The Model of a True Demonstrative: Extra-linguistic Effects on Situated Meaning

2021 ◽  
pp. 23-32
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Logical Form ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Traditional Model ◽  
Context Change ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Standard Account ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Current Context

This chapter introduces the standard account of context-sensitivity, focusing on true demonstratives, the model for most context-sensitive expressions. The account involves an idealization that utterances are interpreted in a single, unchanging context. But this is problematic: it has a consequence that demonstratives are either indefinitely lexically ambiguous, or indefinitely ambiguous at the level of logical form. The chapter argues this is theoretically problematic. Relaxing this idealization, we could let the context change between occurrences of demonstratives. A demonstrative could then have an unambiguous meaning, selecting the prominent interpretation in the current context. However, if prominence is determined extra-linguistically, as the traditional model assumes, we would still lack a systematic account of context-change, facing much of the same problems. An alternative account is outlined, which the chapter argues avoids the problems: the context is shifty, but the mechanisms of context-change are linguistic, and so the content of demonstratives is fully linguistically determined.

Pointing Things Out: Prominence and the Attentional State of a Discourse

2021 ◽  
pp. 40-57
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Logical Form ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Attentional State ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Linguistic Rules ◽  
Demonstrative Pronouns

This chapter provides the key elements of the account of context and context-sensitivity. Like the shifty, dynamic account of context in Chapter 3, this account models context as a running record of candidate interpretations for context-sensitive items, for exmaple, demonstrative pronouns. However, by contrast, the chapter argues that context organizes candidate interpretations by prominence. Further, it argues that prominence is fully linguistically determined: the context is updated exclusively by linguistic rules, through effects triggered by elements in the logical form of a discourse. These elements are richer than standardly thought, including, for example, contributions of demonstrative gestures. A demonstrative, then, receives a simple unambiguous meaning: as a matter of its meaning, it simply selects the most prominent interpretation that satisfies its lexically encoded constraints. This account is argued to be empirically more adequate, and avoids the theoretical challenges facing the alternatives discussed in earlier chapters.

Discourse, Context, and Coherence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Linguistic Feature ◽  
Discourse Context ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Pure Indexicals

On the received view, the resolution of context-sensitivity is at least partly determined by non-linguistic features of utterance situation. If I say ‘He’s happy’, what ‘he’ picks out is underspecified by its linguistic meaning, and is only fixed through extra-linguistic supplementation: the speaker’s intention, and/or some objective, non-linguistic feature of the utterance situation. This underspecification is exhibited by most context-sensitive expressions, with the exception of pure indexicals, like ‘I.’ While this received view is prima facie appealing, I argue it is deeply mistaken. I defend an account according to which context-sensitivity resolution is governed by linguistic mechanisms determining prominence of candidate resolutions of context-sensitive items. Thus, on this account, the linguistic meaning of a context-sensitive expression fully specifies its resolution in a context, automatically selecting the resolution antecedently set by the prominence-governing linguistic mechanisms.

scholarly journals TESTIMONY, RECOVERY AND PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY: A RESPONSE TO PEET

Episteme ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-38
Author(s):  
Alex Davies
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Linguistic Communication ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Epistemology Of Testimony ◽  
Public Responsibility

ABSTRACTAccording to telling based views of testimony (TBVs), B has reason to believe that p when A tells B that p because A thereby takes public responsibility for B's subsequent belief that p. Andrew Peet presents a new argument against TBVs. He argues that insofar as A uses context-sensitive expressions to express p, A doesn't take public responsibility for B's belief that p. Since context-sensitivity is widespread, the kind of reason TBVs say we have to believe what we're told, is not widespread. Peet doesn't identify any problem with his own argument though he does attempt to limit its sceptical potential by identifying special contexts in which TBVs stand a chance of success. A more general defence of TBVs can be provided by showing Peet's argument to be unsound. I argue that Peet's argument is unsound because it requires us to wrongly suppose that speakers do far less labour than their audiences in context-sensitive linguistic communication. I aim to show why – in the context of the epistemology of testimony and the philosophy of language – it's important to recognize the labour that speakers can do, and so can be held responsible for not doing, in episodes of context-sensitive linguistic communication.

An Alleged Ambiguity and the Dynamics of Context-Change

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-39
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Logical Form ◽  
Dynamic Semantics ◽  
Context Change ◽  
Demonstrative Pronouns ◽  
Preceding Discourse ◽  
The Way

The observation that demonstrative expressions allow for both bound and referential readings, and can be bound across sentence boundaries, provides independent motivation for a shifty account of context. Dynamic semantics offers an elegant model of shiftiness, in treating the context as a running record of potential interpretive dependencies, and utterances as instructions to update and possibly change extant dependencies. Such an account advances over the static Kaplanean model insofar as it allows for the interpretation to be dynamically affected by the linguistic elements in the preceding discourse. However, due to the way it represents linguistic dependencies, and due to its reliance on both linguistic and non-linguistic effects of context to determine interpretation, the account still makes demonstrative pronouns indefinitely ambiguous at the level of logical form, thus inheriting some of the theoretical problems of the static account.

