A properly pragmatist pragmatics

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 387-407
Author(s):  
Catherine Legg
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Separate Study ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Pragmatist Philosophy

Abstract Although most contemporary philosophers of language hold that semantics and pragmatics require separate study, there is surprisingly little agreement on where exactly the line should be drawn between these two areas, and why. In this paper I suggest that this lack of clarity is at least partly caused by a certain historical obfuscation of the roots of the founding three-way distinction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics in Charles Peirce’s pragmatist philosophy of language. I then argue for recovering and revisiting these original roots, taking indexicality as a case-study of how certain questions connected with the distinction which are currently considered complex and difficult may be clarified by a ‘properly pragmatist pragmatics’. Such a view, I shall argue, upends a certain priority usually accorded to semantics over pragmatics, teaching that we do not work out what terms mean in some abstract overall sense and then work out to what use they are being put; rather, we must understand to what use terms are being put in order to understand what they mean.

Naming and Indexicality

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Bochner
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Context Dependency ◽  
Critical Survey ◽  
Advanced Students ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
Epistemic Constraints ◽  
Theories Of Meaning

How do words stand for things? Taking ideas from philosophical semantics and pragmatics, this book offers a unique, detailed, and critical survey of central debates concerning linguistic reference in the twentieth century. It then uses the survey to identify and argue for a novel version of current 'two-dimensional' theories of meaning, which generalise the context-dependency of indexical expressions. The survey highlights the history of tensions between semantic and epistemic constraints on plausible theories of word meaning, from analytic philosophy and modern truth-conditional semantics, to the Referentialist and Externalist revolutions in theories of meaning, to the more recent reconciliatory ambition of two-dimensionalists. It clearly introduces technical semantical notions, theses, and arguments, with easy-to-follow, step-by-step guides. Wide-ranging in its scope, yet offering an accessible route into literature that can seem complex and technical, this will be essential reading for advanced students, and academic researchers in semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language.

Language, Meaning, and Information

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Soames
Keyword(s):  
Modal Logic ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Gottlob Frege ◽  
Possible Worlds Semantics ◽  
Language Meaning

This chapter is a case study of the process by which the attempt to solve philosophical problems sometimes leads to the birth of new domains of scientific inquiry. It traces how advances in logic and the philosophy of mathematics, starting with Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, provided the foundations for what became a rigorous and scientific study of language, meaning, and information. After sketching the early stages of the story, it explains the importance of modal logic and “possible worlds semantics” in providing the foundation for the last half century of work in linguistic semantics and the philosophy of language. It argues that this foundation is insufficient to support the most urgently needed further advances. It proposes a new conception of truth-evaluable information as inherently representational cognitive acts of certain kinds. The chapter concludes by explaining how this conception of propositions can be used to illuminate the notion of truth; vindicate the connection between truth and meaning; and fulfill a central, but so far unkept, promise of possible worlds semantics.

scholarly journals FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION OF A THREE YEARS OLD CHILD: AN ANALYSIS OF PHONOLOGICAL COMPONENT (A CASE STUDY)

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-154
Author(s):  
Hilma Safitri ◽  
M. Nur Hakim
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
First Language ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Biological Development ◽  
Consonant Sounds ◽  
Do So

The process of language acquisition undergone by each child in the world is more and less similar. This is because language is universal in which it is acquired through all language components namely phonology, semantics, and pragmatics. The component of phonology is more related to human neuro-biology. The process of sound produced is genetic and human biological development is not similar. Hence, the language development of human beings is not exactly the same. This paper explores first language acquisition particularly on the phonological component of a three years old child named Andi. The data is the transcripts of dialog taken from causal chit chats with the participant. A qualitative method is used to analyze the data. The findings reveal that the participant acquired vocal sounds of /a/, /i/, /u/, /o/, /e/ and consonant sounds of /p/, /b/, /m/, /t/ more dominant compared to others. He never produced /k/ consonant, fricative [s] and [j]. However, he produced nasal consonants of [m], [n], and [ɳ]. The participant also substituted omitted a few sounds. This might happen because his speech articulation has not developed well yet or genetic factor does not allow him to do so.

Robyn Carston on semantics, pragmatics and ‘encoding’

2005 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
NOEL BURTON-ROBERTS
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Language Semantics ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Language And Communication ◽  
Explicit Communication

Robyn Carston,Thoughts and utterances: the pragmatics of explicit communication. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002. Pp. x+408.Robyn Carston's Thoughts and utterances is, in every sense, a big book. The result of years of thinking about communication from a relevance-theoretic perspective, it is long, wide-ranging, rich, intricate, demanding and radical. And it is (or should be) controversial. Essential reading therefore for anyone with any interest in language and communication, philosophy of language, semantics and pragmatics.

scholarly journals Unarticulated constituents and neo-Gricean pragmatics

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Huang
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Conversational Implicature ◽  
Pragmatic Theory ◽  
Pragmatic Enrichment ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Gricean Pragmatics ◽  
Unarticulated Constituents

