Thoughts and Utterances

Thoughts and Utterances
Author: Robyn Carston
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0470754559

Thoughts and Utterances is the first sustained investigation of two distinctions which are fundamental to all theories of utterance understanding: the semantics/pragmatics distinction and the distinction between what is explicitly communicated and what is implicitly communicated. Features the first sustained investigation of both the semantics/pragmatics distinction and the distinction between what is explicitly and implicitly communicated in speech.

Understanding Utterances

Understanding Utterances
Author: Diane Blakemore
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1992-07-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780631158677

This textbook provides an introduction to pragmatics from the point of view of Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory. The first part lays down the foundations of a relevance theoretic approach to utterance understanding, which is then applied to the analysis of a range of phenomena which are central to pragmatics.

Context-Dependence, Perspective and Relativity

Context-Dependence, Perspective and Relativity
Author: Francois Recanati
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2010-08-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110227770

This volume brings together original papers by linguists and philosophers on the role of context and perspective in language and thought. Several contributions are concerned with the contextualism/relativism debate, which has loomed large in recent philosophical discussions. In a substantial introduction, the editors survey the field and map out the relevant issues and positions.

Aristotle's De Interpretatione

Aristotle's De Interpretatione
Author: C. W. A. Whitaker
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 1996-11-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191519049

Aristotle's treatise De Interpretatione is one of his central works; it continues to be the focus of much attention and debate. C. W. A. Whitaker presents the first systematic study of this work, and offers a radical new view of its aims, its structure, and its place in Aristotle's system, basing this view upon a detailed chapter-by-chapter analysis. By treating the work systematically, rather than concentrating on certain selected passages, Dr Whitaker is able to show that, contrary to traditional opinion, it forms an organized and coherent whole. He argues that the De Interpretatione is intended to provide the underpinning for dialectic, the system of argument by question and answer set out in Aristotle's Topics ; and he rejects the traditional view that the De Interpretatione concerns the assertion and is oriented towards the formal logic of the Prior Analytics. In doing so, he sheds valuable new light on some of Aristotle's most famous texts.

Fictional Objects

Fictional Objects
Author: Stuart Brock
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2015-06-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191054534

Eleven original essays discuss a range of puzzling philosophical questions about fictional characters, and more generally about fictional objects. For example, they ask questions like the following: Do they really exist? What would fictional objects be like if they existed? Do they exist eternally? Are they created? Who by? When and how? Can they be destroyed? If so, how? Are they abstract or concrete? Are they actual? Are they complete objects? Are they possible objects? How many fictional objects are there? What are their identity conditions? What kinds of attitudes can we have towards them? This volume will be a landmark in the philosophical debate about fictional objects, and will influence higher-level debates within metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.

Meaning and Relevance

Meaning and Relevance
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.

John Searle's Philosophy of Language

John Searle's Philosophy of Language
Author: Savas L. Tsohatzidis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2007-10-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521685344

This is a volume of original essays on key aspects of John Searle's philosophy of language. It examines Searle's work in relation to current issues of central significance, including internalism versus externalism about mental and linguistic content, truth-conditional versus non-truth-conditional conceptions of content, the relative priorities of thought and language in the explanation of intentionality, the status of the distinction between force and sense in the theory of meaning, the issue of meaning scepticism in relation to rule-following, and the proper characterization of 'what is said' in relation to the semantics/pragmatics distinction. Written by a distinguished team of contemporary philosophers, and prefaced by an illuminating essay by Searle, the volume aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of Searle's work in philosophy of language, and to suggest innovative approaches to fundamental questions in that area.

Modes of Representation

Modes of Representation
Author: Richard Kimberly Heck
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 444
Release: 2024-06-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198861591

Modes of Presentation analyses a collection of problems, known as 'Frege's puzzle', resulting from how thinkers and speakers have a limited perspective on reference in thought and language. Heck argues that these puzzles have much to teach us both about the foundations of cognition and the nature of linguistic communication.

Reference and Representation in Thought and Language

Reference and Representation in Thought and Language
Author: MarĂ­a Ponte
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2017
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0198714211

This volume offers novel views on the precise relation between reference to an object by means of a linguistic expression and our mental representation of that object, long a source of debate in the philosophy of language, linguistics, and cognitive science. Chapters in this volume deal with our devices for singular reference and singular representation, with most focusing on linguistic expressions that are used to refer to particular objects, persons, or places. These expressions include proper names such as Mary and John; indexicals such as I and tomorrow; demonstrative pronouns such as this and that; and some definite and indefinite descriptions such as The Queen of England or a medical doctor. Other chapters examine the ways we represent objects in thought, particularly the first-person perspective and the self, and one explores a notion common to reference and representation: salience. The volume includes the latest views on these complex topics from some of the most prominent authors in the field and will be of interest to anyone working on issues of reference and representation in thought and language.