Causal pluralists hold that that there is not just one determinate kind of causation. Some causal pluralists hold that ‘cause’ is ambiguous among these different kinds. For example, Hall (2004) argues that ‘cause’ is ambiguous between two causal relations, which he labels dependence and production. The view that ‘cause’ is ambiguous, however, wrongly predicts zeugmatic conjunction reduction, and wrongly predicts the behaviour of ellipsis in causal discourse. So ‘cause’ is not ambiguous. If we are to disentangle causal pluralism from the (...) ambiguity claim, we need to consider what other linguistic approaches are available to the causal pluralist. I consider and reject proposals that ‘cause’ is a general term, that the term is an indexical, and that the term conveys different kinds of causation through implicature or presupposition. Finally, I argue that causal pluralism is better handled by treating ‘cause’ as a univocal term within a dynamic interpretation framework. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline a novel approach to the semantics of natural language pronouns. On this account, which I call 'demonstrativism', pronouns are semantically equivalent to demonstratives. I begin by presenting some contrasts that provide support for demonstrativism. Then I try to explain these contrasts by developing a particular demonstrativist proposal. I build on the "hidden argument" theory of demonstratives. On this theory, demonstratives are semantically similar to definite descriptions, with one important difference: demonstratives take two arguments, rather than (...) one. Using these ideas, I propose that pronouns also take two (covert) arguments, and that the second argument needs to be sufficiently salient to members of the conversation in order for the use of a pronoun to be felicitous. As for the first argument, I maintain that its content is constrained by the process of noun-phrase deletion. Taken together, I argue that these constraints provide us with a satisfying account of the uses to which pronouns are put. (shrink)

I argue that emojis are essentially little pictures, rather than words, gestures, expressives, or diagrams. ???? means that the world looks like that, from some viewpoint. I flesh out a pictorial semantics in terms of geometric projection with abstraction and stylization. Since such a semantics delivers only very minimal contents I add an account of pragmatic enrichment, driven by coherence and nonliteral interpretation. The apparent semantic distinction between emojis depicting entities (like ????) and those depicting facial expressions (like ????) I (...) analyze as a difference between truth-conditional and use-conditional pictorial content: ???? depicts what the world of evaluation looks like, while ???? depicts what the utterance context looks like. (shrink)

ABSTRACT ‘You may have beer or wine’ suggests that you may have beer and you may have wine. Following Klinedinst, I argue that this ‘free choice’ effect is a special kind of scalar implicature, arising from the application of an unspecific predicate to a plurality (of worlds). I show that the implicature can be derived from general norms of cooperative communication, without postulating new grammatical rules or hidden lexical items. The derivation calls for an extension to the classical neo-Gricean model. (...) I give independent arguments for this extension. (shrink)

De jure coreference in a discourse is typically understood as explicit coreference that speakers are required to recognize in order to count as having correctly understood the discourse. For example, in an utterance of the sentence ‘Tom went to the market because he needed soy milk’, the two underlined terms are typically coreferential in a way that appreciating their coreference is required to fully understand the utterance. Often, de jure coreference is understood as an equivalence relation, so in particular it (...) is thought of as a transitive relation. However, Pinillos (Philos Stud 154(2):301–324, 2011) provides examples that apparently challenge the transitivity of de jure coreference. In this paper, I argue for two claims. First, while it is inconclusive whether the relevant terms in Pinillos’s examples satisfy his third condition, it is much clearer that they fail to satisfy his first two conditions. Given that Pinillos’s conditions capture important characteristics of de jure coreference, his examples do not successfully show the non-transitivity of de jure coreference. Second, I present an alternative account of his examples, one that shows which representation the anaphoric pronoun in an example of the sort that he presents is de jure coreferential with. (shrink)

