Semantic Field Analysis in the Study of Parent-Child Relationships This article discusses the applicability of semantic field analysis to the study of development and change in important interpersonal relations on the example of parent-child relationships. The narrative material was compiled from responses of 348 teenagers and young adults aged 13-30 years. Participants wrote about their parents. On the basis of the context, semantic fields were generated for the high-incidence phrase "to love one's parents", which is (...) the primary model of conceptualizing the parent-child relationship in our culture. The results demonstrate the material complexity of the "love for parents" semantic field in the study group, and reveal the associative network of other semantic relations involving this concept. They also confirm the hypotheses on subtle developmental changes in the understanding of "love for parents" between early adolescence and adulthood. The study presents the application of methods based on linguistic analysis of language to the analysis of developmental changes in important personal relationships. (shrink)

Objective. Conceptualization of the definition of space as a semantic unit of language consciousness. -/- Materials & Methods. A structural-ontological approach is used in the work, the methodology of which has been tested and applied in order to analyze the subject matter area of psychology, psycholinguistics and other social sciences, as well as in interdisciplinary studies of complex systems. Mathematical representations of space as a set of parallel series of events (Alexandrov) were used as the initial theoretical basis (...) of the structural-ontological analysis. In this case, understanding of an event was considered in the context of the definition adopted in computer science – a change in the object properties registered by the observer. -/- Results. The negative nature of space realizes itself in the subject-object structure, the components interaction of which is characterized by a change – a key property of the system under study. Observer’s registration of changes is accompanied by spatial focusing (situational concretization of the field of changes) and relating of its results with the field of potentially distinguishable changes (subjective knowledge about «changing world»). The indicated correlation performs the function of space identification in terms of recognizing its properties and their subjective significance, depending on the features of the observer`s motivational sphere. As a result, the correction of the actual affective dynamics of the observer is carried out, which structures the current perception of space according to principle of the semantic fractal. Fractalization is a formation of such a subjective perception of space, which supposes the establishment of semantic accordance between the situational field of changes, on the one hand, and the worldview, as well as the motivational characteristics of the observer, on the other. -/- Conclusions. Performed structural-ontological analysis of the system formed by the interaction of the perceptual function of the psyche and the semantic field of the language made it possible to conceptualize the space as a field of changes potentially distinguishable by the observer, structurally organized according to the principle of the semantic fractal. The compositional features of the fractalization process consist in fact that the semantic fractal of space is relevant to the product of the difference between the situational field of changes and the field of potentially distinguishable changes, adjusted by the current configuration of the observer`s value-needs hierarchy and reduced by his actual affective dynamics. (shrink)

Context: The constructivist approach to the definition (or analysis) of the fundamental meanings of language in Ernst von Glasersfeld’s work. Problem: Has this approach achieved better results than other approaches? Method: Review of a book chapter by von Glasersfeld that is devoted to the analysis of the concepts of “unity,” “plurality” and “number.” Results: The constructivist approach to the semantics of the fundamental elements of language (some of which are fundamental for sciences too) seems to have produced positive (...) results; moreover these are in a field where other approaches have produced results that do not objectively seem satisfactory. (shrink)

Presenting a selection of thirteen essays on various topics at the foundations of philosophy--one previously unpublished and eight accompanied by substantial new postscripts--this book offers outstanding insight on truth, meaning, and propositional attitudes; semantic indeterminacy and other kinds of "factual defectiveness;" and issues concerning objectivity, especially in mathematics and in epistemology. It will reward the attention of any philosopher interested in language, epistemology, or mathematics.

This paper examines and compares some legilinguistic features in news/media reports in Hebrew, and in Arabic in Israel and Egypt during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the beginning of 2021. The goal was to find frequent and innovated expressions in the communication media during the COVID-19 period. The research question was, since there are linguistic differences between these language-varieties: would differences be found also on the legilinguistic level? Hebrew and Arabic were studied because of their different status. In (...) Israel, Hebrew is the dominant official language, while Arabic is a minority language. In Egypt, Arabic is the official and dominant language. The material was collected from two news/media channels in each of Modern Hebrew and Arabic in Israel, and two from Egypt. Selected news texts were analyzed and examples of their lexical and syntactic elements are presented. The texts revealed similar methods for controlling the pandemic, and some linguistic differences. The comparison with legilinguistic literature suggests that the findings of these Hebrew and Arabic texts' features during the pandemic differ from features discussed in other studies. (shrink)

The paper offers a solution to the semantic paradoxes, one in which (1) we keep the unrestricted truth schema “True(A)↔A”, and (2) the object language can include its own metalanguage. Because of the first feature, classical logic must be restricted, but full classical reasoning applies in “ordinary” contexts, including standard set theory. The more general logic that replaces classical logic includes a principle of substitutivity of equivalents, which with the truth schema leads to the general intersubstitutivity of True(A) (...) with A within the language.The logic is also shown to have the resources required to represent the way in which sentences (like the Liar sentence and the Curry sentence) that lead to paradox in classical logic are “defective”. We can in fact define a hierarchy of “defectiveness” predicates within the language. Contrary to claims that any solution to the paradoxes just breeds further paradoxes (“revenge problems”) involving defectiveness predicates, there is a general consistency/conservativeness proof that shows that talk of truth and the various “levels of defectiveness” can all be made coherent together within a single object language. (shrink)

