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  1. Context Dependence.Thomas Ede Zimmermann - 2012 - In C. Maienborn, K. von Heusinger & P. Portner (eds.), Handbook of Semantics. Volume 3. de Gruyter.
    Linguistic expressions frequently make reference to the situation in which they are uttered. In fact, there are expressions whose whole point of use is to relate to their context of utterance. It is such expressions that this article is primarily about. However, rather than presenting the richness of pertinent phenomena (cf. Anderson & Keenan 1985), it concentrates on the theoretical tools provided by the (standard) two-dimensional analysis of context dependence, essentially originating with Kaplan (1989)--with a little help from Stalnaker (1978) (...)
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  • Contingent Identity.Wolfgang Schwarz - 2013 - Philosophy Compass 8 (5):486-495.
    It is widely held that if an object a is identical (or non-identical) to an object b, then it is necessary that a is identical (non-identical) to b. This view is supported an argument from Leibniz's Law and a popular conception of de re modality. On the other hand, there are good reasons to allow for contingent identity. Various alternative accounts of de re modality have been developed to achieve this kind of generality, and to explain what is wrong with (...)
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  • Proper names and indexicals trigger rigid presuppositions.Emar Maier - 2009 - Journal of Semantics 26 (3):253-315.
    I provide a novel semantic analysis of proper names and indexicals, combining insights from the competing traditions of referentialism, championed by Kripke and Kaplan, and descriptivism, introduced by Frege and Russell, and more recently resurrected by Geurts and Elbourne, among others. From the referentialist tradition, I borrow the proof that names and indexicals are not synonymous to any definite description but pick their referent from the context directly. From the descriptivist tradition, I take the observation that names, and to some (...)
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  • Covaluation and Unexpected BT Effects.Yael Sharvit - 2011 - Journal of Semantics 28 (1):55-106.
    It is argued that binding theory (BT) must recognize two types of covaluation: the familiar type, which holds between two NPs when they have the same semantic value, and a new type, which holds between two NPs when one of them denotes an attitude holder and the other the ‘self’ of the attitude holder. This is shown to account for the acceptability of ‘de re’ reflexive pronouns and unacceptability of some ‘de re’ non-reflexive pronouns. Alternative theories, which attempt to preserve (...)
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  • Updating as Communication.Sarah Moss - 2012 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (2):225-248.
    Traditional procedures for rational updating fail when it comes to self-locating opinions, such as your credences about where you are and what time it is. This paper develops an updating procedure for rational agents with self-locating beliefs. In short, I argue that rational updating can be factored into two steps. The first step uses information you recall from your previous self to form a hypothetical credence distribution, and the second step changes this hypothetical distribution to reflect information you have genuinely (...)
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  • An investigation of the lumps of thought.Angelika Kratzer - 1989 - Linguistics and Philosophy 12 (5):607 - 653.
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  • Common Ground in Non-face-to-face Communication: In Sensu Diviso or In Sensu Composito.Merel Semeijn - 2024 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 53 (3):657-678.
    Traditional definitions of common ground in terms of iterative de re attitudes do not apply to conversations where at least one conversational participant is not acquainted with the other(s). I propose and compare two potential refinements of traditional definitions based on Abelard’s distinction between generality in sensu composito and in sensu diviso.
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  • Fregeanism, sententialism, and scope.Harvey Lederman - 2022 - Linguistics and Philosophy 45 (6):1235-1275.
    Among philosophers, Fregeanism and sententialism are widely considered two of the leading theories of the semantics of attitude reports. Among linguists, these approaches have received little recent sustained discussion. This paper aims to bridge this divide. I present a new formal implementation of Fregeanism and sententialism, with the goal of showing that these theories can be developed in sufficient detail and concreteness to be serious competitors to the theories which are more popular among semanticists. I develop a modern treatment of (...)
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  • A Puzzle about Belief-about.Alex Rausch - 2021 - Mind 130 (520):1129-1157.
    I present a puzzle for the standard, propositional semantic account of belief reports by considering novel inferences which it incorrectly predicts to be invalid under assumptions that are plausible by its advocates’ own lights. In response, I propose a conservative departure from the standard view on which certain ‘that’-clauses designate novel devices of semantic type that I call open propositions. After outlining some desiderata for a theory of open propositions, I provide some reasons for advocates of the standard view to (...)
