Dynamic Propositionalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 113-140
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Implicit Assumption ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Underlying Assumption ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Linguistic Account

This chapter tackles the challenge of non-propositionalism. It argues that the source of the puzzle motivating non-propositionalism is the implicit assumption of the traditional, extra-linguistic account of context-sensitivity resolution. The problem is not in the idea that modal claims express truth-conditional content, but in the underlying assumption of how a context operates to determine this content. With a more nuanced understanding of the linguistic mechanisms driving context-sensitivity resolution, which captures the effects of discourse conventions, the apparent non-propositionality of modal discourse turns out to be an illusion. The account delivers ordinary propositional content even for discourses that prima facie evade propositionalist treatment. More importantly, a broader range of data suggests that such propositional content is required to properly account for the range of interpretations modal discourses allow. Thus, any adequate account has to take into account how discourse conventions identified in this chapter interact with the interpretation of modality.

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.

The Semantics of Evidentials

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Formal Semantics ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
The Common ◽  
Issue Content

This book gives a compositional, truth‐conditional, crosslinguistic semantics for evidentials set in a theory of the semantics for sentential mood. Central to this semantics is a proposal about a distinction between what propositional content is at‐issue, roughly primary or proffered, and what content is not‐at‐issue. Evidentials contribute not‐at‐issue content, more specifically what I will call a not‐at‐issue restriction. In addition, evidentials can affect the level of commitment a sentence makes to the main proposition, contributed by sentential mood. Building on recent work in the formal semantics of evidentials and related phenomena, the proposed semantics does not appeal to separate dimensions of illocutionary meaning. Instead, I argue that all sentences make three contributions: at‐issue content, not‐at‐issue content, and an illocutionary relation. At‐issue content is presented, made available for subsequent anaphora, but is not directly added to the common ground. Not‐at‐issue content directly updates the common ground. The illocutionary relation uses the at‐issue content to impose structure on the common ground, which, depending on the clause type (e.g., declarative, interrogative), can trigger further updates. Empirical support for this proposal comes from Cheyenne (Algonquian, primary data from the author’s fieldwork), English, and a wide variety of languages that have been discussed in the literature on evidentials.

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.

scholarly journals Secretive Symbolism? The Death Penalty, Executions, and Japan

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-601
Author(s):  
Billy Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Wide Spread ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Symbolic Function ◽  
Execution Rates ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Right

AbstractThe importance of analysing the death penalty and state-imposed executions is derived from their concerning the right to life, and their retaining wide-spread support throughout retentionist, abolitionist de facto, and abolitionist states worldwide. Discrepancies in the execution rates of retentionist states appear reducible to their serving symbolic or pragmatic functions i.e. they are used primarily to validate public opinion or primarily to deter crime. Prima facie, Japan seems akin to a symbolic state, due to its low execution rate and its official justification for both retaining the death penalty and continuing to use executions i.e. doing otherwise would be undemocratic. However, the practices that surround executions in Japan shroud them in secrecy and silence, which appears at odds with both its apparent symbolic function and this justification. This makes Japan a uniquely important case study for research on practices surrounding executions. Understanding why this contradiction exists will entail a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which the death penalty, executions, and the practices surrounding them, can function in retentionist states. This essay aids such understanding by critically analysing this official justification and various other arguments for why this might be the case and advancing an alternative explanation.

Content in Context

2021 ◽  
pp. 85-94
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Content ◽  
The World ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
Current Proposal

On the traditional picture, sentences express content relative to context. This content then is, or determines, truth-conditional, propositional content, which is what we assert and believe, and which can guide our action. If I have a thought about the world, and I want to convey it to you, I should utter a sentence which, in this context, expresses that thought. You can then understand it, and come to believe it, and it might guide your action. But on the current proposal the context is constantly changing, even mid-utterance, and utterances are interpreted as instructions to update the context. What of our simple account of thought, communication, and action? This chapter shows our dynamic account still delivers propositional content. While utterances are semantically assigned dynamic meaning, this meaning serves as an instruction to build ordinary propositional content.