It is now a quarter of a century ago that Wolfgang Stegmfiller wrote his monograph 'Das Wahrheitsproblem und die Idee der Semantik' (1957) which dealt with Tarski's and Carnap's foundational work in the field of semantics. While this book is about the definition of the basic semantical concepts in artificial formal languages there is an article written a year earlier (1956) in which Stegmfiller addresses himself specifically to the relation between logic and natural language. Here he gives a (...) logical analysis of the standard structural expressions in language that are still of primary concern for current semantics: quantifiers, pronouns, articles, etc. The motives for such an analysis at that time were mainly philosophical: the aim was to expose the misconceptions and pitfalls of traditional philosophy arising from the disregard of various systematic semantic ambiguities in everyday language. Or as Stegmfiller puts it: Ober sie [i.e. einige nicht triviale F~ille von Vagheit in der A11tagssprache] Klarheit zu gewinnen, ist schon deshalb yon auBerordentlicher Bedeutung, weil Unkenntnis fiber sie zu schwersten philosophischen Verirrungen ffihren kann, namlich entweder der Unterlassung von berechtigten Fragestellungen, oder, was weit h~ufiger vorgekommen ist, der Formulierung yon falsch gestellten Fragen, denen gegenfiber man dann nur die Wahl hat, entweder fiberhaupt keine oder nur sinnlose Antworten zu geben. So logic was to regiment language. Sentences involving the copula and the above-mentioned structure words are assigned one or more unambiguous formal representations in an already interpreted formal language, usually the first order predicate calculus. The natural language expressions thereby receive a precise meaning, since the semantics of the formal language has been specified in advance, as is always assumed. This procedure has, of course, always been common practice, witness the typical syntactical argot of the mathematicians. It carries, however, an obvious methodological presupposition: it is the idea that the logic of our choice to which the formal representations belong is in some sense an adequate framework to express our thoughts. (shrink)

An analysis of the role of language in basic and applied science from the semantics of science and the theory of reference requires several steps. First, to specify the field of analysis in the light of several factors: the semantic problems of science; the reference in its triple dimension of relation between language and reality, of referent and of transmission in science; and the link between meaning and reference in science.Second, to consider the central approach to (...) the semantics of science, which forks into two main directions: the semantic line and the pragmatic path. De facto, they lead to different interpretations of the role of language in basic science and in applied science. The semantic line focuses on the content expressed through terms, statements and theories, which has been influential in important philosophical trends and still is prominent in some versions of scientific realism. Meanwhile, the pragmatic path emphasizes the meaning as use, which has influenced philosophers of science of diverse tendencies, such as S. Toulmin, Th. Kuhn, American pragmatists and supporters of the methodological pluralism.Third, to make explicit the leading conceptions regarding the theory of reference, both for the formal sciences and for the empirical sciences. There are a number of options, four of which are analyzed here. The view associated with the semantic role and the semantic value, which connects semantic, epistemological and ontological realms in basic science and in applied science. The causal theory of reference, which has shifted towards internal realism. Anti-realistic semantics, where truth is replaced by proof and the reference is the use made by someone of a term in a context. Kuhn’s approach in his linguistic period, where he rethinks the scientific revolutions taking into account the causal theory of reference.Fourth, to be aware of the consequences of these analyses for basic science and applied science in two ways: on the one hand, for the semantic differences between them, and, on the other, for the perspective of reference. (shrink)

A variant of the compatrison theory of metaphor is put forward. The main points are a theory of metaphor belongs to semantics, not pragmatics, a metaphorical statement is a similarity statement, usually comparing descriptions of objects, a metaphor is a constellation of words connected by a certain kind of relation - the metaphorical link, metaphors are not necessarily asymmetric, what expressions copunt as metaphors in a certain language has to do with the semantic fields of the language (...) in question. (shrink)

The relevance of the research is defined by the need to create a set of linguistic means, which would contribute to effective communication with the general public, and the need to study different functional-semantic categories, including appeals, for the competent formation of public opinion in the political context. The research aims to comprehend the functioning of linguistic means used as appeals in the example of political propaganda texts in the English media field. The methodology is based on the (...) theoretical study of the works of modern linguists, linguistic, structural, and communicative analysis of appeal linguistic units and contexts. The research considered the linguistic means that form the functional-semantic category of the appeal, examples of political contexts from the British and American media were presented, the functions of appeal were presented using specific examples, an idea of the communicative side of political propaganda texts and audience participation in this process was formed, emphasis was placed on different types of propaganda (white, black, gray), the following groups of appeals were characterized: imperatives (volitional and involuntary). The materials presented in this research can be used to form an idea of the functional-semantic category of appeal, the choice of linguistic means for the purpose of information promotion in the media or social networks, the study of communicative strategies in linguistics and their successful implementation, consideration of political propaganda texts, increasing efficiency when influencing the audience, further implementation of means of appeal in machine learning. (shrink)