What does it take for lawyers and others to think or talk about the same legal topic—e.g., defamation, culpability? We argue that people are able to think or talk about the same topic not when they possess a matching substantive understanding of the topic, as traditional metasemantics says, but instead when their thoughts or utterances are related to each other in certain ways. And what determines the content of thoughts and utterances is what would best serve the core purposes of (...) the representational practice within which the thought or utterance is located. In thus favoring a “relational model” in metasemantics, we share Ronald Dworkin's goal of explaining fundamental legal disagreements, and also his reliance on constructive interpretation. But what we delineate is a far more general and explanatorily resourceful metasemantics than what Dworkin articulated, which also bypasses some controversial implications for the nature of law that Dworkin alleged. (shrink)

A globally expressivist analysis of the indicative conditional based on the Ramsey Test is presented. The analysis is a form of ‘global’ expressivism in that it supplies acceptance and rejection conditions for all the sentence forming connectives of propositional logic (negation, disjunction, etc.) and so allows the conditional to embed in arbitrarily complex sentences (thus avoiding the Frege–Geach problem). The expressivist framework is semantically characterized in a restrictor semantics due to Vann McGee, and is completely axiomatized in a logic dubbed (...) ICL (‘Indicative Conditional Logic’). The expressivist framework extends the AGM (after Alchourron, Gärdenfors, Makinson) framework for belief revision and so provides a categorical (‘yes’–‘no’) epistemology for conditionals that complements McGee’s probabilistic framework while drawing on the same semantics. The result is an account of the semantics and acceptability conditions of the indicative conditional that fits well with the linguistic data (as pooled by linguists and from psychological experiments) while integrating both expressivist and semanticist perspectives. (shrink)

This paper attempts to revive a once-lively program in the philosophy of language—that of reducing linguistic phenomena to facts about mental states and actions. I argue that recent skepticism toward this project is generated by features of traditional implementations of the project, rather than the project itself. A picture of language as essentially a mechanism for cooperative information exchange attracted theorists to metasemantic accounts grounding language use in illocutionary action (roughly, using an utterance to elicit a propositional attitude). When this (...) picture is rejected, a metasemantics grounding language in locutionary action (using an utterance to direct attention) emerges as a more viable proposal, dissolving an intractable issue for traditional theories: The metasemantics of subsentential expressions. (shrink)

We argue that definite noun phrases give rise to uniqueness inferences characterized by a pattern we call definiteness projection. Definiteness projection says that the uniqueness inference of a definite projects out unless there is an indefinite antecedent in a position that filters presuppositions. We argue that definiteness projection poses a serious puzzle for e-type theories of (in)definites; on such theories, indefinites should filter existence presuppositions but not uniqueness presuppositions. We argue that definiteness projection also poses challenges for dynamic approaches, which (...) have trouble generating uniqueness inferences and predicting some filtering behavior, though unlike the challenge for e-type theories, these challenges have mostly been noted in the literature, albeit in a piecemeal way. Our central aim, however, is not to argue for or against a particular view, but rather to formulate and motivate a generalization about definiteness which any adequate theory must account for. (shrink)

Hybrid metaethical theories have significant promise; they would have important upshots if they were true. But they also face severe problems. The problems are severe enough to make many philosophers doubt that they could be true. My ambition is to show that the problems are just instances of a highly general problem: a problem about what are sometimes called ‘intensional anaphora'. I'll also show that any adequate explanation of intensional anaphora immediately solves all the problems for the hybrid theorist. We (...) should regard hybrid tools as among the most legitimate tools in our toolkit—at least when we use them properly. (shrink)

Consider the following sentence: “Mary meditated on the sentence ‘Bill is a good friend’ and concluded that he was a good friend.” It is standardly assumed that in sentences of this sort, containing so‐called “closed” quotations, the expressions occurring between quotation marks are mentioned and do not take their ordinary referents. The quoted NP “Bill” refers, if anything, to the name ‘Bill,’ not to the individual Bill. At the same time, the pronoun “he,” apparently anaphoric on quoted “Bill,” refers to (...) the individual Bill. The case seems thus to invalidate the intuitive principle that pronouns anaphoric on referential expressions inherit their reference from their antecedents. The paper formulates the argument, argues that sentences exhibiting the described pattern do not constitute evidence against the intuitive principle, and proposes an alternative account of the anaphoric relation involved. (shrink)

