We describe a pattern acquisition algorithm that learns, in an unsupervised fashion, a streamlined representation of linguistic structures from a plain natural-language corpus. This paper addresses the issues of learning structured knowledge from a large-scale natural language data set, and of generalization to unseen text. The implemented algorithm represents sentences as paths on a graph whose vertices are words. Significant patterns, determined by recursive context-sensitive statistical inference, form new vertices. Linguistic constructions are represented by trees composed of significant (...) patterns and their associated equivalence classes. An input module allows the algorithm to be subjected to a standard test of English as a Second Language profi- ciency. The results are encouraging: the model attains a level of performance considered to be “intermediate” for 9th-grade students, despite having been trained on a corpus containing transcribed speech of parents directed to small children. (shrink)

‘Chance’ is arguably a context‐sensitive expression, a fact that some have thought bears upon the debate about the compatibility of determinism with objective, non‐trivial chances (chances with values other than 0 or 1). In this paper, I argue that this attempted move from context sensitivity to compatibilism is misguided, for a number of reasons. First, it relies on a theory of context sensitivity that we have independent reason to reject. Second, the resulting compatibilist position leaves unanswered (...) precisely the sorts of questions we reasonably expect a metaphysical account of chance to answer. (shrink)

According to contextualist accounts, the truth value of a given knowledge ascription may vary with features of the ascriber's context. As a result, the following may be true: "X doesn't know that P but Y says something true in asserting 'X knows that P'". The contextualist must defend his theory in the light of this unpleasant but inevitable consequence. The best way of doing this is to construe the context sensitivity of knowledge ascriptions not as deriving from an (...) alleged indexicality of the word "know" nor from its vagueness or ambiguity, but rather from a distinct semantic feature of the word "know", namely its unspecificity. (shrink)

This paper introduces a notion of cognitive context-sensitivity, in contrast with linguistic context-sensitivity. When a sentence is cognitively contextsensitive, the truth-value assigned to the sentence can vary with context, without any corresponding shift in the interpretation of the terms or structure of the sentence. The notion will be deployed to explain the context-sensitivity of generic generalizations.

The paper is primarily concerned with laying out the space of positions that purport to account for semantic context sensitivity of natural language expressions and with making a prima facie case for relativism. I start with distinguishing between pre-semantic, semantic and post-semantic context sensitivity. In the following section I briefly present the classic picture of indexicals due to David Kaplan and assess some arguments for the introduction of certain parameters in the circumstances of evaluation (specifically, time). In section (...) III I envisage two views that purport to expand semantic context sensitivity beyond expressions from “the basic set”: indexicalism and contextualism. In section IV, by means of an example taken from John Perry, I draw attention to a specific form of semantic context sensitivity, namely that in which what is affected by context are the circumstances of evaluation of utterances rather than their content. The example leads to the necessity of distinguishing between two roles of context: a content-determinative one and a circumstance-determinative one. In section V I introduce relativism as the view incorporating the claim that context has a circumstance-determinative role and contrast it with the two views presented before. In the final section I analyze a certain type of argument usually adduced in favor of contextualism (the so-called “context-shifting arguments”) and show that in order to work it has to rule out relativism. I conclude by claiming that the battle must be fought by giving arguments to the effect that a certain parameter should or should not be part of the circumstances of evaluation rather than the content of utterances. (shrink)

