Previous studies have shown that object properties are processed faster when they follow properties from the same perceptual modality than properties from different modalities. These findings suggest that language activates sensorimotor processes, which, according to those studies, can only be explained by a modal account of cognition. The current paper shows how a statistical linguistic approach of word co-occurrences can also reliably predict the category of perceptual modality a word belongs to (auditory, olfactory–gustatory, visual–haptic), even though the statistical (...) class='Hi'>linguistic approach is less precise than the modal approach (auditory, gustatory, haptic, olfactory, visual). Moreover, the statistical linguistic approach is compared with the modal embodied approach in an experiment in which participants verify properties that share or shift modalities. Response times suggest that fast responses can best be explained by the linguistic account, whereas slower responses can best be explained by the embodied account. These results provide further evidence for the theory that conceptual processing is both linguistic and embodied, whereby less precise linguistic processes precede precise simulation processes. (shrink)

Drawing upon research in philosophical logic, linguistics and cognitive science, this study explores how our ability to use and understand language depends upon our capacity to keep track of complex features of the contexts in which we converse.

A common framing has it that any adequate treatment of quotation has to abandon one of the following three principles: (i) The quoted expression is a syntactic constituent of the quote phrase; (ii) If two expressions are derived by applying the same syntactic rule to a sequence of synonymous expressions, then they are synonymous; (iii) The language contains synonymous but distinct expressions. In the following, a formal syntax and semantics will be provided for a quotational language which adheres to all (...) three principles. The point here is not merely to provide a “possibility proof”, but to reveal the hard constraints on the theory of quotation, and to highlight certain assumptions at the syntax/semantics/post-semantics interfaces. (shrink)

The development of reflex theory in its Pavlovian interpretation had significant resonance in a wide range of academic research areas. Its impact on the so-called humanities was, perhaps, no less than the effect it had in medical science. The idea of the conditioned reflex suggesting a physiological explanation of behaviour patterns received a particularly warm welcome in philosophy and psychology as it provided a scientifically-based tool for a conceptual u-turn towards objectivism. This article looks into the ways these ideas contributed (...) to the formation of the Soviet language theory, namely, to the sociological interpretation of language development and speech production presented in the pioneering works of Sergej M. Dobrogaev (1873–1952). (shrink)

Theories of embodied cognition assume that concepts are grounded in non-linguistic, sensorimotor experience. In support of this assumption, previous studies have shown that upwards response movements are faster than downwards movements after participants have been presented with words whose referents are typically located in the upper vertical space. This is taken as evidence that processing these words reactivates sensorimotor experiential traces. This congruency effect was also found for novel words, after participants learned these words as labels for novel objects (...) that they encountered either in their upper or lower visual field. While this indicates that direct experience with a word's referent is sufficient to evoke said congruency effects, the present study investigates whether this direct experience is also a necessary condition. To this end, we conducted five experiments in which participants learned novel words from purely linguistic input: Novel words were presented in pairs with real up- or down-words ; they were presented in natural sentences where they replaced these real words ; they were presented as new labels for these real words ; and they were presented as labels for novel combined concepts based on these real words. In all five experiments, we did not find any congruency effects elicited by the novel words; however, participants were always able to make correct explicit judgements about the vertical dimension associated to the novel words. These results suggest that direct experience is necessary for reactivating experiential traces, but this reactivation is not a necessary condition for understanding the corresponding aspects of word meaning. (shrink)

This book is an introduction to the relationship between the morphosyntactic properties of sentences and their associated illocutionary forces or force potentials. It draws on insights from linguistics, philosophy, and sociology, and may be used as a textbook for undergraduate or graduate courses in semantics, pragmatics, and morphosyntax.