We define and prove a formal semantics divided into two complementary interacting components: the strictly linguistic semantics, we call linguistic agent, and the strictly logical and referential semantics, we call rational agent. This Linguistic \ Rational Agents’ Semantics applies to Deep Dependency trees or more generally, to discourses, i.e. sequences of DD-trees, and interprets them by functional structures we call Meaning Representation Structures, similar to the DRT, but interpreted very differently. LRA semantics incrementally interprets the discourses by minimal finite models, (...) called proto-models, in a monotonic logic of the LA and checks the proto-models with respect to the classical models of the RA. The proto-model is considered as the linguistic sense of the discourse. We define in full detail the LA which, as we believe, must be universal. On the other hand, we don’t propose a particular RA. We only define the scheme of interaction between the two agents and the stimuli of the RA used by the LA. After all, every discourse has in LRA semantics the single meaning and the single sense for every Rational Agent used to interact with the Linguistic Agent. (shrink)

Traditionally, pronouns are treated as ambiguous between bound and demonstrative uses. Bound uses are non-referential and function as bound variables, and demonstrative uses are referential and take as a semantic value their referent, an object picked out jointly by linguistic meaning and a further cue—an accompanying demonstration, an appropriate and adequately transparent speaker’s intention, or both. In this paper, we challenge tradition and argue that both demonstrative and bound pronouns are dependent on, and co-vary with, antecedent expressions. Moreover, the semantic (...) value of a pronoun is never determined, even partly, by extra-linguistic cues; it is fixed, invariably and unambiguously, by features of its context of use governed entirely by linguistic rules. We exploit the mechanisms of Centering and Coherence theories to develop a precise and general meta-semantics for pronouns, according to which the semantic value of a pronoun is determined by what is at the center of attention in a coherent discourse. Since the notions of attention and coherence are, we argue, governed by linguistic rules, we can give a uniform analysis of pronoun resolution that covers bound, demonstrative, and even discourse bound readings. Just as the semantic value of the first-person pronoun ‘I’ is conventionally set by a particular feature of its context of use—namely, the speaker—so too, we will argue, the semantic values of other pronouns, including ‘he’, are conventionally set by particular features of the context of use. (shrink)

There is a longstanding debate in the literature about static versus dynamic approaches to meaning and conversation. A formal result due to van Benthem is often thought to be important for understanding what, conceptually speaking, is at issue in the debate. We introduce the concept of a conversation system, and we use it to clarify the import of van Benthem's result. We then distinguish two classes of conversation systems, corresponding to two concepts of staticness. The first class corresponds to a (...) generalization of the class of systems that van Benthem's result concerns. These are the strongly static conversation systems. The second class is broader, and allows for a certain commonly recognized form of context sensitivity. These are the weakly static conversation systems. In the vein of van Benthem's result, we supply representation theorems which independently characterize these two varieties of conversation system. We observe that some canonically dynamic semantic systems correspond to weakly static conversation systems. We close by discussing some hazards that arise in trying to bring our formal results to bear on natural language phenomena, and on the debate about whether the compositional semantics for natural language should take a dynamic shape. (shrink)

A sentence of the formEither Jones or Smith entered the room, and he saw the Maltese Falcon,has some notable properties due largely to the sprightly behavior of the pronoun in its second conjunct. For instance, that pronoun can not be a pronoun of laziness for the disjunctive noun phrase, ‘Jones or Smith,’ since patently does not express the thought that Either Jones or Smith entered the room, and either Jones or Smith saw the Maltese Falcon., but not, would be true (...) if Jones entered the room but didn't see the Maltese Falcon, and Smith saw the Maltese Falcon but never entered the room. (shrink)

