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| Author | : Steven Gross |
| Publisher | : Psychology Press |
| Total Pages | : 164 |
| Release | : 2001 |
| Genre | : Context (Linguistics) |
| ISBN | : 9780815340386 |
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.
| Author | : Jason Stanley |
| Publisher | : Clarendon Press |
| Total Pages | : 288 |
| Release | : 2007-07-05 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 0191527556 |
Natural languages all contain constructions the interpretation of which depends upon the situation in which they are used. In Language and Context, Jason Stanley presents a series of essays which develop a theory of how the situation in which we speak interacts with the words we use to help produce what we say. The reason we can so smoothly operate with sentences that can be used to express very different items of information, Stanley argues, is that there are linguistically mandated constraints on the effects of the situation on what we say. These linguistically mandated constraints are most evident in the cases of sentences containing explicit pronouns, such as 'She is a mathematician', where interpretation of the information expressed is guided by the use of the pronoun 'she'. But even when such explicit pronouns are lacking, our sentences provide similar cues to allow our interlocutors to determine the information expressed. We are, in the main, confident that our interlocutors will smoothly grasp what we say, because the grammar and meaning of our sentences encodes these constraints. In defending this theory, Stanley pays close attention to specific cases of context-sensitive constructions, such as quantified noun phrases, comparative adjectives, and conditionals. Philosophers and cognitive scientist have appealed to the dependence of what is intuitively said by a sentence on the situation in which it is uttered to argue against the possibility of a systematic theory of meaning for natural language. The theory developed in this book is a vigorous defence of the possibility of a systematic theory of meaning for natural language against these influential tendencies.
| Author | : Howard Wettstein |
| Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 262 |
| Release | : 2004-04-01 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 9780198036425 |
The late 20th century saw great movement in the philosophy of language, often critical of the fathers of the subject--Gottlieb Frege and Bertrand Russell--but sometimes supportive of (or even defensive about) the work of the fathers. Howard Wettstein's sympathies lie with the critics. But he says that they have often misconceived their critical project, treating it in ways that are technically focused and that miss the deeper implications of their revolutionary challenge. Wettstein argues that Wittgenstein--a figure with whom the critics of Frege and Russell are typically unsympathetic--laid the foundation for much of what is really revolutionary in this late 20th century movement. The subject itself should be of great interest, since philosophy of language has functioned as a kind of foundation for much of 20th century philosophy. But in fact it remains a subject for specialists, since the ideas are difficult and the mode of presentation is often fairly technical. In this book, Wettstein brings the non-specialist into the conversation (especially in early chapters); he also reconceives the debate in a way that avoids technical formulation. The Magic Prism is intended for professional philosophers, graduate students, and upper division undergraduates.
| Author | : Deirdre Wilson |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : 397 |
| Release | : 2012-03-22 |
| Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
| ISBN | : 052176677X |
When people speak, their words never fully encode what they mean, and the context is always compatible with a variety of interpretations. How can comprehension ever be achieved? Wilson and Sperber argue that comprehension is a process of inference guided by precise expectations of relevance. What are the relations between the linguistically encoded meanings studied in semantics and the thoughts that humans are capable of entertaining and conveying? How should we analyse literal meaning, approximations, metaphors and ironies? Is the ability to understand speakers' meanings rooted in a more general human ability to understand other minds? How do these abilities interact in evolution and in cognitive development? Meaning and Relevance sets out to answer these and other questions, enriching and updating relevance theory and exploring its implications for linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science and literary studies.
| Author | : Alessandro Capone |
| Publisher | : Springer Science & Business Media |
| Total Pages | : 664 |
| Release | : 2013-11-26 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 3319010115 |
This book is about the pragmatics of language and it illustrates how pragmatics transcends the boundaries of linguistics. This volume covers Gricean pragmatics as well as topics including: conversation and collective belief, the norm of assertion, speech acts, what a context is, the distinction between semantics and pragmatics and implicature and explicature, pragmatics and epistemology, the pragmatics of belief, quotation, negation, implicature and argumentation theory, Habermas’ Universal Pragmatics, Dascal’s theory of the dialectical self, theories and theoretical discussions on the nature of pragmatics from a philosophical point of view. Conversational implicatures are generally meaning augmentations on top of explicatures, whilst explicatures figure prominently in what is said. Discussions in this work reveal their characteristics and tensions within current theories relating to explicatures and implicatures. Authors show that explicatures and implicatures are calculable and not (directly) tied to conventional meaning. Pragmatics has a role to play in dealing with philosophical problems and this volume presents research that defines boundaries and gives a stable picture of pragmatics and philosophy. World renowned academic experts in philosophy and pragmalinguistics ask important theoretical questions and interact in a way that can be easily grasped by those from disciplines other than philosophy, such as anthropology, literary theory and law. A second volume in this series is also available, which covers the perspective of linguists who have been influenced by philosophy.