Wittgenstein famously remarks that ‘the meaning of a word is its use’ (PI §43). Whether or not one views this as gesturing at a ‘theory’ of meaning, or instead as aiming primarily at dissuading us from certain misconceptions of language that are a source of puzzlement, it is clear that Wittgenstein held that for certain purposes the meaning of an expression could profitably be characterised as its use. Throughout his later writings, however, Wittgenstein’s appeal to the notion of use pulls (...) in two directions. In several places, Wittgenstein seems to connect the notion of an expression’s meaning with that of use in the sense of usage or practice. More specifically, he suggests that for an expression to possess meaning is for there to be a practice of employing it according to certain rules. ‘That’, he tells us, ‘is why there exists a correspondence between the concepts “rule” and “meaning”’ (OC §62; cf. PG 68; PO 51; RFM VI §28; VW 103). Indeed, Wittgenstein goes so far as to say, ‘The rule-governed nature of our languages permeates our life’ (RC §303). Call the view that the meaning of an expression is determined by a general principle governing its use, rulism. (shrink)

Does context and context-dependence belong to the research agenda of semantics - and, specifically, of formal semantics? Not so long ago many linguists and philosophers would probably have given a negative answer to the question. However, recent developments in formal semantics have indicated that analyzing natural language semantics without a thorough accommodation of context-dependence is next to impossible. The classification of the ways in which context and context-dependence enter semantic analysis, though, is still a matter (...) of much controversy and some of these disputes are ventilated in the present collection. This book is not only a collection of papers addressing context-dependence and methods for dealing with it: it also records comments to the papers and the authors' replies to the comments. In this way, the contributions themselves are contextually dependent. In view of the fact that the contributors to the volume are such key figures in contemporary formal semantics as Hans Kamp, Barbara Partee, Reinhard Muskens, Nicholas Asher, Manfred Krifka, Jaroslav Peregrin and many others, the book represents a quite unique inquiry into the current activities on the semantics side of the semantics/pragmatics boundary. (shrink)

Epistemic invariantism is the view that the truth conditions of knowledge ascriptions don’t vary across contexts. Epistemic purism is the view that purely practical factors can’t directly affect the strength of your epistemic position. The combination of purism and invariantism, pure invariantism, is the received view in contemporary epistemology. It has lately been criticized by contextualists, who deny invariantism, and impurists, who deny purism. A central charge against pure invariantism is that it poorly accommodates linguistic intuitions about certain cases. (...) In this paper I develop a new response to this charge. I propose that pure invariantists can explain the relevant linguistic intuitions on the grounds that they track the propriety of indirect speech acts, in particular indirect requests and denials. [Note: this paper was written in 2010-11.]. (shrink)

Despite the recent upsurge in research on abstract concepts, there remain puzzles at the foundation of their empirical study. These are most evident when we consider what is required to assess a person’s abstract conceptual abilities without using language as a prompt or requiring it as a response—as in classic non-verbal categorization tasks, which are standardly considered tests of conceptual understanding. After distinguishing two divergent strands in the most common conception of what it is for a concept to be abstract, (...) we argue that neither reliably captures the kind of abstraction required to successfully categorize in non-verbal tasks. We then present a new conception of concept abstractness—termed Trial Concreteness—that is keyed to individual categorization trials. It has advantages in capturing the context-relativity of the degree of abstraction required for the application of a concept and fittingly correlates with participant success in recent experiments. (shrink)

This chapter provides some tentative conclusions about the likely linguistic status of context‐sensitive semantic properties. It argues that pragmatism is fully aligned with a standard approach to syntax, and should be the default view of the notion of a linguistic 'context', viz., context is not a well‐behaved linguistic notion. But rather a potentially open‐ended way of marking the role extra‐linguistic factors can play in fixing what is said on an occasion of the use (...) of a linguistic type. Context sensitivity is not restricted to the construal of overt linguistic material. It also appears that the construal of tokens of many constructions depends upon contextual factors that are not explicitly encoded in linguistic material; that is, if pronouns are explicit variables, then there appear to be implicit or covert variables as well. Truth‐value of a sentence in context is assigned relative to the value a coordinate of the index takes under the scope of the operator. (shrink)

Bringing together different theoretical frameworks, the volume provides thought-provoking discussions of how the notion of context can be understood, modeled, and implemented in linguistics.

This introduction does three things. We first give an overview of the linguistic justice debate in normative political philosophy. We then situate Philippe Van Parijs’s position within it, by zooming in on Van Parijs’s two major normative claims: the support of the rise of English as the global lingua franca and the defence of linguistic territoriality. Finally, we clarify how each of the essays that follow this introduction relates to those two claims.

