the proposition'; but I do not see that they can do better than bite the bullet already bitten in IL. I agree with Frege's insight that full justification of predicate reference pushes the boundaries of natural language, and to that extent may not be found within the semantic (as opposed to general scientific) enterprise. (shrink)