Abstract In recent years, the concept of unarticulated constitutes has generated a fierce debate both in the philosophy of language and in linguistic semantics and pragmatics. By unarticulated constituent is meant a propositional (or conceptual) constituent of a sentence that is communicated by the speaker in uttering that sentence, but is not linguistically represented in that uttered sentence. The main aim of this article is to provide a neo-Gricean pragmatic analysis of unarticulated constituents, showing that the current existing mechanism of neo-Gricean pragmatic theory can handle unarticulated constituents in a straightforward and elegant way. Second, I defend the neo-Gricean position that the pragmatic enrichment of unarticulated constituents is nothing but a neo-Gricean, pre-semantic conversational implicature. And third and finally, I briefly evaluate an alternative, formal syntactico-semantic analysis of unarticulated constituents.

scholarly journals Book Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-55
Author(s):  
Yanwei Wang
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Lexical Priming ◽  
Linguistic Methodology ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics

The significance of Patterson's work Understanding Metaphor Through Corpora: A Case Study of Metaphors in Nineteenth Century Writing is that only through corpus linguistics have we been able to apply real empirical evidence to our arguments of what metaphor is. By demonstrating that metaphor is supposed to be approached from a linguistic perspective along with a psycholinguistic one, Patterson succeeds in drawing readers' attention to the efficacy and the benefits of combining corpus linguistic methodology with the theory of lexical priming. Thus, the volume is an essential reader for students and researchers in corpus linguistics, metaphor studies, lexicography, semantics, and pragmatics.

scholarly journals THE ‘POLITE’ AORIST: TENSE OR ASPECT?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Arjan A. Nijk
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Extensive Discussion ◽  
Semantic Account ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Pragmatic Account ◽  
Semantic Value ◽  
The Difference

Abstract This article investigates the semantics and pragmatics of the ‘hortative’ aorist (the aorist indicative in questions with τί οὐ ‘why don't …’) and the ‘tragic’ or ‘performative’ aorist (for example ὤμοσα ‘I swear’). Lloyd argued in 1999 that the tragic aorist is a more polite alternative for the corresponding present (ὄμνυμι ‘I swear’). Recently, he has extended this view to the hortative aorist, suggesting that, for example, τί οὐκ ἐκαλέσαμεν; is a polite alternative for τί οὐ καλοῦμεν; Lloyd argues that the politeness value of the aorist derives from its being a past tense, comparing the so-called ‘attitudinal’ past (as in I wanted to ask you something instead of I want to ask you something). The present article, building on work by Colvin, Bary and Nijk, argues instead that the semantic value of the aorist is purely aspectual in these cases: the hortative and tragic aorists serve to construe the designated event as bounded, while the corresponding present forms serve to construe the designated event as unbounded. An extensive discussion of the evidence for the hortative aorist and present is presented, as well as a case study concerning the aspectual behaviour of the verb ὄμνυμι. Moreover, I argue that the proposed semantic account of the hortative and tragic aorists in terms of aspect can be unified with Lloyd's pragmatic account in terms of politeness: the difference in tone between the present and the aorist can be derived from their respective aspectual values, rather than from their temporal values.

Language, Interpretation and Worship—II

1992 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 109-122
Author(s):  
Peter Lamarque
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Language Interpretation ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Biblical Translation ◽  
Theology And Philosophy

Martin Warner's subtle and far-reaching synthesis of philosophical theology and philosophy of language belongs in a cluster of papers he has written on related topics (Warner 1985, 1990a, Introduction to 1990b) so it would be helpful to begin by setting out this wider context. His concerns overall cover three interlocking subjects: biblical interpretation, biblical translation, and reform of the liturgy. All pose a central conundrum, which in its briefest formulation is just this: what kind of meaning is involved in each case? Warner's particular focus is on the role of distinctions like content and style, truth and connotation, literal and figurative, ultimately semantics and pragmatics.

scholarly journals Noun Classifier Constructions in Thai: a Case Study in Construction Grammar

MANUSYA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-90
Author(s):  
Unchalee Singnoi
Keyword(s):  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Grammatical Functions

This paper is a study in the framework of Construction Grammar that seeks for how much information grammatical units like noun classifier constructions in Thai can reveal and why such information must be presented as distinctive grammatical properties. The findings show that noun classifiers, occurring in nominal phrases, have a large number of grammatical functions not restricted to syntax but encompassing semantics and pragmatics, as well. They function syntactically by constituting numeric phrases, standing for head nouns, substituting for nouns, acting as the heads of modifier constructions, acting as noun modifiers and disambiguating constructions. Semantically, they are divided into generic and perceptual main types, which evince different syntactic behaviors. Finally, they pragmatically function by unitizing nouns, referring to particular entities, individuating items, and indicating the numeral ‘one’. It is these pragmatic functions that motivate their forms/structures. Therefore, information types such as semantic and/or pragmatic properties need to be included in the explanation and viewed as a cluster of information, rather than autonomous syntax.

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