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  • The Logicality of Language: Contextualism versus Semantic Minimalism.Guillermo Del Pinal - 2022 - Mind 131 (522):381-427.
    The logicality of language is the hypothesis that the language system has access to a ‘natural’ logic that can identify and filter out as unacceptable expressions that have trivial meanings—that is, that are true/false in all possible worlds or situations in which they are defined. This hypothesis helps explain otherwise puzzling patterns concerning the distribution of various functional terms and phrases. Despite its promise, logicality vastly over-generates unacceptability assignments. Most solutions to this problem rest on specific stipulations about the properties (...)
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  • Qualities and translations.Christopher Tancredi & Yael Sharvit - 2020 - Linguistics and Philosophy 43 (3):303-343.
    We argue for a new mode of interpretation for attributed attitudes, what we call de translato interpretation. De translato interpretation assigns a meaning to an expression based on the interpretation given to that expression by the attitude subject rather than that standardly given by the attributor. We argue that this new mode of interpretation is distinct from but compatible with de dicto, de re and de qualitate interpretation. Formally, de translato interpretation is analyzed as introducing a modification in the language (...)
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  • Careful What You Wish.John Beverley - 2018 - Philosophia 46 (1):21-38.
    Dilip Ninan has raised a puzzle for centered world accounts of de re attitude reports extended to accommodate what he calls “counterfactual attitudes.” As a solution, Ninan introduces multiple centers to the standard centered world framework, resulting in a more robust semantics for de re attitude reports. However, while the so-called multi-centered world proposal solves Ninan’s counterfactual puzzle, this additional machinery is not without problems. In Section 1, I present the centered world account of attitude reports, followed by the extension (...)
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  • Lessons from Descriptive Indexicals.Kjell Johan Sæbø - 2015 - Mind 124 (496):1111-1161.
    Two main methods for analysing de re readings of definite descriptions in intensional contexts coexist: that of evaluating the description in the actual world, whether by means of scope, actuality operators, or non-local world binding, and that of substituting another description, usually one expressing a salient or ‘vivid’ acquaintance relation to an attitude holder, prior to evaluation. Recent work on so-called descriptive indexicals suggests that contrary to common assumptions, both methods are needed, for different ends. This paper aims to show (...)
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  • Vagueness in Degree Constructions.Galit Weidman Sassoon - 2009 - In Arndt Riester & Torgrim Solstad (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn Und Bedeutung 13.
    This paper presents a novel semantic analysis of unit names and gradable adjectives, inspired by measurement theory (Krantz et al 1971). Based on measurement theory's typology of measures, I claim that different predicates are associated with different types of measures whose special characteristics, together with features of the relations denoted by unit names, explain the puzzling limited distribution of measure phrases.
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  • Non-World Indices and Assessment-Sensitivity.Peter Lasersohn - 2013 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 56 (2-3):122-148.
    I argue that sentence contents should be assigned truth-values relative to parameters other than a possible world only if those parameters are fixed by the context of assessment rather than the context of use. Standard counterexamples, including tense, de se attitudes, and knowledge ascriptions, all admit of alternative analyses which do not make use of such parameters. Moreover, allowing such indices greatly complicates the task of defining disagreement, and forces an odd separation between what is true, and what someone has (...)
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  • The semantics of mood, complementation, and conversational force.Paul Portner - 1997 - Natural Language Semantics 5 (2):167-212.
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  • Anaphoric attitudes.M. J. Cresswell - 1990 - Philosophical Papers 19 (1):1-18.
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  • Belief in Context: Towards a Unified Semantics of De Re and De Se Attitude Reports.Emar Maier - 2006 - Dissertation, Radboud University Nijmegen
    This thesis deals with the phenomenon of attitude reporting. More specifically, it provides a unified semantics of de re and de se belief reports. After arguing that de se belief is best thought of as a special case of de re belief, I examine whether we can extend this unification to the realm of belief reports. I show how, despite very promising first steps, previous attempts in this direction ultimately fail with respect to some relatively recent linguistic data involving quantified (...)
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  • Presupposing acquaintance: A unified semantics for de dicto, de re and de se belief reports.Emar Maier - 2009 - Linguistics and Philosophy 32 (5):429--474.