Many beginning students in philosophy of language find themselves grappling with dense and difficult texts not easily understood by someone new to the field. This book offers an introduction to philosophy of language by explaining ten classic, often anthologized, texts. Accessible and thorough, written with a unique combination of informality and careful formulation, the book addresses sense and reference, proper names, definite descriptions, indexicals, the definition of truth, truth and meaning, and the nature of speaker meaning, as (...) addressed by Frege, Kripke, Russell, Donnellan, Kaplan, Evans, Putnam, Tarski, Davidson, and Grice. The explanations aim to be as simple as possible without sacrificing accuracy; critical assessments are included with the exposition in order to stimulate further thought and discussion. Philosophy of Language will be an essential resource for undergraduates in a typical philosophy of language course or for graduate students with no background in the field. It can be used in conjunction with an anthology of classic texts, sparing the instructor much arduous exegesis. ContentsFrege on Sense and Reference • Kripke on Names • Russell on Definite Descriptions • Donnellan's Distinction • Kaplan on Demonstratives • Evans on Understanding Demonstratives • Putnam on Semantic Externalism • Tarski's Theory of Truth • Davidson's Semantics for Natural Language • Grice's Theory of Speaker Meaning. (shrink)

The past eighteen years witnessed the rapid development of experimental philosophy of language. Adopting a bibliometric approach, this study examines the research trends and status quo of this burgeoning field based on a corpus of 237 publications retrieved from PhilPapers. It is observed that experimental philosophy of language has undergone three stages, the initiation stage, the development stage, and the extension stage, across which there is a clear upward trend in the annual number of publications. Michael Devitt, (...) Edouard Machery, John Turri, Nat Hansen, et al., are found to be the most productive philosophers, testifying their leading positions in this field. Journals, instead of books, are the major homes of works in this area. The analysis also yields a list of influential works, including the seminal work “Semantics, Cross-cultural Style” and other significant publications on the semantics of various types of expressions. Relatedly, the major research themes are found to include not only intuitions about the reference of proper names, but also a wide array of philosophically and linguistically interesting issues like the meaning of color adjectives, epistemic modals, and predicates of personal taste, the norms of assertions and the essence of lies, etc. These findings showcase that experimental philosophy of language has broadened the research territory and offered deep insights into central issues of philosophy of language that are beyond the reach of the conventional armchair methodology. (shrink)

Philosophy of language is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of meaning, the relationship of language to reality, and the ways in which we use, learn, and understand language. _The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language _provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the field, charting its key ideas and movements, and addressing contemporary research and enduring questions in the philosophy of language. Unique to this _Companion _is clear coverage of research from (...) the related disciplines of formal logic and linguistics, and discussion of the applications in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and philosophy of mind. Organized thematically, the _Companion _is divided into seven sections: Core Topics; Foundations of Semantics; Parts of Speech; Methodology; Logic for Philosophers of Language; Philosophy of Language for the Rest of Philosophy; and Historical Perspectives. Comprised of 70 never-before-published essays from leading scholars--including Sally Haslanger, Jeffrey King, Sally McConnell-Ginet, Rae Langton, Kit Fine, John MacFarlane, Jeff Pelletier, Scott Soames, Jason Stanley, Stephen Stich and Zoltan Gendler Szabo--the _Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language_ promises to be the most comprehensive and authoritative resource for students and scholars alike. (shrink)

A volume of studies in natural language semantics which brings together work by philosophers, logicians and linguists. The main topics treated are: quantification and reference in natural language; the relations between formal logic, programming languages and natural language; pragmatics and discourse meaning; surface syntax and logical meaning. The volume derives from a colloquium organised in 1973 by the Kings College Research Centre, Cambridge and the papers have been edited for publication by Professor Keenan. It is hoped that (...) the collection will make available some of the best work in this fast-moving field and will stimulate further progress by juxtaposing the different approaches and interests represented here. (shrink)

It is well known that mitto comes to mean ‘put’ in late Latin and that it shows reflexes with this sense in the Romance languages . But the nature of this semantic change has not been fully explained, nor has the relationship of the word with other placing-terms in Latin. E. Löfstedt has stated simply that it ‘takes over the meaning ot ponere’.2 But as pono itself remains common in all types of Latin, the question arises whether the two (...) words did really come into conflict. It is the purpose of the first two sections of this article to show that for a considerable period pono and mitto occupied complementary places in a lexical system. This system exhibits a definite structure which remains unaltered from early Latin to at least the sixth century A.D., though its component terms undergo some changes. In section I pono and the words which in earlier Latin performed the functions later assumed by mitto will be discussed. In section I I we shall move on to mitto itself. It will be necessary to consider the nature and motivation of the transition ‘throwput’ as it appears in Latin. (shrink)

This paper outlines an analysis of the word ‘fun’, as it is used in everyday English sentences to describe various activities and asks why some things are labeled as fun while others seem unable to be properly described as such. One common unspoken idea, for example, is that a fun activity is deemed fun due to having a particular phenomenology, in a way that might be comparable to being in a ‘flow state’. Due to the trouble such psychological accounts of (...) fun have in explaining both the precise conditions of fun and also why some activities are thought to be enjoyable but not fun, a deflationary theory is instead introduced. This proposed alternative account suggests that the use of the word ‘fun’, when describing activities in English sentences, signals that the sentence is a generic sentence, an idea based on a semantic distinction made by Greg Carlson (1989). Further, it is argued that the words ‘pleasurable’ and ‘enjoyable’ are reserved for non-generic sentences, leaving the use of the word ‘fun’ to signal something akin to a grammar relation, rather than referring to a feeling or psychological state. (shrink)

This paper tries to determine the philosophical nature of language, its functions, structure and content. It also explains the concept of natural language, ordinary and ideal language i.e. how there is a need of artificial perfect logical language without errors and unclearness in that language. This paper further shows the logical form of language with its syntactical, semantical, innate and acquired criteria for the evaluation of the languages. It deals with the analysis of (...) class='Hi'>language to clear what is unclear, to know what is unknown, to make definite what is vague. In this paper I used the method; logical method for interpretation and argumentation, analytical method for simplification, and critical method to investigate the real domain of language. This paper does not deal with ordinary functions of the language but it deals with the conceptual and modular functions of the language. The fundamental aim of this written up is to determine the analytical approach of Wittgenstein to sketch the ‘language as a tool to discuss the state of affairs or facts of the worlds that is also what philosophy does. This paper describes the contributions of rationalism and empiricism in the field of knowing the truths of language. (shrink)

Written in a straightforward and explanatory way and filled with examples, this text provides a comprehensive introduction to the field, suitable for students with no background in the philosophy of language or formal logic.