Distributed Cognition and Integrational Linguistics have much in common. Both approaches see communicative activity and intelligent behaviour in general as strongly con- text-dependent and action-oriented, and brains as permeated by history. But there is some ten- sion between the two frameworks on three important issues. The majority of theorists of distributed cognition want to maintain some notions of mental representation and computa- tion, and to seek generalizations and patterns in the various ways in which creatures like us couple with technologies, (...) media, and other agents; many also want to offer explanations at subpersonal levels which may undercut the autonomy of personal-level accounts. In contrast, dominant views in integrational linguistics reject all invocation of representation, resist the explanatory search for similarity across contexts and moments, and see linguistics as a lay dis- cipline which should not offer explanations in terms alien to ordinary agents. On each of these issues, I argue that integrationists could move closer to the distributed cognition frame- work without losing the most important aspects of their view: integrationist criticisms of mainstream or classical theories can be respected while alliances with revised cognitivist views about representation, context, and explanation are developed. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)

A Note on the Linguistic Determinacy in the Legal Context This paper discusses linguistic vagueness in the context of a semantically restricted domain of legal language. It comments on selected aspects of vagueness found in contemporary English normative legal texts and on terminological problems related to vagueness and indeterminacy both in the legal domain and language in general. The discussion is illustrated with selected corpus examples of vagueness in English legal language and attempts to show problems (...) of the relation between vagueness and ambiguity in the context of legal institutionalised systems.The discussion also evokes theoretical issues which pertain to the relation between legal texts and their contexts, the problem of how linguistic forms acquire their contextual meaning and how linguistic expressions are disambiguated. These issues are further related to the post-Gricean theory of relevance, its inferential model of communication, and the interplay between the linguistic code and inferential processes in communication. (shrink)

Nonindexical Context-Dependence and the Interpretation as Abduction Approach Inclusive nonindexical context-dependence occurs when the preferred interpretation of an utterance implies its lexically-derived meaning. It is argued that the corresponding processes of free or lexically mandated enrichment can be modeled as abductive inference. A form of abduction is implemented in Simple Type Theory on the basis of a notion of plausibility, which is in turn regarded a preference relation over possible worlds. Since a preordering of doxastic alternatives taken for (...) itself only amounts to a relatively vacuous ad hoc model, it needs to be combined with a rational way of learning from new evidence. Lexicographic upgrade is implemented as an example of how an agent might revise his plausibility ordering in light of new evidence. Various examples are given how this apparatus may be used to model the contextual resolution of context-dependent or semantically incomplete utterances. The described form of abduction is limited and merely serves as a proof of concept, but the idea in general has good potential as one among many ways to build a bridge between semantics and pragmatics since inclusive context-dependence is ubiquitous. (shrink)

Natural languages are riddled with context-sensitivity. One and the same string of words can express many different meanings on occasion of use, and yet we understand one another effortlessly, on the fly. How do we do so? What fixes the meaning of context-sensitive expressions, and how are we able to recover the meaning so effortlessly? -/- This book offers a novel response: we can do so because we draw on a broad array of subtle linguistic conventions that (...) determine the interpretation of context-sensitive items. Contrary to the dominant tradition, which maintains that the meaning of context-sensitive language is underspecified by grammar and that interpretation relies on non-linguistic cues and speakers' intentions, this book argues that meaning is determined entirely by discourse conventions, rules of language that have largely been missed and the effects of which have been mistaken for extra-linguistic effects of an utterance situation on meaning. The linguistic account of context developed here sheds new light on the nature of linguistic content and the interaction between content and context. At the same time, it provides a novel model of context that should constrain and help evaluate debates across many subfields of philosophy where appeal to context has been common, often leading to surprising conclusions such as epistemology, ethics, value theory, metaphysics, metaethics, and logic. (shrink)