| Author | : Nick Riemer |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 550 |
| Release | : 2015-07-30 |
| Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
| ISBN | : 1317412451 |
The Routledge Handbook of Semantics provides a broad and state-of-the-art survey of this field, covering semantic research at both word and sentence level. It presents a synoptic view of the most important areas of semantic investigation, including contemporary methodologies and debates, and indicating possible future directions in the field. Written by experts from around the world, the 29 chapters cover key issues and approaches within the following areas: meaning and conceptualisation; meaning and context; lexical semantics; semantics of specific phenomena; development, change and variation. The Routledge Handbook of Semantics is essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students working in this area.
| Author | : Ilse Depraetere |
| Publisher | : Springer |
| Total Pages | : 354 |
| Release | : 2017-03-16 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 3319322478 |
This book explores new territory at the interface between semantics and pragmatics, reassessing a number of linguistic phenomena in the light of recent advances in pragmatic theory. It presents stimulating insights by experts in linguistics and philosophy, including Kent Bach, Philippe de Brabanter, Max Kölbel and François Recanati. The authors begin by reassessing the definition of four theoretical concepts: saturation, free pragmatic enrichment, completion and expansion. They go on to confront (sub)disciplines that have addressed similar issues but that have not necessarily been in close contact, and then turn to questions related to reported speech, modality, indirect requests and prosody. Chapters investigate lexical pragmatics and (cognitive) lexical semantics and other interactions involving experimental pragmatics, construction grammar, clinical linguistics, and the distinction between mental and linguistic content. The authors bridge the gap between different disciplines, subdisciplines and methodologies, supporting cross-fertilization of ideas and indicating the empirical studies that are needed to test current theoretical concepts and push the theory further. Readers will find overviews of the ways in which concepts are defined, empirical data with which they are illustrated and explorations of the theoretical frameworks in which concepts are couched. This exciting exchange of ideas has its origins in the editors’ workshop series on the theme ‘The semantics/pragmatics interface: linguistic, logical and philosophical perspectives’, held at the University of Lille 3 in 2012-13. Scholars of linguistics, logic and philosophy and those interested in the research benefits of crossing disciplines will find this work both accessible and thought-provoking, especially those with an interest in pragmatic theory or semantics.
| Author | : Riccardo Dottori |
| Publisher | : LIT Verlag Münster |
| Total Pages | : 452 |
| Release | : 2003 |
| Genre | : Logic |
| ISBN | : 9783825867027 |
This volume contains the Proceedings of the Third meeting Italian/American Philosophy that took place in Rome in June 5-10, 2001. What is "Truth" in Analytic Philosophy after the linguistic turn? What can we say about "Truth" in Hermeneutics, after taking into account the so-called hermeneutical circle? According to Nietzsche: "Truth is that form of error without which human beings could not live." From this definition it follows: "The point is not the rightness of theory but its importance for human existence." Could we say the same from an epistemological point of view? Who (or what) could be the neutral arbiter among different conceptual schemes? Can an interpretative paradigm stand in as a substitute for traditional objectivity? The controversial problem of "Truth," however, must be discussed within the various fields of philosophy: Aesthetics, Logic, Epistemology, Ethics and Politics. In view of this, Hermeneutics and Analytic Philosophy converged to create the body of this meetin
| Author | : Alexis Burgess |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 378 |
| Release | : 2014 |
| Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
| ISBN | : 0199669597 |
Metasemantics comprises new work on the philosophical foundations of linguistic semantics, by a diverse group of established and emerging experts in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and the theory of content. The science of semantics aspires to systematically specify the meanings of linguistic expressions in context. The paradigmatic metasemantic question is accordingly: what more basic or fundamental features of the world metaphysically determine these semantic facts? Efforts to answer this question inevitably raise others. Where are the boundaries of semantics? What is the essence of the meaning relation? Which framework should we use for semantic theorizing? What are the intrinsic natures of semantic values? Are the semantic facts metaphysically determinate? What is semantic competence? Metasemantic inquiry has long been recognized as a central part of the philosophy of language, but recent developments in metaphysics and semantics itself now allow us to approach these classic questions with an unprecedented degree of precision. The essays collected here provide promising new perspectives on old problems, pose questions that suggest novel research projects, and taken together, greatly sharpen our understanding of linguistic representation.
| Author | : Tadeusz Ciecierski |
| Publisher | : Springer |
| Total Pages | : 319 |
| Release | : 2021-02-26 |
| Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
| ISBN | : 9783030344870 |
This volume addresses foundational issues of context-dependence and indexicality, which are at the center of the current debate within the philosophy of language. Topics include the scope of context-dependency, the nature of content and the character of input data of cognitive processes relevant for the interpretation of utterances. There's also coverage of the role of beliefs and intentions as contextual factors, as well as the validity of arguments in context-sensitive languages. The contributions consider foundational issues regarding context-sensitivity from three different, yet related, perspectives on the phenomenon of context-dependence: representational, structural, and functional. The contributors not only address the representational, structural and/or functional problems separately but also study their mutual connections, thus furthering the debate and bringing competing approaches closer to unification and consensus. This text appeals to students and researchers within the field. This is a very useful collection of essays devoted to the roles of context in the study of language. Its essays provide a useful overview of the current debates on this topic, and they put forth novel contributions that will undoubtedly be of relevance for the development of all areas in philosophy and linguistics interested in the notion of context. Stefano Predelli Department of Philosophy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