This book studies Chinese opposites. It uses a large corpus to trace the behavior of opposite pairings’ co-occurrence, focusing on the following questions: In what types of constructions, from window-size restricted and bi-syllabic to quad-syllabic, will the opposite pairings appear together? And, on a larger scale, i.e. in constrained-free contexts, in which syntactic frames will the opposite pairings appear together? The data suggests aspects that have been ignored by previous theoretical studies, such as the ordering rules in co-occurrent pairings, the (...) differences between the three main sub-types of opposites in discourse function distributions. The author also considers the features of this Chinese study and compares it to similar studies of English and Japanese. In all, it offers a practical view of how opposites are used in a certain language as a response to the puzzles lingering in theoretical fields. This study appeals to linguists, computational linguists and language-lovers. With numerous tables, illustrations and examples, it is easy to read but also encourages readers to link their personal instincts with the results from a large corpus to experience the beauty of language as a shared human resource. (shrink)

In recent years, the study of formal semantics and formal pragmatics has grown tremendously showing that core aspects of language meaning can be explained by a few principles. These principles are grounded in the logic that is behind - and tightly intertwined with - the grammar of human language. In this book, some of the most prominent figures in linguistics, including Noam Chomsky and Barbara H. Partee, offer new insights into the nature of linguistic meaning and pave the (...) way for the further development of formal semantics and formal pragmatics. Each chapter investigates various dimensions in which the logical nature of human language manifests itself within a language and/or across languages. Phenomena like bare plurals, free choice items, scalar implicatures, intervention effects, and logical operators are investigated in depth and at times cross-linguistically and/or experimentally. This volume will be of interest to scholars working within the fields of semantics, pragmatics, language acquisition and psycholinguistics. (shrink)

Software application ontologies have the potential to become the keystone in state-of-the-art information management techniques. It is expected that these ontologies will support the sort of reasoning power required to navigate large and complex terminologies correctly and efficiently. Yet, there is one problem in particular that continues to stand in our way. As these terminological structures increase in size and complexity, and the drive to integrate them inevitably swells, it is clear that the level of consistency required for such navigation (...) will become correspondingly difficult to maintain. While descriptive semantic representations are certainly a necessary component to any adequate ontology-based system, so long as ontology engineers rely solely on semantic information, without a sound ontological theory informing their modeling decisions, this goal will surely remain out of reach. In this paper we describe how Language and Computing nv (L&C), along with The Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Sciences (IFOMIS), are working towards developing and implementing just such a theory, combining the open software architecture of L&C’s LinkSuiteTM with the philosophical rigor of IFOMIS’s Basic Formal Ontology. In this way we aim to move beyond the more or less simple controlled vocabularies that have dominated the industry to date. (shrink)

This paper aims to single out some pathologies of current lexical semantics, which suffers from both the trauma of immanence and the opposite anxiety of rooting all knowledge in the pre-semiotic dimension, or entrusting sense-making entirely to context. To untangle these pitfalls, the dialogue with a phenomenological cognitive semiotics may prove fertile to focus on the lexicon as a type of storage and a type of memory; that is, a type of accumulated and sedimented knowledge based on the dynamical re-pertinentization (...) of invariants. In particular, the perspective developed by Sonesson shows striking coincidences with De Mauro’s semiotic semantics, which already provides a solid foundation for rethinking the notion of lexical field drawing on an “authentic” Humboldtian and Saussurean heritage. Therefore, I will briefly review some principles of lexical structural semantics, with the aim of showing how these notions, once emancipated from the Saussurean vulgata, can not only be compatible with a cognitive phenomenological approach, but also facilitate the rehabilitation of a theoretical apparatus still valuable for both (lexical) semantics and semiotics. Although focused on lexical fields, some of the issues addressed can be extended to language and languages, as well as to other types of semiotic systems, to shed light on controversial themes such as the embodiment of signs and the autonomy of linguistics and semantics. (shrink)

The Continuum Companion to Philosophy of Language offers the definitive guide to contemporary philosophy of language. The book covers all the fundamental questions asked by the philosophy of language - areas that have continued to attract interest historically as well as topics that have emerged more recently as active areas of research. Ten specially commissioned essays from an international team of experts reveal where important work continues to be done in the area and, most valuably, the exciting (...) new directions the field is taking. The Companion explores issues pertaining to the nature of language, form semantics, theories of meaning, reference, intensional contexts, context-dependence, pragmatics, the normativity of language, analyticity, a priority and modality. Featuring a series of indispensable research tools, including an A to Z of key terms and concepts, a detailed list of resources and a fully annotated bibliography, this is the essential reference tool for anyone working in the philosophy of language. (shrink)