One of the major problems for Critical Discourse Analysts is how to move on from their insightful critical analyses to successfully ‘acting on the world in order to transform it’. This paper discusses, with detailed exemplification, some of the areas where linguists have moved beyond description to acting on and changing the world. Examples from three murder trials show how essential it is, in order to protect the rights of witnesses and defendants, to have audio records of significant interviews with (...) police officers. The article moves on to discuss the potentially serious consequences of the many communicative problems inherent in legal/lay interaction and illustrates a few of the linguist-led improvements to important texts. Finally, the article turns to the problems of using linguistic data to try to determine the geographical origin of asylum seekers. The intention of the article is to act as a call to arms to linguists; it concludes with the observation that ‘innumerable mountains remain for those with a critical linguistic perspective who would like to try to move one’. (shrink)

SUMMARYThis essay combines the study of Humboldt's sources with a critique of the treatment of this subject in most studies of Humboldt and his linguistic thought. One crucial issue is the date of his early ‘Über Denken und Sprechen’, which is our first evidence of his mature thinking about language. This text is conventionally dated 1795, thus ruling out that Humboldt might be indebted to the anthropo-linguistic philosophy that he explored in Paris a few years later. But a (...) host of facts make the date untenable and the debt unquestionable, including incontrovertible evidence that ‘Über Denken und Sprechen’ relies on Condillac's argument for the anti-idealist principle that the distinction between subject and object is the absolute precondition for self-awareness and reflection, and thus, by the same token, for the concept of Weltansicht. ‘Über Denken und Sprechen’ also shows that Humboldt was inspired to choose Condillac's and Destutt de Tracy's argument over that of Fichte for what Berkeley disapprovingly called ‘outness’. This analysis exemplifies the critique that is advanced in this essay. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 7, July 2022.

This paper attempts to account for the contrastive discourse connective (tam) tersine (‘on the contrary’) in Turkish discourse. We suggest that this connective evokes a discourse structure which has at least three parts: the material in the prior linguistic context, its refutation, and then rectification in the clause where the connective is hosted. Since negation is obligatory in the discourse context for refutation, we include a discussion of negation and we conclude that the obligatory negative clauses are (...) instances of descriptive negation rather than metalinguistic negation. We show that linguistic and cognitive contexts interact in producing and interpreting the discourse adverbial connective under discussion and the discourse structure in which it is used. It is claimed that (tam) tersine serves to bring closer the cognitive context of the intended audience to that of the writer’s while minimizing any potential discrepancies in the audience’s and the writer’s cognitive context. We argue that this discourse connective and the discourse it evokes are used in the argumentative mode. (shrink)

This book is a guide to understanding and applying the essential, heretofore elusive notion of context in language study and pedagogy: Éva Illés offers a new, critical, systematic theoretical framework, then applies that framework to practical interactions and issues in communicative language teaching rooted in English as a Lingua Franca. By linking theory and practice for research and teaching around the world, this book brings a new awareness of how context can be conceptualized and related to language pedagogy (...) to advanced students, teachers, teacher educators, and researchers of language teaching, applied linguistics, and pragmatics. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the thesis that alleffects of extra-linguistic context on thetruth-conditions of an assertion are traceable toelements in the actual syntactic structure of thesentence uttered. In the first section, I develop thethesis in detail, and discuss its implications for therelation between semantics and pragmatics. The nexttwo sections are devoted to apparent counterexamples.In the second section, I argue that there are noconvincing examples of true non-sentential assertions.In the third section, I argue that there are noconvincing examples (...) of what John Perry has called`unarticulated constituents''. I conclude by drawingsome consequences of my arguments for appeals tocontext-dependence in the resolution of problems inepistemology and philosophical logic. (shrink)

La contextualisation didactique en tant que champ émergent revisite les objectifs inhérents aux situations d'enseignement/ apprentissage. Depuis les premiers travaux fondant la pédagogie différenciée, les réflexions se sont poursuivies sur l'ajustement de l'enseignement aux spécificités de l'apprenant. On conçoit désormais que l'environnement dans lequel évolue celui-ci influe sur les acquisitions et qu'il peut expliquer les décalages parfois observés entre un objectif d'enseignement et sa réalisation. Mais comment le contexte interagit-il avec l'acte d'enseignement? Comment identifier les paramètres qu'il convient d'intégrer dans (...) le processus didactique? Comment concevoir cette nécessaire articulation entre prise en compte du contexte et situation didactique? Ces questions sont au coeur de cet ouvrage collectif qui interroge les modalités d'une approche contextualisée dans le domaine de la didactique des langues. (shrink)

