Insensitive Semantics

Insensitive Semantics PDF

Author: Herman Cappelen

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2008-04-15

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0470754915

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Insensitive Semantics is an overview of and contribution to the debates about how to accommodate context sensitivity within a theory of human communication, investigating the effects of context on communicative interaction and, as a corollary, what a context of utterance is and what it is to be in one. Provides detailed and wide-ranging overviews of the central positions and arguments surrounding contextualism Addresses broad and varied aspects of the distinction between the semantic and non-semantic content of language Defends a distinctive and explanatorily powerful combination of semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism Confronts core problems which not only run to the heart of philosophy of language and linguistics, but which arise in epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy as well

Context-Sensitivity and Semantic Minimalism

Context-Sensitivity and Semantic Minimalism PDF

Author: Gerhard Preyer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2007-10-25

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 0199213321

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"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.

The Semantics-Pragmatics Boundary in Philosophy

The Semantics-Pragmatics Boundary in Philosophy PDF

Author: Maite Ezcurdia

Publisher: Broadview Press

Published: 2013-03-14

Total Pages: 591

ISBN-13: 1554810698

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The boundary between semantics and pragmatics has been important since the early twentieth century, but in the last twenty-five years it has become the central issue in the philosophy of language. This anthology collects classic philosophical papers on the topic, along with recent key contributions. It stresses not only the nature of the boundary, but also its importance for philosophy generally.

Making Semantics Pragmatic

Making Semantics Pragmatic PDF

Author: Ken Turner

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0857249096

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A collection of invited papers that intends to explore the nature of the semantics/pragmatics interface by examining the extent to which the analysis of certain expressions or constructions can be pragmaticised. It contains papers that address the topic of 'making pragmatics semantic'.

The Architecture of Context and Context-Sensitivity

The Architecture of Context and Context-Sensitivity PDF

Author: Tadeusz Ciecierski

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-02-25

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 3030344851

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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

Liberating Content

Liberating Content PDF

Author: Herman Cappelen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0199641331

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This volume brings together two influential series of papers by Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore on language, communication, and contexts. These are the papers which introduced speech act pluralism and semantic minimalism, and they provide the foundation for one of the most powerful attacks on contextualism in contemporary philosophy.

Meaning, Context and Methodology

Meaning, Context and Methodology PDF

Author: Sarah-Jane Conrad

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-10-23

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1501504320

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What methodological impact does Contextualism have on the philosophy of language? This collection sets out to provide some answers. The authors in this volume question three ultimately connected assumptions of the philosophy of language. The first assumption relates to the predominant status of referential semantics and its power to explain truth-conditional meaning. This assumption has come under attack by the context thesis and a number of papers pursue the question of whether this is justified. The second assumption gives priority to assertive sentences when considering language use. The context thesis changes our understanding of language use altogether; possible implications from this methodological shift are addressed in this volume. According to the third assumption, philosophical analysis amounts to nothing more than conceptual analysis. The context thesis risks undermining this project. Whether conceptual analysis can still be defended as a methodological tool is discussed in this volume.

Pragmatics

Pragmatics PDF

Author: Yan Huang

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-11-27

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0192518380

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Yan Huang's highly successful textbook on pragmatics - the study of language in use - has been fully revised and updated in this second edition. It includes a brand new chapter on reference, a major topic in both linguistics and the philosophy of language. Chapters have also been updated to include new material on upward and downward entailment, current debates about conversational implicature, impoliteness, emotional deixis, contextualism versus semantic minimalism, and the elimination of binding conditions. The book draws on data from English and a wide range of the world's languages, and shows how pragmatics is related to the study of semantics, syntax, and sociolinguistics and to such fields as the philosophy of language, linguistic anthropology, and artificial intelligence. Professor Huang includes exercises and essay topics at the end of each chapter, and offers guidance and suggested solutions at the end of the volume. Written by one of the leading scholars in the field, this new edition will continue to be an ideal textbook for students of linguistics, and a valuable resource for scholars and students of language in philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and computer science.

Meaning in Linguistic Interaction

Meaning in Linguistic Interaction PDF

Author: Kasia M. Jaszczolt

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-04-29

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0191068985

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This book offers a semantic and metasemantic inquiry into the representation of meaning in linguistic interaction. Kasia Jaszczolt's view represents the most radical stance on meaning to be found in the contextualist tradition and thereby the most radical take on the semantics/pragmatics boundary. It allows for the selection of the cognitively plausible object of enquiry without being constrained by such distinctions as what is said/what is implicated or what is linguistic and what is extralinguistic. She argues that this is the only promising stance on meaning. The analysis transcends the traditional distinctions drawn, and traditional questions posed, in post-Gricean pragmatics and philosophy of language. It heavily relies on the dynamic construction of meaning in discourse, using truth conditions as a tool but at the same time conforming to pragmatic compositionality ? whereby aspects of meaning that enter this composition have very different provenance. Meaning in Linguistic Interaction builds on the author's earlier work on Default Semantics and adds new arguments in favour of radical contextualism as well as novel applications, focusing on the role of salience, the flexibility of word meaning, the literal/nonliteral distinction, and the dynamic nature of a character, as well as offering an entirely new perspective on the indexical/nonindexical distinction. It contains a state-of-the-art discussion of the semantics/pragmatics boundary disputes, focusing on varieties of semantic minimalism and contextualism and on the limitations of an indexicalism. Jaszczolt's work is illustrated with examples from a variety of languages and offers some formal representations of meaning in the metalanguage of Default Semantics.

Meaning in Linguistic Interaction

Meaning in Linguistic Interaction PDF

Author: Katarzyna Jaszczolt

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 0199602468

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This work builds on Kasia Jaszczolt's earlier work on Default Semantics. It draws on data from a variety of languages to show that meaning should be understood as a merger of information coming from different sources and via a variety of interacting processes.