In a series of papers, Donald Davidson :3–17, 1984, The philosophical grounds of rationality, 1986, Midwest Stud Philos 16:1–12, 1991) developed a powerful argument against the claim that linguistic conventions provide any explanatory purchase on an account of linguistic meaning and communication. This argument, as I shall develop it, turns on cases of what I call lexical innovation: cases in which a speaker uses a sentence containing a novel expression-meaning pair, but nevertheless successfully communicates her intended meaning to her audience. (...) I will argue that cases of lexical innovation motivate a dynamic conception of linguistic conventions according to which background linguistic conventions may be rapidly expanded to incorporate new word meanings or shifted to revise the meanings of words already in circulation. I argue that this dynamic account of conventions both resolves the problem raised by cases of lexical innovation and that it does so in a way that is preferable to those who—like Davidson—deny important explanatory roles for linguistic conventions. (shrink)

Since the pioneering work by Kripke and Montague, the term possible world has appeared in most theories of formal semantics for modal logics, natural languages, and knowledge-based systems. Yet that term obscures many questions about the relationships between the real world, various models of the world, and descriptions of those models in either formal languages or natural languages. Each step in that progression is an abstraction from the overwhelming complexity of the world. At the end, nothing is left but a (...) colorful metaphor for an undefined element of a set W called worlds, which are related by an undefined and undefinable primitive relation R called accessibility. For some purposes, the resulting abstraction has proved to be useful, but as a general theory of meaning, the abstraction omits too many significant features. So much information has been lost at each step that many philosophers, linguists, and psychologists have dismissed model-theoretic semantics as irrelevant to the study of meaning. This article examines the steps in the process of extractingthe pair (W,R) from the world and the way people talk about the world. It shows that the Kripke worlds can be reinterpreted as part of a Peircean semiotic theory, which can also include contributions from many other studies in cognitive science. Among them are Dunn’s semantics based on laws and facts, the lexical semantics preferred by manylinguists, psychological models of how the world is perceived, and philosophies of science that relate theories to the world. A full integration of all those sources is far beyond the scope of this article, but an outline of the approach suggests that Peirce’s vision is capable of relating and reconciling the competing sources. (shrink)

I present a concrete DRT-based syntax and semantics for the representation of mental states in the style of Kamp. This system is closely related to Recanati’s Mental Files framework, but adds a crucial distinction between anchors, the analogues of mental files, and attitudes like belief, desire and imagination. Attitudes are represented as separate compartments that can be referentially dependent on anchors. I show how the added distinctions help defend the useful notion of an acquaintance-based mental file against Ninan’s :368–377 2015) (...) recent challenge involving counterfactual de re attitudes. (shrink)

This paper argues for three kinds of possible worlds: Wittgensteinian totalities of facts, Lewisian worlds or universes, concrete objects of maximal essence, and the world, a concrete object of minimal essence. It moreover explains that correspondence truth applies to Wittgensteinian totalities and pragmatic truth to Lewisian universes. And it finally argues that this conceptualization lays proper foundations to two-dimensional semantics.

The domain of a quantifier is determined by a variety of factors, which broadly speaking fall into two types. On the one hand, the context of utterance plays a role: if the focus of attention is on a particular collection of kangaroos, for example, then “Q kangaroos” is likely to range over the individuals in that set. On the other hand, the utterance itself will help to establish the quantificational domain, inter alia through presuppositions triggered within the sentence. In this (...) paper, we concentrate our attention on constructions like the following, in which “the square to which... ” is the critical presupposition trigger: Q circles... Q of these circles... Q of these five circles...... have the same colour as the square to which they are connected. Many theories predict that all instances of these schemata will give rise to the presupposition that every circle is connected to a square. We present an analysis which predicts that these sentences should generally be accepted in a context in which not all the circles are connected to a square, with one exception only: if a quantified sentence is of type and Q is non-intersective, then the sentence should be more likely to be rejected. Furthermore, we predict that manipulating the context so as to make the connected circles more or less salient should have an effect on statements with non-intersective quantifiers only. These predictions were tested in a series of experiments. (shrink)