Sensitivity to the extra-linguistic context, as exhibited by indexical and demonstrative expressions, and sensitivity to the linguistic context, as exhibited by, for example, anaphoric uses of third person pronouns, are regularly regarded as different and independent phenomena. The data on indexicals, demonstratives, and third person pronouns, however, call for a more unified notion of context and of context sensitivity. This paper aims to develop such a unified picture by generalizing the notion of anaphora to (...) encompass extra-linguistic context dependency and generalizing the notion of a structured discourse context so that contexts contain antecedents for expressions that refer to entities in the extra-linguistic context. (shrink)

This book steers a middle course between two opposing conceptions that currently dominate the field of semantics, the logical and cognitive approaches. Patrick Duffley brings to light the inadequacies of both of these frameworks, arguing that linguistic semantics must be based on the linguistic sign itself and on the meaning that it conveys across the full range of its uses. The book offers 12 case studies that demonstrate the explanatory power of a sign-based semantics, dealing with topics such (...) as complementation with aspectual and causative verbs, control and raising, wh- words, full-verb inversion, and existential-there constructions. It calls for a radical revision of the semantics/pragmatics interface, proposing that the dividing line be drawn between content that is linguistically encoded and content that is not encoded but still communicated. While traditional linguistic analysis often places meaning at the level of the sentence or construction, this volume argues that meaning belongs at the lower level of linguistic items, where the linguistic sign is stored in a stable, permanent, and direct relation with its meaning outside of any particular context. Building linguistic analysis from the ground up in this way provides it with a more0solid foundation and increases its explanatory power. (shrink)

Linguistic Modelling of Scenarios proposes a paradigm change from the 'systemic VIEW' to 'systems SCIENCE', so as to extend the methodology of conventional science of physics into the domains hitherto beyond the reach of this kind of treatment. The book: I. Identifies the problematic issues in current approaches to the 'systemic or structural view' of parts of the world as opposed to the 'quantitative/qualitative views' of conventional science of physics and the arts whereby introducing the 'third culture'. II. Locates (...) the position of the structural view in the context of 'human intellectual endeavour'. III. Discusses the fundamental questions raised by modelling aspects of human behaviour. IV. Introduces the basic ideas and the symbolism of linguistic modelling which are then applied to turning descriptions of scenarios as a story or narrative into reasoning schemes. V. Describes a methodology of 'problem solving' of which design thinking and the operation of purposive systems are seen as essential ingredients. Problem solving is a universal activity of living in particular human beings through innovation, invention and creativity. Lack of this activity leads to death! Problem solving is regarded as pivotal point which may propel the spread of the modified structural view into social, technical, cultural and educational awareness. VI. Shows the location of aspects of conventional science within the scheme of systems science whereby achieving a 'continuity of the scientific endeavour'. VII. Outlines a teaching scheme for 'linguistic modelling'. Janos Korn explains how a view can be converted into a science which can lead to a possibility of 'organised speculation' or simulation of behaviour, exploring the effects of variation of parameters on performance, and the occurrence of outcomes of operations, beneficial or not, of dynamic structures. Static and dynamic structures are expressed in more rigorous and computable terms so that the results of analysis and design of human activity scenarios could be exposed to at least thought experiments. Linguistic Modelling of Scenarios is an informative read for any professionals, teachers and students of engineering, social science, management, business and production. (shrink)

Stefano Predelli comes to the defense of the traditional "formal" approach to natural-language semantics, arguing that it has been misrepresented not only by its critics, but also by its foremost defenders. In Contexts he offers a fundamental reappraisal, with particular attention to the treatment of indexicality and other forms of contextual dependence which have been the focus of much recent controversy. In the process, he presents original approaches to a number of important semantic issues, including the relationship between validity and (...) indexicality, the limits of token-reflexive systems, the significance of contextualist arguments, and the interpretation of attitude reports. Contexts will make invigorating reading for all philosophers of language and many linguists. (shrink)