In this paper, I report new empirical data on folk semantic intuitions concerning color adjectives in so-called context-shifting experiments. Contextualists present such experiments — that is, they describe different conversational contexts in which a given sentence is uttered — in order to argue that context can shape meaning and truth conditions to such a degree that competent speakers would give opposite truth evaluations of the same sentence in different contexts. The initial findings of Hansen and Chemla (2013) suggest (...) that laypersons’ semantic judgments are sensitive to context in the same way that is predicted by contextualists. In this paper, I focus on context-shifting experiments that involve color adjectives; also, I present experiments that are a partial replication and methodological extension of Hansen and Chemla’s study. One aim of my study was to corroborate these authors’ findings using a bigger sample (total N = 1128), but the main goal was to test the stability of results in different methodological variants of empirical adaptations of context-shifting experiments. This part of the study addresses the issues pointed out in my earlier paper (Ziółkowski 2017), where I argued that certain experimental settings (within-subjects) might bring data that is more favorable to contextualism than other settings (between-subjects). My study compares three different experimental settings: within-subjects (with randomized order of context presentation), between-subjects (where participants evaluating different contexts aredistinct groups), and “contrastive design” (where both contexts are presented side by side on the same screen). My results are highly consistent across the methodological variants I employed, but while they show some of the effects expected by contextualists, it is disputable whether they bring strong support to contextualism with respect to color adjectives. (shrink)

According to cognitivist truth-theoretic accounts of semantic competence, aspects of our linguistic behavior can be explained by ascribing to speakers cognition of truth theories. It's generally assumed on this approach that, however much context sensitivity speakers' languages contain, the cognized truththeories themselves can be adequately characterized context insensitively—that is, without using in the metalanguage expressions whose semantic value can vary across occasions of utterance. In this paper, I explore some of the motivations for and problems and consequences of (...) dropping this assumption. (shrink)

It’s intuitively plausible to suppose that there are many things that we can be rationally certain of, at least in many contexts. The present paper argues that, given this principle of Abundancy, there is a Preface Paradox for credence. Section 1 gives a statement of the paradox, discusses its relation to its familiar counterpart for belief, and points out the congeniality between Abundancy and broadly contextualist trends in epistemology. This leads to the question whether considerations of context-sensitivity might lend (...) themselves to solving the Preface for credence. Sections 2 and 3 scrutinize two approaches in this spirit—one mimicking Hawthorne’s Semantic Contextualist approach to an epistemic version of the Preface, the other one analogous to Clarke’s Sensitivist approach to the doxastic version—arguing that neither approach succeeds as it stands. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Contextualist theories of semantics are not undermined by their purported failure to explain the practice of indirect reporting. I adopt Cappelen & Lepore’s test for context sensitivity to show that the scope of context sensitivity is much broader than Semantic Minimalists are willing to accept. The failure of their arguments turns on their insistence that the content of indirect reports is semantically minimal.

ABSTRACT Copredication, as exhibited by sentences such as ‘That book is heavy but informative,’ is commonly seen as a phenomenon that is tied to sentences featuring polysemous expressions. David Liebesman and Ofra Magidor have recently attacked this view by arguing that ‘book’ has a single context-sensitive sense. The first aim of the present paper is to show that Liebesman and Magidor are wrong to claim that ‘book’ is univocal, but that they may nonetheless be right to question that (...) copredication requires polysemy. Its second aim is to consider implications of this result for the debates on copredication and on semantic variability. (shrink)

This paper studies the logical context-sensitivity of Aristotelian diagrams. I propose a new account of measuring this type of context-sensitivity, and illustrate it by means of a small-scale example. Next, I turn toward a more large-scale case study, based on Aristotelian diagrams for the categorical statements with subject negation. On the practical side, I describe an interactive application that can help to explain and illustrate the phenomenon of context-sensitivity in this particular case study. On the theoretical side, (...) I show that applying the proposed measure of context-sensitivity leads to a number of precise yet highly intuitive results. (shrink)

Contextualists and relativists about predicates of personal taste, epistemic modals, and so on (“CR-expressions”) agree that the interpretation of these expressions depends, in some sense, on context. Relativists claim that the sort of context-sensitivity exhibited by CR-expressions is importantly different from that exhibited by paradigm context-sensitive expressions. This bifurcation is often motivated by the claim that the two classes of expressions behave differently in patterns of agreement and disagreement. I provide cases illustrating that the same sorts (...) of discourse phenomena that have been thought problematic for contextualists can arise with paradigm context-sensitive expressions. These cases motivate a more unified treatment of paradigm context-sensitive expressions and the expressions that have figured in recent contextualism/relativism debates. (shrink)