The Grammar of Prominence

2021 ◽  
pp. 171-186
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Gradable Adjectives ◽  
Domain Restriction ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
Model Context ◽  
The Way

This chapter draws theoretical conclusions and outlines directions for future developments. It summarizes the key theoretical and philosophical upshots of the account developed in the book and discusses further extensions of this framework. It discusses how the account can be applied to model context-sensitivity of situated utterances, in a way that can offer insights into puzzles concerning disagreement in discourse and communication under ignorance, which have plagued standard accounts of context and content. Further, it outlines the way the account is to be extended and applied to various types of context-sensitive items, including relational expressions, gradable adjectives, and domain restriction.

Colour Categories in Context

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmina Jraissati
Keyword(s):  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Unified Framework ◽  
Colour Space ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Way

It is agreed that colour categorization is context sensitive, and that context plays a role in why colour categories are the way they are. Yet, the way context is supposed to influence colour categorization is never spelled out in the literature, the focus of which has mostly been to identify mechanisms at play in colour categorization, either perceptual and cognitive or, alternatively, linguistic. This chapter steers away from the wealthy categorization literature, and takes a different starting point by asking the preliminary question of how we categorize colour in our everyday interactions. The answer to this question makes important use of the notion of colour space and subspace. It leads to a unified framework that makes room for context sensitivity, while also accounting for colour categorization.

Prominence Semantics for Modality

2021 ◽  
pp. 153-168
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Classical Logic ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Logical Form ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Language Discourse ◽  
Satisfactory Account ◽  
Demonstrative Pronouns

This chapter develops a formal model of context-sensitivity of modal discourse. Much like demonstrative pronouns, modals are prominence-sensitive, selecting the most prominent candidate interpretation. The prominence ranking of candidate interpretations is recorded in the conversational record, and is maintained through the effects of discourse conventions represented in the logical form of a discourse. In this way arguments are individuated as structured discourses that underwrite a particular propositional pattern. It is shown that such account provably preserves classical logic. Further, this chapter argues that its model offers a more satisfactory account of the individuation of argument patterns in natural language discourse then the competing alternatives. Any adequate account, it is here argued, will have to take into account not just the contribution of individual sentences, but also of discourse conventions. Indeed, the contribution of discourse conventions is crucial for determining the contribution of individual sentences in the first place.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Recent Literature ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Traditional Model ◽  
Linguistic Model ◽  
Theoretical Significance ◽  
Content Interaction

The chapter provides an introduction to the key themes of the book. It introduces the problem of context-sensitivity, and its theoretical significance. It then outlines the key elements of the account the book develops—the notion of context, of content, and of context-content interaction—situating them with respect to the dominant tradition in theorizing about context-sensitivity. The chapter, finally, outlines some of the philosophical ramifications of this account and of its criticism of the traditional model for the nature of context, content, and their interaction. The book argues that the traditional model of context-sensitivity underlies the linguistic arguments for non-propositional accounts of content and non-classical semantics that have gained support in recent literature. But it is the traditional model that should be abandoned instead, and replaced with a more adequate linguistic model of context this book develops.

scholarly journals Relative Necessity and Propositional Quantification

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 703-726
Author(s):  
Alexander Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Logic ◽  
Propositional Logic ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Symbolic Logic ◽  
Philosophical Logic ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Standard Account ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Modal Propositional Logic ◽  
Propositional Quantification

AbstractFollowing Smiley’s (The Journal of Symbolic Logic, 28, 113–134 1963) influential proposal, it has become standard practice to characterise notions of relative necessity in terms of simple strict conditionals. However, Humberstone (Reports on Mathematical Logic, 13, 33–42 1981) and others have highlighted various flaws with Smiley’s now standard account of relative necessity. In their recent article, Hale and Leech (Journal of Philosophical Logic, 46, 1–26 2017) propose a novel account of relative necessity designed to overcome the problems facing the standard account. Nevertheless, the current article argues that Hale & Leech’s account suffers from its own defects, some of which Hale & Leech are aware of but underplay. To supplement this criticism, the article offers an alternative account of relative necessity which overcomes these defects. This alternative account is developed in a quantified modal propositional logic and is shown model-theoretically to meet several desiderata of an account of relative necessity.

CONTEXT-AWARENESS AND USER PROFILING IN MOBILE ENVIRONMENTS

2009 ◽  
Vol 03 (03) ◽  
pp. 331-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
SPYROS PANAGIOTAKIS ◽  
MARIA KOUTSOPOULOU ◽  
ATHANASSIA ALONISTIOTI
Keyword(s):  
Context Awareness ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
User Profile ◽  
User Profiling ◽  
Generic Model ◽  
Service Provisioning ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Network Equipment ◽  
Current Context ◽  
Network Status

The evolution of mobile communication systems to 3G and beyond introduces requirements for flexible, customized, and ubiquitous multimedia service provision to mobile users. One must be able to know at any given time the network status, the user location, the profiles of the various entities (users, terminals, network equipment, services) involved and the policies that are employed within the system. Namely, the system must be able to cope with a large amount of context information. The present paper focuses on location and context awareness in service provisioning and proposes a flexible and innovative model for user profiling. The innovation is based on the enrichment of common user profiling architectures to include location and other contextual attributes, so that enhanced adaptability and personalization can be achieved. For each location and context instance an associated User Profile instance is created and hence, service provisioning is adapted to the User Profile instance that better apply to the current context. The generic model, the structure and the content of this location- and context-sensitive User Profile, along with some related implementation issues, are discussed.

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