Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. King
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Value ◽  
Semantic Values

It is arguable that the word ‘I’ has a context invariant meaning that suffices to secure semantic values for it in context. Set ‘I’ in a context and its context invariant meaning secures the speaker of the context as its semantic value in that context (at least if there is one). Consider the class of contextually sensitive expressions whose context invariant meanings arguably do ...

Two‐Dimensional Semantics

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Chalmers
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Cognitive Significance ◽  
Dimensional Approach ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Semantic Value ◽  
Sense And Reference ◽  
Semantic Values ◽  
Distinctive Role

Two-dimensional approaches to semantics, broadly understood, recognize two ‘dimensions’ of the meaning or content of linguistic items. On these approaches, expressions and their utterances are associated with two different sorts of semantic values, which play different explanatory roles. Typically, one semantic value is associated with reference and ordinary truth-conditions, while the other is associated with the way that reference and truth-conditions depend on the external world. The second sort of semantic value is often held to play a distinctive role in analyzing matters of cognitive significance and/or context-dependence. In this broad sense, even Frege's theory of sense and reference might qualify as a sort of two-dimensional approach.

PROOF-THEORETIC SEMANTIC VALUES FOR LOGICAL OPERATORS

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 466-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
NISSIM FRANCEZ ◽  
GILAD BEN-AVI
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Natural Deduction ◽  
Logical Operators ◽  
Logical Grammar ◽  
Basic Meaning ◽  
Semantic Value ◽  
Semantic Types ◽  
Theoretic Semantic ◽  
Semantic Values ◽  
Henkin Models

The paper proposes a semantic value for the logical constants (connectives and quantifiers) within the framework of proof-theoretic semantics, basic meaning on the introduction rules of a meaning conferring natural deduction proof system. The semantic value is defined based on Frege’s Context Principle, by taking “contributions” to sentential meanings as determined by the function-argument structure as induced by a type-logical grammar. In doing so, the paper proposes a novel proof-theoretic interpretation of the semantic types, traditionally interpreted in Henkin models. The compositionality of the resulting attribution of semantic values is discussed. Elsewhere, the same method was used for defining proof-theoretic meaning of subsentential phrases in a fragment of natural language. Doing the same for (the simpler and clearer case of) logic sheds more light on the proposal.

EMBRACING THE TECHNICALITIES: EXPRESSIVE COMPLETENESS AND REVENGE

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICHOLAS TOURVILLE ◽  
ROY T COOK
Keyword(s):  
Formal Language ◽  
Formal Languages ◽  
Semantic Paradoxes ◽  
A Value ◽  
Completeness Result ◽  
Semantic Value ◽  
Semantic Values

AbstractThe Revenge Problem threatens every approach to the semantic paradoxes that proceeds by introducing nonclassical semantic values. Given any such collection Δ of additional semantic values, one can construct a Revenge sentence:This sentence is either false or has a value in Δ.TheEmbracing Revengeview, developed independently by Roy T. Cook and Phlippe Schlenker, addresses this problem by suggesting that the class of nonclassical semantic values is indefinitely extensible, with each successive Revenge sentence introducing a new ‘pathological’ semantic value into the discourse. The view is explicitly motivated in terms of the idea that every notion thatseemsto be expressible (e.g., “has a value in Δ”, for any definite collection of semantic values Δ) should, if at all possible,beexpressible. Extant work on the Embracing Revenge view has failed to live up to this promise, since the formal languages developed within such work are expressively impoverished. We rectify this here by developing a much richer formal language, and semantics for that language, and we then prove an extremely powerful expressive completeness result for the system in question.

Felicitous Underspecification

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. King
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Propositional Attitude ◽  
Single Female ◽  
Semantic Value ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Semantic Values

Felicitous uses of contextually sensitive expressions generally have unique semantic values in context. For example, a felicitous use of the singular pronoun ‘she’ generally has a single female as its unique semantic value in context. In the present work, it is argued that contextually sensitive expressions have felicitous uses where they lack unique semantic values in context. The author calls such uses instances of felicitous underspecification. In these uses, the underspecified expression is associated with a range of candidate semantic values in context. A rule is provided for updating the Stalnakerian common ground when sentences containing felicitous underspecified expressions are uttered and accepted in a conversation. The author also gives an account of the mechanism that associates the range of candidate semantic values in context with an underspecified expression. Sentences containing felicitous underspecified expressions can be embedded in various constructions. The author considers the result of embedding such sentences under negation and verbs of propositional attitude. He also examines the question of why some uses of underspecified expressions are felicitous and others aren’t. This investigation yields the notion of a context being appropriate for a sentence (LF), where a context is appropriate for a sentence containing an underspecified expression if the sentence is felicitous in that context. Finally, some difficulties are covered that arise in virtue of the fact that pronouns and demonstratives have some sorts of implications of uniqueness that clash with their being underspecified.

Felicitous Underspecification and Metasemantics

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-79
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. King
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Value ◽  
Semantic Values

In cases of felicitous underspecification, instead of having a unique semantic value in context, the relevant expression is associated with a range of candidate semantic values in context. I formulate an account of the mechanism that associates this range of candidate semantic values in context with the relevant expression. I argue that it is the same mechanism that associates expressions with unique semantic values in context in “normal” cases.