Context and Coherence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Value Theory ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Linguistic Conventions ◽  
Broad Array ◽  
Novel Model ◽  
Linguistic Account ◽  
Do So

Natural languages are riddled with context-sensitivity. One and the same string of words can express indefinitely many different meanings on an occasion of use. And yet we understand one another effortlessly, on the fly. What fixes the meaning of context-sensitive expressions, and how are we able to recover this meaning so quickly and without effort? This book offers a novel response: we can do so because we draw on a broad array of subtle linguistic conventions that fully determine the interpretation of context-sensitive items. Contrary to the dominant tradition, which maintains that the meaning of context-sensitive language is underspecified by grammar, and depends on non-linguistic features of utterance situation, this book argues that meaning is determined entirely by discourse conventions, rules of language that have largely been missed, and the effects of which have been mistaken for extra-linguistic effects of an utterance situation on meaning. The linguistic account of context developed in this book sheds a new light on the nature of linguistic content, and the interaction between content and context. At the same time, it provides a novel model of context that should constrain and help evaluate debates across many sub-fields of philosophy where appeal to context has been common, often leading to surprising conclusions: for example, in epistemology, ethics, value theory, metaphysics, metaethics, and logic, among others.

‘Or’-parentheticals, ‘that is’-parentheticals and the pragmatics of reformulation

2007 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
DIANE BLAKEMORE
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Content ◽  
The Other ◽  
Conceptual Representation ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
Pragmatic Interpretation ◽  
The One

The classification of that is, or (in other words), and or rather as reformulation markers would seem to suggest that the utterances they introduce achieve relevance in the same way. However, the examination of a range of discrepancies between reformulations introduced by or, on the one hand, and reformulations introduced by that is, on the other, suggests that any account of the pragmatics of reformulation must be a non-unitary one. In this paper, I build on Burton-Roberts' (1993) suggestion that the reformulations introduced by or are meta-linguistic in character, and show how these can be distinguished from the reformulations introduced by that is, which must be analysed at the level of conceptual representation. I also show how this distinction corresponds to a distinction between the different ways in which a parenthetical construction may be pragmatically integrated with its host. As Potts (2005) would predict, parenthetical that is-reformulations are not themselves part of the truth-conditional content of their hosts. However, in contrast with or-reformulations, they communicate information about the propositional content of their hosts, and in this way can contribute to the identification of their truth-conditional content at the level of pragmatic interpretation.

scholarly journals Felicity Conditions of the Speech Acts in Banyumasan Daily Conversation

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 700
Author(s):  
Chusni Hadiati
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Unique Characteristic ◽  
Essential Condition ◽  
Conditional Sentence ◽  
The World ◽  
Felicity Condition ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
Lexical Items

A truth conditional sentence requires a sentence to fit into the world; however, it cannot be applied pragmatically in a daily conversation, consequently, non-truth conditional sentence is applied. In pragmatics filed, an utterance needs to be felicitous, thus it has to meet the felicity condition. Felicity condition underlies that in order to be felicitous an utterance must meet the felicity condition that includes preparatory condition, propositional content, sincerity condition, and essential condition. By using felicity condition, speakers can mean what they say and say what they mean. Searle has only postulated the felicity condition for directive and commisives, thus this article attempts to complete the felicity conditions of another three speech acts. The utterances are taken from Banyumas dialect or Banyumasan; it is a dialect of standard Javanese spoken along Serayu River. It has unique characteristic due to its phonological and lexical items compared to Standard Javanese spoken in Yogyakarta and Surakarta. This article describes the felicity condition of the speech acts found in Banyumasan daily conversation which is conducted by using descriptive analysis. The finding of this research shows that felicity conditions of Banyumasan are realized into representative, directives, commisives, expressive, and declarations.

scholarly journals Evaluating the Replicability of the Uncanny Valley Effect

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jussi Palomäki ◽  
Anton Kunnari ◽  
Marianna Drosinou ◽  
Mika Koverola ◽  
Noora Lehtonen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Uncanny Valley ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Domain Of Applicability ◽  
Photorealistic Images ◽  
Human Image

The uncanny valley (UV) effect refers to an eerie feeling of unfamiliarity people get while observing or interacting with robots that resemble humans almost but not quite perfectly. The effect is not well understood, and it is also unclear how well results from previous research on the UV can be replicated. In six studies, both in the laboratory and online (N = 1343), we attempted to replicate the UV effect with various stimuli used in previous research. In Studies 1 and 2 we failed to replicate the UV effect with CGI stimuli created using the so-called morphing technique (a robot image morphed into a human image, resulting in a supposedly creepy robot-human image). In Studies 3a and 3b we found a prominent UV effect using pre-evaluated, non-morphed and photorealistic robot pictures. Finally, in exploratory Studies 4a and 4b we found the UV effect using morphed and photorealistic human and robot pictures. Our results suggest that the UV effect is more robust when elicited by pre-validated or prima facie uncanny robot pictures than by non-photorealistic images generated using the morphing technique. We argue that photorealistic pictures are more suitable than less realistic CGI pictures as stimuli for research attempting to elicit the UV effect – however, our results do not invalidate any previous research on the UV effect using morphing techniques, but point to their domain of applicability and context sensitivity.

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