This inquiry will be limited to an analysis of Turkic borrowings that have been attested in inscriptions found in Mongolia and southern Siberia in the period beginning around the year 700 A.D., as well as in Turkic-Uighur manuscripts, beginning around the year 900 A.D., conserved in northern Tarim (especially in the Turfan region) and in Dunhuang, which is a Chinese outpost on the main road of the silk trade. We will look only at borrowings that predate Islamization, a process that (...) developed rapidly during the eleventh century and of which some borrowings are still part of the language of the Islamic Turkish world. Although most of our study will concentrate on pre-Islamic borrowings that were fully assimilated into written words, we will will also investigate some transcriptions of foreign terms that are mentioned in various manuscripts of a theological bent (most notably of Indian, Iranian, Chinese, and Syriac origin and found in Buddhist, Manichaean, and Nestorian Christian texts) as well as words of a very technical nature. We will also look at more contemporary terms that are derived from several major semantic fields. (shrink)

The paper explores the relationships and distinctions between pictorial and linguistic symbolic systems. It addresses the issue of the interplay between these media and symbolic systems. The paper explains why we cannot speak of any “pure” approaches and why it is necessary to be familiar with these mixed strategies. The central hypothesis is based on the idea of mutual "lending" of strategies and influences, leading to the emergence of a "new homogeneity," or a new semanticity and conceptualization. The main question (...) posed is: How does the linguistic symbolic system influence images, and how does the image symbolic system, in turn, influence language under contextual pressures? The first objective is to identify and analyze suitable examples of these pressures and “borrowings” to determine the domains of language and imagery. The analysis seeks to understand when these symbolic systems are most effective in their functions, when they exchange strategies, and what new meanings arise from this exchange. The second objective, derived from the first, is to defend the irreplaceability of the unique “message of the samples” (images) and how they symbolically create their version of the world in an irreplaceable way through words. Additionally, the paper aims to define a functional and irreplaceable space for words within the realm of visual art. (shrink)

Meaning has traditionally been regarded as a problem for philosophers and psychologists. Advances in cognitive science since the early 1960s, however, broadened discussions of meaning, or more technically, the semantics of perceptions, representations, and/or actions, into biology and computer science. Here, we review the notion of “meaning” as it applies to living systems, and argue that the question of how living systems create meaning unifies the biological and cognitive sciences across both organizational and temporal scales.

Experimental philosophy of language, as a subdiscipline of experimental philosophy, shares its most important defining characteristic: conducting empirical studies to solve traditional problems in the philosophy of language. Much of the attention in the field has been directed to theories of reference because of the influential 2004 article by Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols, and Stephen Stich, Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style. After almost 20 years of research, it is time to take stock. This introduction has two goals. (...) First, to represent the discipline’s past and current state, and highlight which have been the topics of study addressed by the discipline in addition to the theories of reference. Second, to draw attention to corpus methods in the experimental philosophy of language, a methodology that, although not the most widespread today, is gaining more and more adherents. (shrink)

This is a jointly written paper. It has two parts: an empirical part and a theoretical one. Part one, the empirical part, is written by Adrienne Lehrer and describes the language of taste, illustrated by the vocabulary for wine language. The language of the taste of wine often has both a descriptive and evaluate element. Using wine talk as an example, one wine may be described as fruity, acidic, and light, and another as sour, unbalanced, and thin. (...) The second uses highly evaluative terms not found in the first. We analyze the structure of the semantic field of wine descriptors, both literal and metaphoric. A heavy wine uses a deal metaphor, but recent wine writers have expanded the vocabulary by terms such as brawny and muscular. The authority of experts, the advantages and pitfalls thereof, in the description of wine is considered as an instance of delegation of semantic authority. Part two, written by Keith Lehrer, deals with the theoretical implications for a theory of meaning. The theory of wo... (shrink)

The Ollivier–Poulin–Zurek definition of objectivity provides a philosophical basis for the environment as witness formulation of decoherence theory and hence for quantum Darwinism. It is shown that no account of the reference of the key terms in this definition can be given that does not render the definition inapplicable within quantum theory. It is argued that this is not the fault of the language used, but of the assumption that the laws of physics are independent of Hilbert-space decomposition. All (...) evidence suggests that this latter assumption is true. If it is, decoherence cannot explain the emergence of classicality. (shrink)

Se presentan propuestas recientes en tres ámbitos de la filosofía del lenguaje en que se están haciendo contribuciones significativas: el fenómeno de la vaguedad; la distinción entre semántica y pragmática, y el uso de semánticas “bidimensionales” para tratar problemas generados por las tesis de “referencia directa”. Hace unos años existia una percepción de la pérdida por la filosofia del lenguaje, en favor de la filosofia de la mente, del lugar central ocupado en la tradición analítica -una perdida que equivaldría según (...) Dummett al abandono del rasgo distintivo de esa tradición. Tomando como modelo ilustrativo las propuestas presentadas, se sugieré que tal percepción se ha revelado una moda pasajera y aventura una hipótesis explicativa.Some recent proposals in three fields in the philosophy of language are discussed: vagueness, the semantics-pragmatics distinction, and the use of “bidimensional” semantics to treat problems created by “Direct Reference” theses. Some years ago there was a perception concerning the loss of the philosophy of language, in favour ofthe philosophy of mind, of its central place in the analytic tradition -a loss which, according to Dummett, would amount to the loss of its most distinctive trait. With the discussed proposals as illustrative model, it is suggested that that perception was the product of a fleeting fashion, and an explanatory hypothesis is ventured. (shrink)

This volume offers a general introduction to the field of semantics and provides coverage of the main perspectives.

