This compilation of references includes all references for the knowledge-how chapters included in Bengson & Moffett's edited volume. The volume and the compilation of references may serve as a good starting point for people who are unfamiliar with the philosophical literature on knowledge-how.

It is commonly claimed that, when a constituent is the focus of an occurrence of a sentence, certain alternatives to that constituent are relevant to our understanding of the sentence. Normally these are alternatives to the denotation of the focused constituent. However, Krifka (2007) briefly discusses the notion of expression focus, where the alternatives are linguistic items. Yet an adequate account of expression focus has not been given within the literature. This is despite the fact that it holds the potential (...) to provide analyses of several important metalinguistic phenomena, including metalinguistic negotiation, metalinguistic negation and embedded pejorative expressions. This paper provides an account of expression focus and shows the explanatory power it holds with respect to metalinguistic phenomena. (shrink)

It is a hallmark of natural language use that the way we talk about something reflects how it is represented in the mind of our conversation partner. This thesis studies the use and cognitive processing of referring expressions like one in comparison with other expression types in spoken Danish. The cognitive status of referents in other people’s minds can be understood in terms or referential givenness. The common view of givenness is that it constitutes a one-dimensional scale or continuum of (...) cognitive prominence. In opposition to this view, the present thesis assumes that givenness is partly composed of the dynamic referential features of accessibility and identifiability, two fundamental dimensions of givenness that are essentially free to vary independently of each other. A small corpus study of spoken Danish shows no differences between referent accessibility in indefinite and definite pronominal forms. Furthermore, referents of definite and indefinite forms clearly tend to differ with respect to identifiability. An experimental eye-tracking study provides evidence that there is no difference in the timecourse of the initiation of anaphoric reference resolution processes between expressions differing in definiteness marking and lexical explicitness. It is also shown, however, that the referential commitment of pronouns---both indefinite and definite---lag behind that of full noun phrases. Finally, an explorative dyadic eye-tracking study suggests that the moment-by-moment activation of referents in both speaker and listener vary as a function of lexical explicitness in indefinite forms. This result is consistent with the assumption that givenness differences associated with accessibility marking generalize to indefinite forms. All of these findings provide support for the new view of givenness proposed in the thesis. The dyadic eye-tracking methodology eventually arrived at in the thesis proves that it is possible to study language processing in unscripted, relatively natural dialogue in both speaker and listener simultaneously, and that interesting results can be obtained that are well worth the effort. (shrink)

Ontology is the study of what there is, what kinds of things make up reality. Ontology seems to be a very difficult, rather speculative discipline. However, it is trivial to conclude that there are properties, propositions and numbers, starting from only necessarily true or analytic premises. This gives rise to a puzzle about how hard ontological questions are, and relates to a puzzle about how important they are. And it produces the ontologyobjectivity dilemma: either (certain) ontological questions can be trivially (...) answered using only uncontroversial premises, or the uncertainties of ontology are really a threat to the truth of basically everything we say or believe. The main aim of this dissertation is to resolve these puzzles and to shed some light on the discipline of ontology. I defend a view inspired by Carnap’s internal-external distinction about what there is, but one according to which both internal and external questions are fully factual and meaningful. In particular, I argue that the trivial arguments are valid, but they do not answer any ontological questions. Furthermore, I propose an account of the function of our talk about properties, propositions and natural numbers. According to this account our talk about them has no ontological presuppositions for its literal and objective truth. This avoids the ontology-objectivity dilemma, and solves the puzzles about ontology. To do this I look at quantification and noun phrases in general, and at their relation to ontology. I argue that quantifiers are semantically underspecified in a certain respect, and play two different roles in communication. I discuss the relation between syntactic form and information structure, the function of certain non-referential, non-quantificational noun phrases, the uses of bare number determiners, and how arithmetic truths are learned and taught. The more metaphysical issues discussed include: inexpressible properties, logicism about arithmetic, nominalism, Carnap’s view about ontology, the problem of universals, the relationship between ontology and objectivity, different projects within ontology, non-existent.... (shrink)

While language is presumably unique to humans, there are possible pre-linguistic features that developed in the course of human evolution which predate features of language, and might have even been essential for its evolution. A number of such possible preadaptations for human language have been discussed, like the permanent lowering of the larynx, the ability to control one’s breath, or the inclination of humans to imitate. In this paper I would like to point out another candidate for a preadaptation, namely (...) the functional differentiation of the hands and the way in which they cooperate in manual actions. (shrink)

An investigation into 'Austinian semantics'. Every utterance is said to express an 'Austinian proposition' consisting of a situation and a fact the situation is presented as supporting. A more recent statement of the theory is to be found in *Oratio Obliqua, Oratio Recta: an Essay on Metarepresentation* (MIT Press/Bradford Books, 2000).

We use a dynamic, context-sensitive approach to abductive interpretation to describe coordinated processes of understanding, generation and accommodation in dialogue. The agent updates the dialogue uniformly for its own and its interlocutors’ utterances, by accommodating a new context, inferred abductively, in which utterance content is both true and prominent. The generator plans natural and comprehensible utterances by exploiting the same abductive preferences used in understanding. We illustrate our approach by formalizing and implementing some interactions between information structure and the form (...) of referring expressions. (shrink)

The term ‘ellipsis’ can be used to refer to a variety of phenomena: syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. In this article, I discuss the recent comprehensive survey by Stainton 2006 of these kinds of ellipsis with respect to the analysis of nonsententials and try to show that despite his trenchant criticisms and insightful proposal, some of the criticisms can be evaded and the insights incorporated into a semantic ellipsis analysis, making a ‘divide-and-conquer’ strategy to the properties of nonsententials feasible after all. (...) -/- Editor's comment: To find the contribution, please go to item 16 of the URL, which contains the full text. Professor Merchant has permitted this. (shrink)

Nicholas P. Lunn, Word-Order Variation in Biblical Hebrew Poetry: Differentiating Pragmatics and Poetics. 2006. Paternoster Biblical Monographs. Milton Keynes: Paternoster. 373 pp. + xiv, bibliography, appendices, indexes.