    This paper deals with the semantics of de dicto , de re and de se belief reports. First, I flesh out in some detail the established, classical theories that assume syntactic distinctions between all three types of reports. I then propose a new, unified analysis, based on two ideas discarded by the classical theory. These are: (i) modeling the de re/de dicto distinction as a difference in scope, and (ii) analyzing de se as merely a special case of relational de (...)
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  • On the proper treatment of opacity in certain verbs.Thomas Ede Zimmermann - 1993 - Natural Language Semantics 2 (1):149-179.
    This paper is about the semantic analysis of referentially opaque verbs like seek and owe that give rise to nonspecific readings. It is argued that Montague's categorization (based on earlier work by Quine) of opaque verbs as properties of quantifiers runs into two serious difficulties: the first problem is that it does not work with opaque verbs like resemble that resist any lexical decomposition of the seek ap try to find kind; the second one is that it wrongly predicts de (...)
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  • Variabilism.Samuel Cumming - 2008 - Philosophical Review 117 (4):525-554.
    Variabilism is the view that proper names (like pronouns) are semantically represented as variables. Referential names, like referential pronouns, are assigned their referents by a contextual variable assignment (Kaplan 1989). The reference parameter (like the world of evaluation) may also be shifted by operators in the representation language. Indeed verbs that create hyperintensional contexts, like ‘think’, are treated as operators that simultaneously shift the world and assignment parameters. By contrast, metaphysical modal operators shift the world of assessment only. Names, being (...)
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  • Propositional attitudes without propositions.Friederike Moltmann - 2003 - Synthese 135 (1):77 - 118.
    The most common account of attitude reports is the relational analysis according towhich an attitude verb taking that-clause complements expresses a two-placerelation between agents and propositions and the that-clause acts as an expressionwhose function is to provide the propositional argument. I will argue that a closerexamination of a broader range of linguistic facts raises serious problems for thisanalysis and instead favours a Russellian `multiple relations analysis' (which hasgenerally been discarded because of its apparent obvious linguistic implausibility).The resulting account can be (...)
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  • Inside names.Denis Delfitto & Gaetano Fiorin - 2022 - Evolutionary Linguistic Theory 4 (2):153-190.
    In this contribution, we offer a contextualist analysis of names whereby a name N is used as a felicitous referential term in all and only those contexts of utterance in which N is intended to refer to a unique referent by all cognitive agents that are relevant in the context. This analysis has important across-the-board virtues. It reduces the distance between common nouns and names, under the insight that names are a highly specific case of a more general phenomenon consisting (...)
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  • On the Pragmatics of Counterfactuals.Sarah Moss - 2010 - Noûs 46 (3):561-586.
    Recently, von Fintel (2001) and Gillies (2007) have argued that certain sequences of counterfactuals, namely reverse Sobel sequences, should motivate us to abandon standard truth conditional theories of counterfactuals for dynamic semantic theories. I argue that we can give a pragmatic account of our judgments about counterfactuals without giving up the standard semantics. In particular, I introduce a pragmatic principle governing assertability, and I use this principle to explain a variety of subtle data concerning reverse Sobel sequences.
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  • On the objects of belief.Wolfgang Spohn - 1996 - In C. Stein & M. Textor (eds.), Intentional Phenomena in Context. Hamburg.
    When I talk about the objects of belief I do not mean, e.g., the sun to which my thought that the sun will rise tomorrow refers; I do not mean the objects we think about. I take objects rather in a general philosophical sense; they simply are the bearers of properties and the relata of relations. I am thus concerned with the objects that are related by the belief relation „_a_ believes that _p_“. In this scheme „ _a _“ represents (...)
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  • Quantifying In from a Fregean Perspective.Seth Yalcin - 2015 - Philosophical Review 124 (2):207-253.
    As Quine observed, the following sentence has a reading which, if true, would be of special interest to the authorities: Ralph believes that someone is a spy. This is the reading where the quantifier is naturally understood as taking wide scope relative to the attitude verb and as binding a variable within the scope of the attitude verb. This essay is interested in addressing the question what the semantic analysis of this kind of reading should look like from a Fregean (...)
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  • Reference and Monstrosity.Paolo Santorio - 2012 - Philosophical Review 121 (3):359-406.
    According to the orthodox account developed by Kaplan, indexicals like I, you, and now invariably refer to elements of the context of speech. This essay argues that the orthodoxy is wrong. I, you, and the like are shifted by certain modal operators and hence can fail to refer to elements of the context, for example, I can fail to refer to the speaker. More precisely, indexicals are syntactically akin to logical variables. They can be free, in which case they work, (...)