This paper investigates, formulates and proves an indexical barrier theorem, according to which sets of non-indexical sentences do not entail (except under specified special circumstances) indexical sentences. It surveys the usual difficulties for this kind of project, as well some that are specific to the case of indexicals, and adapts the strategy of Restall and Russell's "Barriers to Implication" to overcome these. At the end of the paper a reverse barrier theorem is also proved, according to which an indexical sentence (...) will not, except under specified circumstances, entail a non-indexical one. (shrink)

This article is a survey of the literature on context sensitivity in the philosophy of language.

The target article criticises reductionist programs in cognitive science for failing to take into account important explanatory features of the organism's physical embodiment and task environment. My aim in this commentary is to show how such features are increasingly being taken seriously by (some) researchers in cognitive neuroscience, who describe the functional activity of neural structures in terms that are context-sensitive rather than intrinsic. This approach can allow us to take seriously the concerns presented in Gallagher’s [2019] target (...) article without having to completely give up on neuroscientific explanations of human behaviour. (shrink)

Conditionals give rise to stand-offs that have become well known from Gibbard’s initial Sly Pete example. The stand-offs can be seen as evidence for the context-sensitivity of conditionals and arguably do not involve disagreement. I claim that the latter feature lends credibility to an indexical treatment of indicatives.

The aim of this paper is to show that tests for semantic context-sensitivity are of no help in the debate between semantic contextualists and minimalists. Two kinds of context-sensitivity tests are discussed: Cappelen & Lepore's says-that tests and Cappelen & Hawthorne's agreement-based tests. It is shown that Cappelen & Lepore's tests are unreliable because they are based on unstable data. Then it is argued that although the data of Cappelen & Hawthorne's tests is more reliable, contextualists and minimalists (...) alike can explain this data. The paper ends by pointing to ways in which the debate might be moved forward without context-sensitivity tests. (shrink)

Meaning and Context-Sensitivity Truth-conditional semantics explains meaning in terms of truth-conditions. The meaning of a sentence is given by the conditions that must obtain in order for the sentence to be true. The meaning of a word is given by its contribution to the truth-conditions of the sentences in which it occurs. What a speaker … Continue reading Meaning and Context-Sensitivity →.

Axel Barceló has extended the objectivist apparatus for handling color terms that I develop in my book Roads to Reference, so that the extension covers also some aesthetic predicates. In this note I argue that Barceló’s extension probably attempts to go too far.

_This article reflects on the central themes of Vilhjálmur Árnason's work, particularly his focus on contextualized morality and dialogical ethics. Vilhjálmur emphasizes the importance of balancing individual freedom and responsibility with an understanding of social and political contexts. By examining relational ethics across healthcare, research, and public health, the article highlights his contributions to bioethics, including concepts like informed consent, scientific citizenship, and authorization in biobank research. Vilhjálmur 1 advocates for communicative reasoning and authentic dialogue as essential tools for ethical (...) analysis, situational decision-making, and fostering trust in research and healthcare practices. The work underscores the importance of trustworthiness, veracity, and participatory engagement in addressing modern ethical challenges, particularly in rapidly advancing biotechnologies. _ _Keywords: _Contextual ethics, dialogical ethics, relational autonomy, informed consent, authorization, bioethics, trustworthiness, communicative reasoning, healthcare ethics, public health ethics, scientific citizenship, biobank research. (shrink)

"This book represents a continuation of the research project in philosophy of language and semantics represented in the journal "Protosociology" at the J. W. ...