Rarely is the problem of the diversity of languages taken into account whenever population groups are formed into States. When the problem does come up, it is later, in a primarily political context which tries to find political solutions, such as we may presently see them in Canada or in Belgium for instance. These solutions are few and they deal with situations that may contain a host of nuances.Certain countries have chosen a vehicular language while keeping their local languages: (...) the common language in the USSR is the language of one of its republics. In Senegal it is French, which is of a totally foreign origin but has the advantage of avoiding the rivalry existing among the native languages, and it also has a place within the international community. Other countries have accepted as official languages the different languages spoken within its borders. Thus Switzerland is officially tri-lingual (French, German, Italian), giving legal status to what somewhere else may simply be an accepted fact. Many Alsatians speak three languages (Alsatian, French, German). As far as it concerns countries with a strong linguistic heterogeneity, whether it be their history or their size making for a centralizing policy, they have adopted, with the resulting neglect of all others, the language or the idiom of the region which was politically or culturally the dominant one at the time of their unification. Pekinese has been extended to all of China, Florentine to Italy, Hindi to India. Some original combinations can be found: in Israel Jewish immigrants who came from more than seventy different countries, have again taken up the nation's old cultural and religious language, which had been out of use for two thousand years, and have placed it on equal footing with Arabic spoken by the local population, while English is being used for international relations. (shrink)

Pragmatics is the study of the role of context in communication. This chapter discusses experimental research in pragmatics. It provides clarity on pragmatics by contrasting the role of context in communication with the role of sentence meaning. There is some disagreement about which communicative effects are due to which thing, so there is some disagreement as to where to draw the boundary between semantics and pragmatics. The chapter considers a rich experimental research project in pragmatics, which has developed (...) primarily within linguistics and psychology over the course of the last several decades in response to the boundary disputes. Finally, it talks about a more nascent experimental research project, which, building upon insights from psychology, aims towards understanding survey pragmatics. These two projects are discussed and attention is paid to the methods unique to each project and the philosophical and linguistic underpinnings they share in common. (shrink)

In this paper we examine how English and Mandarin speakers think about time, and we test how the patterns of thinking in the two groups relate to patterns in linguistic and cultural experience. In Mandarin, vertical spatial metaphors are used more frequently to talk about time than they are in English; English relies primarily on horizontal terms. We present results from two tasks comparing English and Mandarin speakers’ temporal reasoning. The tasks measure how people spatialize time in three-dimensional space, (...) including the sagittal (front/back), transverse (left/right), and vertical (up/down) axes. Results of Experiment 1 show that people automatically create spatial representations in the course of temporal reasoning, and these implicit spatializations differ in accordance with patterns in language, even in a non-linguistic task. Both groups showed evidence of a left-to-right representation of time, in accordance with writing direction, but only Mandarin speakers showed a vertical top-to-bottom pattern for time (congruent with vertical spatiotemporal metaphors in Mandarin). Results of Experiment 2 confirm and extend these findings, showing that bilinguals’ representations of time depend on both long-term and proximal aspects of language experience. Participants who were more proficient in Mandarin were more likely to arrange time vertically (an effect of previous language experience). Further, bilinguals were more likely to arrange time vertically when they were tested in Mandarin than when they were tested in English (an effect of immediate linguistic context). (shrink)

Una Stojnić urges the radical view that the meaning of context-sensitive language is not “partially determined by non-linguistic features of utterance situation”, as traditionally thought, but rather “is determined entirely by grammar—by rules of language that have largely been missed”. The missed rules are ones of discourse coherence. The paper argues against this radical view as it applies to demonstrations, demonstratives, and the indexical ‘I’. Stojnić’s theories of demon-strations and demonstratives are found to be seriously incomplete, failing to (...) meet the demands on any theory of reference. Furthermore, the paper argues that, so far as Stojnić’s theories of these terms go, they are false. This argument appeals to perception-based theories of demonstratives, a part of the tradition that Stojnić strangely overlooks. The paper ends by arguing briefly that though coherence has a place in a theory of understanding, it has no place in a theory of meaning. (shrink)