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  • Double-access sentences and reference to states.Toshiyuki Ogihara - 1995 - Natural Language Semantics 3 (2):177-210.
    This article deals with the semantics of “double-access” sentences. They are defined as English sentences which have a past tense morpheme in the matrix clause and a present tense morpheme in a subordinate clause in the immediate scope of the matrix past tense. They receive a very peculiar interpretation, which we will refer to as a “double-access interpretation.” The episode described in the embedded clause makes reference to two times: the time referred to by the matrix predicate and the utterance (...)
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  • Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 9.Emar Maier, Corien Bary & Janneke Huitink (eds.) - 2005 - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics.
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  • A note on the gifted mathematician that you claim to be.Alexander Grosu & Manfred Krifka - 2022 - Linguistics and Philosophy 45 (6):1227-1233.
    The paper is a reply to Bassi and Rasin ( 2018 ) on the treatment of sentences like [_The gifted mathematician that you claim to be_] _should have solved this task without problems_ by Grosu and Krifka ( 2007 ), which was published in _Linguistics and Philosophy_. Grosu and Krifka provide an analysis of the _de dicto_ interpretation in which the bracketed expression refers to an individual concept. Bassi and Rasin question this because equivalent expressions in Hebrew, in which the (...)
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  • On Mates's puzzle.Andrés Soria-Ruiz - 2023 - Mind and Language 38 (2):515-544.
    I defend a metalinguistic account of Mates's puzzle: sentences where synonymous expressions cannot be substituted salva veritate. If Andrea thinks that attorneys are different from lawyers, and she thinks that Fiona is the former but not the latter, we may hesitate to substitute ‘lawyer’ for ‘attorney’ in ‘Andrea believes that Fiona is an attorney’, even though ‘lawyer’ and ‘attorney’ are synonymous. I argue that these sentences report de re beliefs about linguistic expressions, thereby blocking such substitutions, and I offer a (...)
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  • Attitudes and ascriptions in Stalnaker models.Brian Ball - 2019 - Linguistics and Philosophy 42 (5):517-539.
    What role, if any, should centered possible worlds play in characterizing the attitudes? Lewis :513–543, 1979) argued that, in order to account for the phenomena of self-location :474–497, 1977, Noûs 13:3–21, 1979), the contents of the attitudes should be taken to be centered propositions. Stalnaker Assertion: New philosophical essays, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011, Context, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014), however, has argued that while centered worlds are needed to characterize e.g. belief states, the contents of such states should be (...)
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  • Mental Graphs.James Pryor - 2016 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (2):309-341.
    I argue that Frege Problems in thought are best modeled using graph-theoretic machinery; and that these problems can arise even when subjects associate all the same qualitative properties to the object they’re thinking of twice. I compare the proposed treatment to similar ideas by Heck, Ninan, Recanati, Kamp and Asher, Fodor, and others.
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  • Four Thousand Ships Passed through the Lock: Object-Induced Measure Functions on Events.Manfred Krifka - 1990 - Linguistics and Philosophy 13 (5):487 - 520.
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  • How to theorize about subjective language: a lesson from ‘de re’.Pranav Anand & Natasha Korotkova - 2022 - Linguistics and Philosophy 45 (3):619-681.
    Subjective language has attracted substantial attention in the recent literature in formal semantics and philosophy of language Subjective meaning: alternatives to relativism, De Gruyter, Berlin, pp 1–19, 2016; Lasersohn in Subjectivity and perspective in truth-theoretic semantics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017; Vardomskaya in Sources of subjectivity, Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, IL, 2018; Zakkou in Faultless disagreement: a defense of contextualism in the realm of personal taste, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M., 2019b). Most current theories argue that Subjective Predicates, which (...)
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  • The scope of indefinites.Dorit Abusch - 1993 - Natural Language Semantics 2 (2):83-135.
    This paper claims that indefinite descriptions, singular and plural, have different scope properties than genuine quantifiers. This claim is based on their distinct behavior in island constructions: while indefinites in islands can have intermediate (and maximal) scope readings, quantifiers cannot. Further, the simplest in situ interpretation strategy for indefinites results in incorrect truth conditions for intermediate (and maximal) scope readings. I introduce a mechanism which “auto-matically” preserves the restriction on free variables corresponding to indefinites, in a way which allows the (...)