Semantic overlaps of French modal expressions

1991 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierrette Thibault
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Semantic Field ◽  
Patterns Of Use ◽  
The Social ◽  
Semantic Value ◽  
Semantic Values

ABSTRACTAlthough there is no consensus on whether French has any true modal auxiliary, devoir ‘must’ is one of the very few possible candidates. Most studies of devoir concentrate on criteria for distinguishing its epistemic and root semantic values, but some also explore the subtle semantic nuances it conveys depending on context. Here, we identify discrete meanings through the analysis of semantic overlaps between devoir and other French modal expressions, such as probablement ‘probably’, être supposé ‘to be supposed to’, or falloir ‘ought to’. The analysis of data from two corpora on Montreal French, collected in 1971 and 1984, shows that:1. There is only one root semantic value exclusively associated with devoir, namely, the notion of desirability (as in the English ‘should’).2. There are different patterns of use of the competing modal expressions within each semantic field analyzed, according to the social class of the speaker. Moreover, some patterns characterizing a specific social group are acquired relatively late.

scholarly journals Verse Forms as Bearers of Semantic Values

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-128
Author(s):  
Teresa Dobrzyńska
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Study ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
The Social ◽  
Semantic Value ◽  
Verse Form ◽  
Verse Forms ◽  
Iconic Signs ◽  
Linguistic Units ◽  
Semantic Values

Verse forms may be employed as bearers of semantic values. The present paper intends to show the richness of this resource in literary texts. The semantic values of particular verse structures are interpreted here in terms of the semiotic categories introduced by C. S. Peirce: as symptoms, symbols, or iconic signs. The basis for this kind of reflection is earlier systematic study of various verse forms and their linguistic morphology conducted by a group of Polish and Slavic researchers (as part of the Comparative Slavic Metrics programme).The semantic value can be attributed to the fact that verse forms function as filters of various linguistic units. It is why the metrical organisation of a text determines its stylistic characteristics. A verse form may be employed and interpreted in many different ways; for instance, to represent the social status of the speaker or to differentiate between various literary genres. Many metrical forms perform an iconic function. Some semantic values are derived from the intertextual relationships of a poem. Verse structure may also be seen as a kind of author’s signature. It may also be employed to perform axiological functions.

Methods of Communicative Intention Explication of the Phraseological Unit with Biblical Expression «Forbidden Fruit» (Diachronic Section)

2020 ◽  
pp. 65-76
Author(s):  
Olga Lomakina ◽  
Oksana Shkuran
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Communicative Intention ◽  
Tree Of Knowledge ◽  
Media Space ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
Semantic Value ◽  
Book Of Genesis ◽  
Good And Evil

The article analyzes methods of explication of the traditional and widely used stable biblical expression «forbidden fruit». The study is based on a diachronic section – from the interpretation of the biblical text to the communicative intention of dialogue participants in the media space illustrating nuclear and peripheral meanings. The analysis includes biblical texts that realize the archetypal meaning of the biblical expression «forbidden fruit» in which it is called the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The secularized interest in the kind of tree, on which forbidden fruits grew, is motivated by a realistic presentation of a sad history of the first people’s fall in the Book of Genesis. Scientific hypotheses have their origins since the Middle Ages, when artists recreated the author’s story of eating the forbidden fruit. For religion, the variety of the fruit is not of fundamental importance, however, visualization in the works of art has become an incentive for the further use of the biblical expression with a new semantic segment. Modern media texts actively represent the transformation of the biblical expression«forbidden fruit» for different purposes: in advertising texts for pragmatic one, in informative, educational, ideological texts for cognitive one, in entertaining textsfor communicative one, lowering the spiritual and semantic value register of the modern language. Therefore, the process of desemantization and profanization of the biblical expression results in the destruction of national stereotypes in Russian people’s worldview.

From Meaning to Content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
François Recanati
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Semantic Value

According to a widespread picture due to Kaplan, there are two levels of semantic value: character and content. Character is determined by the grammar, and it determines content with respect to context. In this chapter Recanati criticizes that picture on several grounds. He shows that we need more than two levels, and rejects the determination thesis: that linguistic meaning as determined by grammar determines content. Grammatical meaning does not determine assertoric content, he argues, but merely constrains it—speaker’s meaning necessarily comes into play. On the alternative picture he offers, there are four basic levels, only one of which is determined by the grammar. Pragmatics is what enables the transition from each level to the next.

Boolean-valued structures

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Button ◽  
Sean Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Model Theory ◽  
Order Logic ◽  
First Order Logic ◽  
Inference Rules ◽  
Mathematical Concepts ◽  
Semantic Framework ◽  
First Order ◽  
Standard Models ◽  
Boolean Valued Model ◽  
Semantic Values

Chapters 6-12 are driven by questions about the ability to pin down mathematical entities and to articulate mathematical concepts. This chapter is driven by similar questions about the ability to pin down the semantic frameworks of language. It transpires that there are not just non-standard models, but non-standard ways of doing model theory itself. In more detail: whilst we normally outline a two-valued semantics which makes sentences True or False in a model, the inference rules for first-order logic are compatible with a four-valued semantics; or a semantics with countably many values; or what-have-you. The appropriate level of generality here is that of a Boolean-valued model, which we introduce. And the plurality of possible semantic values gives rise to perhaps the ‘deepest’ level of indeterminacy questions: How can humans pin down the semantic framework for their languages? We consider three different ways for inferentialists to respond to this question.

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