We argue that an adequate treatment of verb phrase anaphora must depart in two major respects from the standard approaches. First of all, VP anaphors cannot be resolved by simply identifying the anaphoric VP with an antecedent VP. The resolution process must establish a syntactic/semantic parallelism between larger units that the VPs occur in. Secondly, discourse structure has a significant influence on the reference possibilities of VPA. This influence must be accounted for. We propose a treatment which meets these requirements. (...) It builds on a discourse grammar which characterizes discourse cohesion by means of a syntactic/semantic matching procedure which recognizes parallel structures in discourse. It turns out that this independently motivated procedure yields the resolution of VPA as a side effect. (shrink)

This paper studies the distribution of ‘list readings’ in questions like who does everyone like? vs. who likes everyone?. More generally, it focuses on the interaction between wh-words and quantified NPs. It is argued that, contrary to widespread belief, the pattern of available readings of constituent questions can be explained as a consequence of Weak Crossover, a well-known property of grammar. In particular, list readings are claimed to be a special case of ‘functional readings’, rather than arising from quantifying into (...) questions. Functional readings are argued to be encoded in the syntax as doubly indexed traces, which straightforwardly leads to a Crossover account of the absence of list readings in who likes everyone?. Empirical and theoretical consequences of this idea for the syntax and semantics of questions are considered. (shrink)

This paper proposes that a core semantic property of temporal locating adverbs is the ability to introduce a new time discourse referent. The core data comes from that same day in narrative discourse. I argue that unlike other previously studied temporal locating adverbs—which introduce a new time discourse referent and relate it to the speech time or a salient time introduced into the discourse context—that same day is ‘twice anaphoric’, i.e. it retrieves two salient times from the input context without (...) introducing one of its own. Moreover, I argue that the adverb currently is like that same day in not introducing a new time discourse referent. Unlike that same day, however, currently has both a deictic and an anaphoric usage analogous to on Sunday. The analysis that I propose is implemented within Compositional Discourse Representation Theory. It illustrates how adverbial meaning can be integrated within a more general theory of temporal interpretation. (shrink)

Mandarin Chinese exhibits two paradigms of conditionals with indefinite wh-words that have the semantics of donkey sentences, represented by ‘bare conditionals’ on the one hand and ruguo- and dou-conditionals on the other. The bare conditionals require multiple occurrences of wh-words, disallowing the use of overt or covert anaphoric elements in the consequent clause, whereas the ruguo- and dou-conditionals present a completely opposite pattern. We argue that the bare conditionals are cases of unselective binding par excellence (Heim 1982, Kamp 1981) while (...) the ruguo- and dou-conditionals are most naturally accounted for with the traditional E-type pronoun strategy of Evans (1980). We thus argue partly for a return to the E-type strategy (along with Heim 1990) but maintain the need for unselective binding in UG (cf. Kratzer 1989, Chierchia 1992). It is further shown that these two paradigms do not differ with respect to the proportion problem and the distribution of symmetric and asymmetric readings of Kadmon (1987), though they differ with respect to ∀ and ∃ readings (discussed in Chierchia 1992) in a non-trivial way that provides further support for the proposed approach. Finally, evidence is given that the bare conditionals should be kept apart from correlative constructions in languages like Hindi, and treated differently from the latter. (shrink)

According to the alternative semantics for focus, the semantic reflec of intonational focus is a second semantic value, which in the case of a sentence is a set of propositions. We examine a range of semantic and pragmatic applications of the theory, and extract a unitary principle specifying how the focus semantic value interacts with semantic and pragmatic processes. A strong version of the theory has the effect of making lexical or construction-specific stipulation of a focus-related effect in association-with-focus constructions (...) impossible. Furthermore, while focus has a uniform import, the sources of meaning differences in association with focus are various. (shrink)