For fifty years, Willard Van Orman Quine's books and articles have stimulated intense debate in the fields of logic and the philosophy of language. Many scholars in fact, regard Quine as the greatest living English-speaking philosopher; yet his views remain widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. This book provides the first major explication and defense of Quine's systematic philosophy and is ideally suited for use as a required or supplementary text in a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy (...) and linguistics.The book explores the far-reaching implications of Quine's views on language for contemporary analytic philosophy. It is unique in providing a lucid and rich description and reconstruction of the historical context from which Quine's work grew, focusing in particular on the role that Russell and Wittgenstein played in shaping the problems inherited by Quine. It presents Quine's difficult later views in an accessible fashion, bringing out as no other study has the very radical nature of his position. One of the book's highlights is its careful examination and assessment of Tarski's theory of truth as it relates to the traditions of Russell and Wittgenstein and to Quine's own philosophy.George D. Romanos took his Ph.D. in philosophy under George D. W. Berry and Paul T. Sagal at Boston University. This book grew out of his dissertation with the active criticism and support of Quine himself. (shrink)

What is linguistic meaning? What do people precisely do in uttering sentences? What are the principles involved in linguistic interpretation? How is it possible that linguistic signs, such as oral sounds or squiggles on a piece of paper, refer to things in the world? This book presents the attempts by philosophers in the 20th century to understand the workings of language, and address questions such as these.Presenting an accessible, balanced introduction to the philosophy of language as it has (...) evolved in analytical philosophy during the 20th century, this textbook offers equal attention to both of the main divisions within the field of philosophical semantics - truth-conditional theory and speech act theory - and shows how these theoretical approaches may be construed as complementary abstractions from a prior, undifferentiated understanding of meaning as defined by use.Meaning, Use and Truth offers students of philosophy of language and those in related fields such as logic or linguistics a comprehensive introduction to the field, and explores why philosophy of language in the 20th century could be viewed as providing the key to the solution of the classical problems of philosophy. (shrink)

This volume brings together new research on fiction from the fields of philosophy and linguistics. Fiction has long been a topic of interest in philosophy, but recent years have also seen a surge in work on fictional discourse at the intersection between linguistics and philosophy of language. In particular, there has been a growing interest in examining long-standing issues concerning fiction from a perspective that is informed both by philosophy and linguistic theory. -/- Following a detailed introduction by the (...) editors, The Language of Fiction contains 14 chapters by leading scholars in linguistics and philosophy, organized into three parts. Part I, 'Truth, Reference, and Imagination', offers new, interdisciplinary perspectives on some of the central themes from the philosophy of fiction: What is fictional truth? How do fictional names refer? What kind of speech act is involved in telling a fictional story? What is the relation between fiction and imagination? Part II, 'Storytelling', deals with themes originating from the study of narrative: How do we infer a coherent story from a sequence of event descriptions? And how do we interpret the words of impersonal or unreliable narrators? Part III, 'Perspective Shift', focuses on an alleged key characteristic of fictional narratives, namely how we get access to the fictional characters' inner lives, through a variety of literary techniques for representing what they say, think, or see. The volume will be of interest to scholars from graduate level upwards in the fields of discourse analysis, semantics and pragmatics, philosophy of language, psychology, cognitive science, and literary studies. -/- Table of Contents 1:Introduction, Emar Maier and Andreas Stokke Part I: Truth, Reference, and Imagination 2:Fictional reference as simulation, François Recanati 3:Sharing real and fictional reference, Hans Kamp 4:Fictional truth: In defense of the reality principle, Nils Franzén 5:On the generation of content, Sandro Zucchi 6:Do the imaginings that fictions invite have a direction of fit?, Manuel García-Carpintero Part II: Storytelling 7:In search of the narrator, Regine Eckardt 8:Extracting fictional truth from unreliable sources, Emar Maier and Merel Semeijn 9:Narrative and point-of-view, Samuel Cumming 10:A puzzle about narrative progression and causal reasoning, Daniel Altshuler 11:Isomorphic mapping in fictional interpretation, Matthias Bauer and Sigrid Beck Part III: Perspective Shift 12:Metalinguistic acts in fiction, Nellie Wieland 13:Computing perspective shift in narratives, Márta Abrusán 14:Derogatory terms in free indirect discourse, Isidora Stojanovic 15:Protagonist projection, character-focus, and mixed quotation, Andreas Stokke. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that being in an intentional state is a matter of being related to a sentence in a mental language-a 'Language of Thought' (see especially Fodor 1975, 1987 Appendix; Field 1978). According to this view-which I shall call 'the LT hypothesis'-when anyone has a belief or a desire or a hope with a certain content, they have a sentence of this language, with that content, 'written' in their heads. The claim is meant quite literally: (...) the mental representations that make up the items of this language have semantic and syntactic properties. This is why, according to this view, cognitive psychology does, and should, treat that part of the mind which deals with intentional states as a semantic and a syntactic 'engine'. (shrink)