Aravind Joshi famously hypothesized that natural language syntax was characterized (in part) by mildly context-sensitive generative power. Subsequent work in mathematical linguistics over the past three decades has revealed surprising convergences among a wide variety of grammatical formalisms, all of which can be said to be mildly context-sensitive. But this convergence is not absolute. Not all mildly context-sensitive formalisms can generate exactly the same stringsets (i.e. they are not all weakly equivalent), and even when (...) two formalisms can both generate a certain stringset, there might be differences in the structural descriptions they use to do so. It has generally been difficult to find cases where such differences in structural descriptions can be pinpointed in a way that allows linguistic considerations to be brought to bear on choices between formalisms, but in this paper we present one such case. The empirical pattern of interest involves wh-movement dependencies in languages that do not enforce the wh-island constraint. This pattern draws attention to two related dimensions of variation among formalisms: whether structures grow monotonically from one end to another, and whether structure-building operations are conditioned by only a finite amount of derivational state. From this perspective, we show that one class of formalisms generates the crucial empirical pattern using structures that align with mainstream syntactic analysis, and another class can only generate that same string pattern in a linguistically unnatural way. This is particularly interesting given that (i) the structurally-inadequate formalisms are strictly more powerful than the structurally-adequate ones from the perspective of weak generative capacity, and (ii) the formalism based on derivational operations that appear on the surface to align most closely with the mechanisms adopted in contemporary work in syntactic theory (merge and move) are the formalisms that fail to align with the analyses proposed in that work when the phenomenon is considered in full generality. (shrink)

Can one and the same quotation be used on different occasions to quote distinct objects? The view that it can is taken for granted throughout the literature (e.g. Goddard & Routley 1966, Christensen 1967, Davidson 1979, Goldstein 1984, Jorgensen et al 1984, Atlas 1989, Clark & Gerrig 1990, Washington 1992, García-Carpintero 1994, 2004, 2005, Reimer 1996, Saka 1998, Wertheimer 1999). Garcia-Carpintero (1994, p. 261) illustrates with the quotation expression ''gone''. He says it can be used to quote any of the (...) following items. (shrink)

We commend Hempeler et al. (2024) on their important manuscript outlining a context-sensitive and patient-centered model for informal coercion in mental healthcare. Indeed, in clinical experience a...

Conditionals (in particular indicatives) give rise to stand-offs that have become well known from Gibbard’s initial Sly Pete example. The stand-offs can be seen as evidence for the context-sensitivity of (indicative) conditionals and arguably do not involve disagreement. I claim that the latter feature lends credibility to an indexical treatment of indicatives.

Context-sensitivity raises a metasemantic question: what determines the value of a context-sensitive expression in context? Taking gradable adjectives as a case study, this paper argues against various forms of intentionalist metasemantics, i.e. that speaker intentions determine values for context-sensitive expressions in context, including the coordination account recently defended by King :219–237, 2014a; in: Burgess, Sherman Metasemantics: New essays on the foundations of meaning, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 97–118, 2014b). The paper argues that (...) all intentionalist accounts face the speaker authority problem, that speaker intentions are just the wrong sorts of things to determine the standards for gradable adjectives in context. The problem comes to light when we look at cases in which speakers have idiosyncratic, false beliefs that cause their proper communicative intentions to come apart from the non-intentional features of context like the question under discussion, facts about the world, practical goals, and prior linguistic discourse. (shrink)

This paper classifies a family of grammar formalisms that extendcontext-free grammar by talking about tuples of terminal strings, ratherthan independently combining single terminal words into larger singlephrases. These include a number of well-known formalisms, such as headgrammar and linear context-free rewriting systems, but also a new formalism,(simple) literal movement grammar, which strictly extends the previouslyknown formalisms, while preserving polynomial time recognizability.The descriptive capacity of simple literal movement grammars isillustrated both formally through a weak generative capacity argument and ina more (...) practical sense by the description of conjunctive cross-serialrelative clauses in Dutch. After sketching a complexity result and drawing anumber of conclusions from the illustrations, it is then suggested that thenotion of mild context-sensitivity currently in use, that depends on therather loosely defined concept of constant growth, needs a modification toapply sensibly to the illustrated facts; an attempt at such a revision isproposed. (shrink)