It is widely held that propositions are structured entities. In The Nature and Structure of Content (2007), Jeff King argues that the structure of propositions is none other than the syntactic structure deployed by the speaker/hearers who linguistically produce and consume the sentences that express the propositions. The present paper generalises from King’s position and claims that syntax provides the best in-principle account of propositional structure. It further seeks to show, however, that the account faces severe problems pertaining to the (...) fine individuation of propositions that the account entails. The ‘fineness of cut’ problem has been raised by Collins (The unity of linguistic meaning, 2007) and others. King (Philos Stud 163(3):763–781, 2013) responds to these complaints in ways this paper rebuts. Thus, the very idea of structured propositions is brought into doubt, for the best in-principle account of such structure appears to fail. (shrink)

A uniform theory of conditionals is one which compositionally captures the behavior of both indicative and subjunctive conditionals without positing ambiguities. This paper raises new problems for the closest thing to a uniform analysis in the literature (Stalnaker, Philosophia, 5, 269–286 (1975)) and develops a new theory which solves them. I also show that this new analysis provides an improved treatment of three phenomena (the import-export equivalence, reverse Sobel-sequences and disjunctive antecedents). While these results concern central issues in the study (...) of conditionals, broader themes in the philosophy of language and formal semantics are also engaged here. This new analysis exploits a dynamic conception of meaning where the meaning of a symbol is its potential to change an agent’s mental state (or the state of a conversation) rather than being the symbol’s content (e.g. the proposition it expresses). The analysis of conditionals is also built on the idea that the contrast between subjunctive and indicative conditionals parallels a contrast between revising and consistently extending some body of information. (shrink)

So-called 'dynamic' semantic theories such as Kamp's discourse representation theory and Heim's file change semantics account for such phenomena as cross-sentential anaphora, donkey anaphora, and the novelty condition on indefinites, but compare unfavorably with Montague semantics in some important respects (clarity and simplicity of mathematical foundations, compositionality, handling of quantification and coordination). Preliminary efforts have been made by Muskens and by de Groote to revise and extend Montague semantics to cover dynamic phenomena. We present a new higher-order theory of discourse (...) semantics which improves on their accounts by incorporating a more articulated notion of context inspired by ideas due to David Lewis and to Craige Roberts. On our account, a context consists of a common ground of mutually accepted propositions together with a set of discourse referents preordered by relative salience. Employing a richer notion of contexts enables us to extend our coverage beyond pronominal anaphora to a wider range of presuppositional phenomena, such as the factivity of certain sentential-complement verbs, resolution of anaphora associated with arbitrarily complex definite descriptions, presupposition 'holes' such as negation, and the independence condition on the antecedents of conditionals. Formally, our theory is expressed within a higher-order logic with natural number type, separation-style subtyping, and dependent coproducts parameterized by the natural numbers. The system of semantic types builds on proposals due to Thomason and to Pollard in which the type of propositions (static meanings of sentential utterances) is taken as basic and worlds are constructed from propositions (rather than the other way around as in standard Montague semantics). (shrink)

Nondescriptivist views in many areas of philosophy have long been associated with the commitment that in contrast to other domains of discourse, there are no propositions in their particular domain. For example, the ‘no truth conditions’ theory of conditionals1 is understood as the view that conditionals don’t express propositions, noncognitivist expressivism in metaethics is understood as advocating the view that there are not really moral propositions,2 and expressivism about epistemic modals is thought of as the view that there is no (...) such thing as the proposition that Jack might be at home, over and above the proposition that Jack is at home.3 Of course, it is nearly always acknowledged that advocates of a nondescriptivist theory need not deny that there are conditional, moral, or modal propositions ‘at the end of the day’ – for if they also endorse a deflationary reading of talk about propositions, as famously advocated by Simon Blackburn, then they can employ such deflationary talk just as much as the rest of us. They just don’t appeal to propositions to do any of the work in their theories. Rather, they ‘earn the right’ to talk about propositions.4 It is the aim of this paper to upset this way of thinking about the proper attitude of nondescriptivists toward propositions, and to advocate a more constructive and in some ways more radical alternative on behalf of the nondescriptivist. I will begin by introducing and developing a set of problems that are faced by any nondescriptivist theory which tries to do without propositions. All of these problems are easily solved by any view which postulates propositions across the board, but none of them are solved by merely deflationary talk about propositions – their most promising solutions require propositions to do real theoretical work, and therefore the problems themselves remind us of and illustrate some of the important reasons why it is worth positing propositions in the first place.. (shrink)

