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Author: Steven Gross
Publisher: Psychology Press
Published: 2001
Total Pages: 164
ISBN-13: 9780815340386
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Drawing upon research in philosophical logic, linguistics and cognitive science, this study explores how our ability to use and understand language depends upon our capacity to keep track of complex features of the contexts in which we converse.
Author: Tadeusz Ciecierski
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2020-02-25
Total Pages: 319
ISBN-13: 3030344851
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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
Author: Gerhard Preyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2007-10-25
Total Pages: 374
ISBN-13: 0199213321
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"This book represents a continuation of the research project in philosophy of language and semantics represented in the journal "Protosociology" at the J. W. Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main." - editors' preface.
Author: Jason Stanley
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Published: 2007-07-05
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 0191527556
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Natural languages all contain constructions the interpretation of which depends upon the situation in which they are used. In Language and Context, Jason Stanley presents a series of essays which develop a theory of how the situation in which we speak interacts with the words we use to help produce what we say. The reason we can so smoothly operate with sentences that can be used to express very different items of information, Stanley argues, is that there are linguistically mandated constraints on the effects of the situation on what we say. These linguistically mandated constraints are most evident in the cases of sentences containing explicit pronouns, such as 'She is a mathematician', where interpretation of the information expressed is guided by the use of the pronoun 'she'. But even when such explicit pronouns are lacking, our sentences provide similar cues to allow our interlocutors to determine the information expressed. We are, in the main, confident that our interlocutors will smoothly grasp what we say, because the grammar and meaning of our sentences encodes these constraints. In defending this theory, Stanley pays close attention to specific cases of context-sensitive constructions, such as quantified noun phrases, comparative adjectives, and conditionals. Philosophers and cognitive scientist have appealed to the dependence of what is intuitively said by a sentence on the situation in which it is uttered to argue against the possibility of a systematic theory of meaning for natural language. The theory developed in this book is a vigorous defence of the possibility of a systematic theory of meaning for natural language against these influential tendencies.
Author: Deirdre Wilson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012-03-22
Total Pages: 397
ISBN-13: 052176677X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →When people speak, their words never fully encode what they mean, and the context is always compatible with a variety of interpretations. How can comprehension ever be achieved? Wilson and Sperber argue that comprehension is a process of inference guided by precise expectations of relevance. What are the relations between the linguistically encoded meanings studied in semantics and the thoughts that humans are capable of entertaining and conveying? How should we analyse literal meaning, approximations, metaphors and ironies? Is the ability to understand speakers' meanings rooted in a more general human ability to understand other minds? How do these abilities interact in evolution and in cognitive development? Meaning and Relevance sets out to answer these and other questions, enriching and updating relevance theory and exploring its implications for linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science and literary studies.
Author: Robert J. Stainton
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2008-11-14
Total Pages: 287
ISBN-13: 1402083106
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Are natural languages genuinely compositional? What roles does context play in linguistic communication, and by what means? In particular, does context interfere with the compositional determination of truth conditions? What meanings should theorists assign to sentences if compositionality is to be retained? These are the central questions of this important volume of new philosophical essays in honour of Ernie Lepore.
Author: Alessandro Capone
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2013-11-26
Total Pages: 664
ISBN-13: 3319010115
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book is about the pragmatics of language and it illustrates how pragmatics transcends the boundaries of linguistics. This volume covers Gricean pragmatics as well as topics including: conversation and collective belief, the norm of assertion, speech acts, what a context is, the distinction between semantics and pragmatics and implicature and explicature, pragmatics and epistemology, the pragmatics of belief, quotation, negation, implicature and argumentation theory, Habermas’ Universal Pragmatics, Dascal’s theory of the dialectical self, theories and theoretical discussions on the nature of pragmatics from a philosophical point of view. Conversational implicatures are generally meaning augmentations on top of explicatures, whilst explicatures figure prominently in what is said. Discussions in this work reveal their characteristics and tensions within current theories relating to explicatures and implicatures. Authors show that explicatures and implicatures are calculable and not (directly) tied to conventional meaning. Pragmatics has a role to play in dealing with philosophical problems and this volume presents research that defines boundaries and gives a stable picture of pragmatics and philosophy. World renowned academic experts in philosophy and pragmalinguistics ask important theoretical questions and interact in a way that can be easily grasped by those from disciplines other than philosophy, such as anthropology, literary theory and law. A second volume in this series is also available, which covers the perspective of linguists who have been influenced by philosophy.
Author: Nick Riemer
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-07-30
Total Pages: 550
ISBN-13: 1317412451
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Routledge Handbook of Semantics provides a broad and state-of-the-art survey of this field, covering semantic research at both word and sentence level. It presents a synoptic view of the most important areas of semantic investigation, including contemporary methodologies and debates, and indicating possible future directions in the field. Written by experts from around the world, the 29 chapters cover key issues and approaches within the following areas: meaning and conceptualisation; meaning and context; lexical semantics; semantics of specific phenomena; development, change and variation. The Routledge Handbook of Semantics is essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students working in this area.
Author: Ilse Depraetere
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2017-03-16
Total Pages: 357
ISBN-13: 3319322478
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book explores new territory at the interface between semantics and pragmatics, reassessing a number of linguistic phenomena in the light of recent advances in pragmatic theory. It presents stimulating insights by experts in linguistics and philosophy, including Kent Bach, Philippe de Brabanter, Max Kölbel and François Recanati. The authors begin by reassessing the definition of four theoretical concepts: saturation, free pragmatic enrichment, completion and expansion. They go on to confront (sub)disciplines that have addressed similar issues but that have not necessarily been in close contact, and then turn to questions related to reported speech, modality, indirect requests and prosody. Chapters investigate lexical pragmatics and (cognitive) lexical semantics and other interactions involving experimental pragmatics, construction grammar, clinical linguistics, and the distinction between mental and linguistic content. The authors bridge the gap between different disciplines, subdisciplines and methodologies, supporting cross-fertilization of ideas and indicating the empirical studies that are needed to test current theoretical concepts and push the theory further. Readers will find overviews of the ways in which concepts are defined, empirical data with which they are illustrated and explorations of the theoretical frameworks in which concepts are couched. This exciting exchange of ideas has its origins in the editors’ workshop series on the theme ‘The semantics/pragmatics interface: linguistic, logical and philosophical perspectives’, held at the University of Lille 3 in 2012-13. Scholars of linguistics, logic and philosophy and those interested in the research benefits of crossing disciplines will find this work both accessible and thought-provoking, especially those with an interest in pragmatic theory or semantics.
Author: Riccardo Dottori
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 452
ISBN-13: 9783825867027
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This volume contains the Proceedings of the Third meeting Italian/American Philosophy that took place in Rome in June 5-10, 2001. What is "Truth" in Analytic Philosophy after the linguistic turn? What can we say about "Truth" in Hermeneutics, after taking into account the so-called hermeneutical circle? According to Nietzsche: "Truth is that form of error without which human beings could not live." From this definition it follows: "The point is not the rightness of theory but its importance for human existence." Could we say the same from an epistemological point of view? Who (or what) could be the neutral arbiter among different conceptual schemes? Can an interpretative paradigm stand in as a substitute for traditional objectivity? The controversial problem of "Truth," however, must be discussed within the various fields of philosophy: Aesthetics, Logic, Epistemology, Ethics and Politics. In view of this, Hermeneutics and Analytic Philosophy converged to create the body of this meetin