The chapters in this volume address a variety of issues surrounding quotation, such as whether it is a pragmatic or semantic phenomenon, what varieties of quotation exist, and what speech acts are involved in quoting. Quotation poses problems for many prevailing theories of language. One fundamental principle is that for a language to be learnable, speakers must be able to derive the truth-conditions of sentences from the meanings of their parts. Another popular view is that indexical expressions (...) like "I" display a certain fixity -- that they always refer to the speaker using them. Both of these tenets appear to be violated by quotation. This volume is suitable for scholars in philosophy of language, semantics, and pragmatics, and for graduate students in philosophy and linguistics. The book will also be useful for researchers in other fields that study quotation, including psychology and computer science. (shrink)

Published originally as “Loogisen kielentutkimuksen näköaloja”, Ajatus 19,, pp. 81–96, the following piece by Jaakko Hintikka is the first essay he published in his mother tongue of Finnish. It is seen to provide both a state-of-the-art review of current topics emerging in the philosophy of language in the mid-1950, as well as outlines of Hintikka’s own evaluation of major theses of that era, in particular those of Quine’s and Wittgenstein’s concerning language use. Hintikka evaluates contributions that the logical (...) study of language use can make to the solving of philosophical questions. Published in 1956 in Ajatus: The Yearbook of the Philosophical Society of Finland, Hintikka’s essay served to introduce these topical issues to the Finnish-speaking audience soon after the original works had appeared in print. It also puts the theses into the perspectives of Hintikka’s own fledgling logical philosophy. One can see the germs of game-theoretical semantics is his comments on Wittgenstein’s notion of a language-game, and his remarks on general habits of action anticipate the importance of strategic rules in Hintikka’s mature, inquiry-led and ‘action-first’ epistemology. This is manifest in Hintikka’s characteristic approach to the methodology of philosophy of science and mathematics as an attempt to understand the nature of scientific and mathematical practices and operations through the logical analysis of their central concepts. Topics indicated below thus became the hallmarks of Hintikka’s next sixty years of work, which saw the development of a range of logical methods by which language and its use can be studied, and in particular in such a way that progress can be made in solving problems of genuinely philosophical nature that one encounters across various fields of science. This piece was very briefly summarized in English in 1963 by Arto Salomaa, 1963, p. 165), and it is translated from the original Finnish by Jukka Nikulainen and Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen. [A.-V. P, J. N.]. (shrink)

This volume is a tribute to Roger Schwarzschild's immense contributions in the formal semantics of nouns, focus, degrees and space, and tense and aspect. Collectively, the papers in the volume reveal parallels across ontological domains, in particular in the context of elements with internal structure, like plural sets, alternative sets, degree intervals, temporal intervals, and vectors. This research suggests that the structure of an entity could inform the semantic behavior of that entity just as much than its semantic (...) type or lexical category. And because these structures dictate the formation of semantic alternatives, it can help inform focus semantics and scalar implicature as well. Old questions on plurals, focus and degree expressions get new answers in this collection of papers in honor of Roger Schwarzchild. Roger Schwarzschild is one of the leading scholars in semantics, and the editors have been highly successful in requesting contributions by his teachers, peers and former students. Some papers have circulated in draft form for many years, and find their final home in this edited volume, which well reflects the state of the art in the field. Prof. dr. Henriëtte de Swart, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbooks series is a major new initiative in academic publishing. Each volume offers an authoritative and up-to-date survey of original research in a particular subject area. Specially commissioned essays from leading figures in the discipline give critical examinations of the progress and direction of debates. Oxford Handbooks provide scholars and graduate students with compelling new perspectives upon a wide range of subjects in the humanities and social sciences. Ernie Lepore and Barry Smith present the definitive reference work for (...) this diverse and fertile field of philosophy. A superb international team contribute more than forty brand-new essays covering topics from the nature of language to meaning, truth, and reference, and the interfaces of philosophy of language with linguistics, psychology, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. It will be an essential resource for anyone working in the central areas of philosophy, for linguists interested in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and for psychologists and cognitive scientists working on language. (shrink)

This present book explores recent advances in modeling discourse processes, in particular, new approaches aimed at understanding pathological language behavior specific to schizophrenia. The contributors examine the modeling paradigm of formal semantics, which falls within the scope of both linguistics and logic while providing overlapping links with other fields such as philosophy of language and cognitive psychology. This book is based on results presented during the series of workshops on Coherence and Discourse organized by SLAM, a project developed (...) to systemize the study of pathological language processing by taking an overarching interdisciplinary approach combining psychology, linguistics, computer science and philosophy. The principle focus is on conversations produced by people with psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. The contributions come from young and experienced researchers, and invited speakers. The book appeals to likeminded students and researchers. (shrink)

SECTION I In 1972, Donald Davison and Gilbert Hannan wrote in the introduction to the volume Semantics of Natural Language: "The success of linguistics in treating natural languages as formal ~yntactic systems has aroused the interest of a number of linguists in a parallel or related development of semantics. For the most part quite independently, many philosophers and logicians have recently been applying formal semantic methods to structures increasingly like natural languages. While differences in training, method and vocabulary (...) tend to veil the fact, philosophers and linguists are converging, it seems, on a common set of interrelated problems. " Davidson and Harman called for an interdisciplinary dialogue of linguists, philosophers and logicians on the semantics of natural language, and during the last ten years such an enterprise has proved extremely fruitful. Thanks to the cooperative effort in these several fields, the last decade has brought about striking progress in our understanding of the semantics of natural language. This work on semantics has typically paid little attention to psychological aspects of meaning. Thus, psychologists or computer scientists working on artificial intelligence were not invited to join the forces in the influential introduction of Semantics of Natural Language. No doubt it was felt that while psychological aspects of language are important in their own right, they are not relevant to our immediate semantic concerns. In the last few years, several linguists and logicians have come to question the fundamental anti-psychological assumptions underlying their theorizing. (shrink)