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 (...) re attitudes. The resurrection of these ideas takes place in a dynamic setting. My formalization of the first idea involves a modification of the presupposition-as-anaphora resolution algorithm for DRT. The second involves treating acquaintance relations as second-order presuppositions, to be bound in the context by means of higher-order unification, or accommodated if necessary. The resulting framework requires no syntactic distinctions between different modes of attitude, with the exception of a specific subclass of de se reports characterized by special ‘ de se pronouns’ (i.e. PRO and logophors). These special pronouns are handled in syntax; everything alse is passed on to the pragmatic resolution module as it appears on the surface. The more sophisticated contextual resolution process nonetheless ensures adequate output truth conditions for a variety of classical and novel puzzles. In particular, I compare the new pragmasemantic system to the classical, syntactic analysis with respect to iterated and quantified reports, and monstrously shifted indexicals. (shrink)

As a class of terms and mental representations, proper names and mental names possess an important function that outstrips their semantic and psycho-semantic functions as common, rigid devices of direct reference and singular mental representations of their referents, respectively. They also function as abstract linguistic markers that signal and underscore their referents' individuality. I promote this thesis to explain why we give proper names to certain particulars, but not others; to account for the transfer of singular thought via communication with (...) proper names; and, more generally, to support a cognitivist, not acquaintance or instrumentalist, theory of singular thought. (shrink)

This paper describes Peirce's systems of logic diagrams, focusing on the so-called ''existential'' graphs, which are equivalent to the first-order predicate calculus. It analyses their implications for the nature of mental representations, particularly mental models with which they have many characteristics in common. The graphs are intended to be iconic, i.e., to have a structure analogous to the structure of what they represent. They have emergent logical consequences and a single graph can capture all the different ways in which a (...) possibility can occur. Mental models share these properties. But, as the graphs show, certain aspects of propositions cannot be represented in an iconic or visualisable way. They include negation, and the representation of possibilities qua possibilities, which both require representations that do not depend on a perceptual modality. Peirce took his graphs to reveal the fundamental operations of reasoning, and the paper concludes with an analysis of different hypotheses about these operations. (shrink)

We discuss the challenge to truth-conditional semantics presented by apparent shifts in extension of predicates such as ‘red’. We propose an explicit indexical semantics for ‘red’ and argue that our account is preferable to the alternatives on conceptual and empirical grounds.

This paper criticizes the dominant approaches to presupposition projection and proposes an alternative. Both the update semantics of Heim and the discourse representation theory of van der Sandt have problems in explicating the presuppositions of disjunctions. Moreover, Heim's approach is committed to a conception of accommodation that founders on the problem of informative presuppositions, and van der Sandt's approach is committed to a conception of accommodation that generates over-interpretations of utterances. The present approach borrows Karttunen's idea that instead of associating (...) presuppositions with sentences, we should define the conditions that contexts must meet in order to satisfy-the-presuppositions-of a sentence. However, in place of Karttunen's conception of contexts in terms of common ground, the present theory substitutes a conception of contexts as objective entities that are independent of the attitudes of the interlocutors. Contexts, so conceived, may be defined as containing sets of relevant possibilities. This allows us to define the conditions under which a context satisfies-the-presuppositions-of a disjunction. (shrink)

In “Descriptions as Predicates” (Fara 2001) I argued that definite and indefinite descriptions should be given a uniform semantic treatment as predicates rather than as quantifier phrases. The aim of the current paper is to clarify and elaborate one of the arguments for the descriptions-aspredicates view, one that concerns the interaction of descriptions with adverbs of quantification.