Larry Temkin challenged what seems to be an analytic truth about comparatives: if A is Φ-er than B and B is Φ-er than C, then, A is Φ-er than C. Ruth Chang denies a related claim: if A is Φ-er than B and C is not Φ-er than B, but is Φ to a certain degree, then A is Φ-er than C. In this paper I advance a context-sensitive semantics of gradability according to which the data uncovered by (...) Temkin and Chang leave both statements intact. (shrink)

The Agreement-Based Tests for Context Sensitivity In my paper, I present and discuss Cappelen and Lepore's context sensitivity tests, which appeal to says-that reports. In Relativism and Monadic Truth Cappelen and Hawthorne criticize those tests and propose agreement-based tests instead. I argue that such tests do not fare much better. The original Cappelen and Lepore's tests presupposed a minimal notion of says-that. One might postulate a parallel notion of "thin" agreement, according to which people agree that p if (...) they all believe the minimal proposition that p. In this sense we might say - as opposed to what Cappelen and Hawthorne say - that A and B agree that Nicola is smart, even though A thinks that she is smart because she stands way back against strong servers, while B thinks that she is smart because she invested all her money in penny stocks. The paper ends with a critical gloss concerning the case in which Joe Coach predicates tall of people who are over six-foot-eight and Joe Normal, who applies tall to anyone over six-foot tall. I conclude that agreement and disagreement tests are poor indicators of context sensitivity, since their result depends on the prior theoretical standpoint one adopts. (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)

We argue there is a clash between the standard treatments of context sensitivity and presupposition triggering. We use this criticism to motivate a defense of an often-discarded view about how to represent context sensitivity, according to which there are more lexically implicit items in logical form than has been appreciated.

Cappelen and Lepore (2005) claim that the English language contains a basic and limited set of context-sensitive expressions, as only expressions within this set pass the truth-related tests that they propose to single out context-sensitive from context-insensitive words. In this paper, I argue that racial and ethnic slurs also pass Cappelen and Lepore’s context sensitivity tests and that, as a result, slurs should also be seen as context-sensitive expressions in a truth-related sense.

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. (shrink)

The association of resilience-related factors with frailty is a recent research topic. Dispositional optimism and context sensitivity are two psychological factors that differently contribute to individual resilience. This study aimed at investigating whether dispositional optimism and context sensitivity might contribute to a multifactorial model of frailty, together with established relevant factors such as cognitive and physical factors. This cross-sectional study involved 141 elderly outpatients aged ≥65 years, who were referred to the Geriatrics and Multidimensional Evaluation Clinic of the (...) University Hospital of Messina. We used the following measures: the Mini-Mental State Examination to screen for global cognitive functioning; 4-m gait speed and handgrip strength to measure physical performance; a 35-item Frailty Index to evaluate patients’ frailty status; the revised Life Orientation Test to gauge dispositional optimism; and the Context Sensitivity Index to measure context sensitivity. We found that LOT-R, CSI, and MMSE were all significantly associated with FI. Gait speed was only marginally associated with FI. The present study showed a novel association of dispositional optimism and context sensitivity with frailty among elderly outpatients. These preliminary findings support a multidimensional approach to frailty in which even peculiar psychological features might provide a significant contribution. (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)

Abstract: I argue that practically all vague language is context-sensitive in a covert and unfamiliar way. I first outline a novel puzzle concerning the interaction of conditionals and vagueness. I then argue that the best way of resolving the puzzle is through positing context-sensitive penumbral connections between sundry parts of language. I argue that these penumbral connections shift through a distinct form of Lewisian accommodation. The upshot is that meaning is a far shiftier thing than has (...) typically been thought. (shrink)