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  • In Defense of Standard Approach to Logico-Semantic Explication of Non-Specific Transparent Interpretation of Propositional Attitude Reports.Petr S. Kusliy & Куслий Петр Сергеевич - 2023 - RUDN Journal of Philosophy 27 (3):677-697.
    This study explores the phenomenon of the so-called “third reading” of propositional attitude reports. This reading, which was originally explored in the dissertation of J. Fodor (1973) and has since become one of the significant problems in the formal semantics of natural languages, differs from the more well-known de re and de dicto readings by being an intermediate case. If the de re interpretation can be referred to as transparent specific, and the de dicto interpretation as opaque non-specific, then the (...)
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  • Without 'Focus'.Nirit Kadmon & Aldo Sevi - 2011 - The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 6:18.
    It is widely accepted that a notion of 'focus', more or less as conceived of in Jackendoff , must be incorporated into our theory of grammar, as a means of accounting for certain observed correlations between prosodic facts and semantic/pragmatic facts. In this paper, we put forth the somewhat radical idea that the time has come to give up this customary view, and eliminate 'focus' from our theory of grammar. We argue that such a move is both economical and fruitful.Research (...)
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  • Adjectival relatives.Toshiyuki Ogihara - 2004 - Linguistics and Philosophy 27 (5):557-608.
    This article discusses what may be referred to as ``adjectival relatives''''in Japanese and related constructions in other languages (such asadjectival passives in English). The most intriguing characteristicof this construction is that the verb contained in it occurs in the pasttense form, but its primary role is to describe a state that obtains atthe local evaluation time, rather than the past event that producedthis state. In fact, in some cases, the putative event that presumablyproduced the target state is non-existent, and the (...)
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  • Emedded Questions and 'De Dicto' Readings.Yael Sharvit - 2002 - Natural Language Semantics 10 (2):97-123.
    It is argued, contra Beck and Rullmann (1999), and with Heim (1994), that the sources of strongly exhaustive interpretations and `de dicto' interpretations of wh-complements of veridical question-embedding verbs are one and the same. Beck and Rullmann's theory is shown to predict certain `de dicto' readings which do not exist, while a particular rendition of Heim's theory is shown to constrain the generation of `de dicto' readings in the correct way.
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  • Analyticity, Necessity and Belief : Aspects of two-dimensional semantics.Johannesson Eric - 2017 - Dissertation, Stockholm University
    A glass couldn't contain water unless it contained H2O-molecules. Likewise, a man couldn't be a bachelor unless he was unmarried. Now, the latter is what we would call a conceptual or analytical truth. It's also what we would call a priori. But it's hardly a conceptual or analytical truth that if a glass contains water, then it contains H2O-molecules. Neither is it a priori. The fact that water is composed of H2O-molecules was an empirical discovery made in the eighteenth century. (...)
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  • Four thousand ships passed through the lock: Object-induced measure functions on events. [REVIEW]K. Manfred - 1990 - Linguistics and Philosophy 13 (5):487-520.
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  • De re and de se in quantified belief reports.Emar Maier - 2005 - In Sylvia Blaho, Luis Vicente & Erik Schoorlemmer (eds.), Proceedings of Console Xiii. pp. 211-29.
    Percus & Sauerland (2003) use quantified belief reports of the form 'Only Peter thinks he's...' to argue for dedicated de se LFs. The argument is targeted against any reductionist account that sees de se as merely a particular subtype of de re, viz. a de re belief about oneself from a first person perspective, requiring nothing but an account of de re attitudes. My acquaintance resolution framework is an attempt at just such a reduction and in this paper I extend (...)
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  • (1 other version)Structured anaphora to quantifier domains: A unified account of quantificational & modal subordination and exceptional wide scope.Adrian Brasoveanu - manuscript
    The paper proposes a novel analysis of quantificational subordination, e.g. Harvey courts a woman at every convention. {She is very pretty. vs. She always comes to the banquet with him.} (Karttunen 1976), in particular of the fact that the indefinite in the initial sentence can have wide or narrow scope, but the first discourse as a whole allows only for the wide scope reading, while the second discourse allows for both readings. The cross-sentential interaction between scope and anaphora is captured (...)
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