In this paper we discuss the treatment of variables in dynamic semantics. Referent systems are introduced as a flexible mechanism for working with variables. In a referent system we carefully distinguish the variables themselves both from the machinery by which we manipulate them - their names - and from the information that we store in them - their values. It is shown that the referent systems provide a natural basis for dynamic semantics. The semantics with referent systems is compared with (...) the familiar formalisms in dynamic semantics, DRT and DPL. (shrink)

A new formalism for predicate logic is introduced, with a non-standard method of binding variables, which allows a compositional formalization of certain anaphoric constructions, including donkey sentences and cross-sentential anaphora. A proof system in natural deduction format is provided, and the formalism is compared with other accounts of this type of anaphora, in particular Dynamic Predicate Logic.

We develop a framework for natural language semantics which handles intensionality via metalogical constructions and deals with degree truth values in an integrated way. We take an axiomatic set theory, ZF, as the foundation for semantic representations, but we make ZF a metalanguage for part of itself by embedding a language ℒ within ZF which is basically a copy of the part of ZF consisting of set expressions. This metalogical set-up is used for handling propositional attitude verbs (limited to believe (...) in this paper). We define a truth function τ which determines the truth value τ(p, T) of an ℒ-proposition p with respect to a theory T. Theories are sets of ℒ-propositions with associated truth values, and can be viewed as a (much more well-defined) replacement for possible worlds. We develop a mechanism for defining belief worlds as theories. We simultaneously develop two different versions of our system - a Boolean version where the set Ω of truth values is {0, 1}, and a degree-truth version where Ω is the interval [0, 1] of real numbers. We use degrees of truth in handling a broad class of semantic predicates that we call base-focus predicates, which include generalized quantifiers as well as many adverb and adjective senses and certain discourse-level predicates. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to the formulation and investigation of a dynamic semantic interpretation of the language of first-order predicate logic. The resulting system, which will be referred to as ‘dynamic predicate logic’, is intended as a first step towards a compositional, non-representational theory of discourse semantics. In the last decade, various theories of discourse semantics have emerged within the paradigm of model-theoretic semantics. A common feature of these theories is a tendency to do away with the principle of compositionality, (...) a principle which, implicitly or explicitly, has dominated semantics since the days of Frege. Therefore the question naturally arises whether non-compositionality is in any way a necessary feature of discourse semantics. Since we subscribe to the interpretation of compositionality as constituting primarily a methodological principle, we consider this to be a methodological rather than an empirical question. As a consequence, the emphasis in the present paper lies on developing an alternative compositional semantics of discourse, which is empirically equivalent to its non-compositional brethren, but which differs from them in a principled methodological way. Hence, no attempts are made to improve on existing theories empirically. Nevertheless, as we indicate in section 5, the development of a compositional alternative may in the end have empirical consequences, too. First of all, it can be argued that the dynamic view on interpretation developed in this paper suggests natural and relatively easy to formulate extensions which enable one to deal with a wider range of phenomena than can be dealt with in existing theories. Moreover, the various approaches to the model-theoretic semantics of discourse that have been developed during the last decade, have constituted a ‘fresh start’ in the sense that much of what had been accomplished before was ignored, at least for a start. Of course, this is a justified strategy if one feels one is trying to develop a radically different approach to recalcitrant problems. However, there comes a time when such new approaches have to be compared with the older one, and when an assessment of the pros and cons of each has to be made. One of the main problems in semantics today, we feel, is that a semantic theory such as Montague grammar, and an approach like Kamp’s discourse representation theory, are hard to compare, let alone that it is possible to unify their insights and results.. (shrink)