The article discusses the reasons why modern formal semantics of natural language is an integral part of a larger philosophical research program for the study of the nature of intentionality. The purpose of this article is to show how research in the field of formal semantics of natural language became the implementation of a large philosophical research program that is focused on the nature of intentional objects, which since the time of F. Brentano have been considered an (...) integral part of mental phenomena. Mental phenomena are opposed to physical phenomena due to their inherent intentionality. In modern philosophy, it is commonly considered that the comprehension of the nature of intentionality is the key to understanding the nature of consciousness, and, consequently, the nature of man. The article shows that formal semantics represents the structure of the meaning of linguistic expressions, with the help of which human thought is formed, which is one of the main objects of intentional consciousness. In formal semantics, this representation is carried out in a rigorous, systematic, and empirically verifiable way on the basis of natural languages, that is, on those symbolic systems that real people use in real practice to shape their thoughts. The research is based on the works of G. Frege, who laid the foundation for the formal-semantic methodology. Thus, the answer is given to the question of why modern formal linguistics, which originates in the analytical philosophy of the 20th century, is a philosophically significant discipline. This response is a reaction to the objections of skeptics who believe that modern analytic philosophy cannot be considered a direction that has any serious philosophical significance. (shrink)

[Publisher's description] -/- * Authoritative review of this dynamic field placed in an interdisciplinary context * Approximately 175 articles by leaders in the field * Compact and affordable single-volume format -/- The application of philosophy to language study, and language study to philosophy, has experienced demonstrable intellectual growth and diversification in recent decades. This work comprehensively analyzes and evaluates many of the most interesting facets of this vibrant field. An edited collection of articles taken from (...) the award-winning Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics 2nd edition, this volume acts as a single-stop desk reference resource for the field, comprising contributions from the foremost scholars of philosophy of linguistics in their various interdisciplinary specializations. From Plato's Cratylus to Semantic and Epistemic Holism, this fascinating work authoritatively unpacks the diverse and multi-layered concepts of meaning, expression, identity, truth, and countless other themes and subjects straddling the linguistic-philosophical meridian, in 175 articles and over 900 pages. Readership: Relevant to any department, institute or individual interested in the philosophical aspects of language. (shrink)

This textbook, which is completely self-contained and can be read by anyone with a secondary school education, is the result of the author's material prepared over the past 15 years of teaching introductory natural language semantics to graduate and undergraduate students at McGill University. The intended audience comprises undergraduate and graduate students in linguistics as well as those in philosophy, computer science and psychology with an interest in natural language semantics. The aim of the textbook is to teach (...) the fundamentals of natural language semantics, with English as the principal, though not the exclusive, target language. The principal aim of the textbook is to provide the student with all the basics necessary to be able him or her read research in natural language semantics, regardless of the theory assumed by the author of the research. In contrast to other textbooks in the field, which aim to introduce students to a particular theory of natural language semantics, this textbook seeks to give to its reader a clear overview of the kind of natural language phenomena which, at least prima facie, fall within the ambit of an investigation of natural language semantics; to assist the reader in developing a mastery of the mathematical tools used to formulate hypotheses about the natural language phenomena studied; and to impart to the reader an appreciation of the interplay between hypothesis and data. As a result, the textbook is rich in its presentation of the patterns of English, drawing extensively on the best and most contemporary descriptive grammars of English. The textbook also has more than 500 exercises, with answers to half of them. (shrink)

This handbook comprises, in three volumes, an in-depth presentation of the state of the art in linguistic semantics from a wide variety of perspectives. It contains 112 articles written by leading scholars from around the world. These articles present detailed, yet accessible, introductions to key issues, including the analysis of specific semantic categories and constructions, the history of semantic research, theories and theoretical frameworks, methodology, and relationships with related fields; moreover, they give expert guidance on topics of debate (...) within the field, on the strengths and weaknesses of existing theories, and on the likely directions for the future development of semantic research. In many cases, the articles written for this handbook promise to become the standard references on the topics they cover. This work will provide an essential reference for both advanced students and researchers in semantics and related fields within linguistics, psychology, philosophy, and other areas. (shrink)

The collection of very large text sources has revolutionized the study of natural language, leading to the development of several models of language learning and distributional semantics that extract sophisticated semantic representations of words based on the statistical redundancies contained within natural language. The models treat knowledge as an interaction of processing mechanisms and the structure of language experience. But language experience is often treated agnostically. We report a distributional semantic analysis that shows (...) written language in fiction books varies appreciably between books from the different genres, books from the same genre, and even books written by the same author. Given that current theories assume that word knowledge reflects an interaction between processing mechanisms and the language environment, the analysis shows the need for the field to engage in a more deliberate consideration and curation of the corpora used in computational studies of natural language processing. (shrink)

Language Use offers a philosophical examination of the basic conceptual framework of pragmatic theory, and contrasts this framework with detailed descriptions of our everyday practices of language use. While the results should be highly relevant to pragmatics, the investigation is not a contribution to pragmatic theory. Drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems, Language Use brings out the relevance of Wittgenstein's methods to fundamental problems in central pragmatic fields of research such as deixis, implicatures, speech acts (...) and presuppositions. (shrink)