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.

scholarly journals Two linguistic models of the context-sensitivity of ‘know’

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 67-82
Author(s):  
Bojan Milunovic
Keyword(s):  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Epistemic Contextualism ◽  
Epistemic Position ◽  
Gradable Adjectives ◽  
Linguistic Support ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Knowledge Ascriptions ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Linguistic Practices ◽  
Linguistic Models

This article aims to assess the validity of two linguistic models of the context-sensitivity of the term ?know?: (I) indexical model, according to which knowledge ascriptions are context-sensitive due to an unstable Kaplanian character of the term ?know?, and (II) hidden-indexical model, that explains context sensitivity of ?know? by referring to its semantic similarities with gradable adjectives. This article is structured as follows. Section 1 briefly reviews contextualism as an epistemic position and introduces key features of both models. Section 2 establishes criteria for their evaluation: (A) their compatibility with our common linguistic practices, and (B) their compatibility with a contextualist solution to the problem of philosophical skepticism. Sections 3 and 4 examine two of the most prominent objections that aim to prove that each of these models fails to meet one or both of the aforementioned criteria. The article concludes that the hidden-indexical model, supplemented by Bloom-Tillman?s Modifiability Constraint, provides the more adequate linguistic support for the thesis of epistemic contextualism.

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.

Caesar, Cicero and the Problem of Debt

1966 ◽  
Vol 56 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 128-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. W. Frederiksen
Keyword(s):  
Roman Law ◽  
Remedial Measures ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Way

The purpose of the following pages is to study the problem of debt in Rome of the Ciceronian age. A part of this argument will be uncontroversial or at least familiar; that is, the way in which Roman politicians lived in prolonged states of indebtedness. The rest of the argument will be frankly more speculative; it will suggest that Caesar's arrival in Rome in 49 B.C. provoked a crisis that was in some degree inevitable; but that Caesar in consequence undertook certain remedial measures that were of an importance for the future developments of Roman law.

Skepticism and Objective Contexts: A Critique of DeRose

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-129
Author(s):  
Giovanni Mion
Keyword(s):  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Cartesian Skepticism ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Truth Value

In this paper I contrast my contextualist account of Cartesian skepticism with Keith DeRose’s account. I agree with DeRose that when the Cartesian skeptic and her opponent meet in the same context, their claims are truth-value-less. But I agree with him on the basis of a different conception of context sensitivity. According to DeRose, the content of context sensitive expressions in general, and of knowledge in particular, is personally indicated. By contrast, I think that the content of context sensitive expressions in general, and of knowledge in particular, is objectively determined by the goals of the conversation and the environment in which the conversation takes place.

scholarly journals Warm (for Winter): Inferring comparison classes for gradable adjectives

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Henry Tessler ◽  
Noah D. Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Gradable Adjectives ◽  
Language Understanding ◽  
Comparison Class ◽  
Scale Free ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Bayesian Data Analysis ◽  
Production Experiment ◽  
Pragmatic Reasoning ◽  
Basic Level

The meaning of an utterance can change depending on the context. Yet, what counts as context is often only implicit in everyday conversation. The utterance “it’s warm outside” signals that the temperature outside is relatively high, but the temperature could be high relative to a number of different comparison classes: other days of the year, other weeks, other seasons, etc. Theories of context-sensitive language use agree that the comparison class is a crucial feature of meaning understanding, but little is known about how a listener decides upon a comparison class. We extend a Bayesian model of pragmatic reasoning to be able to reason flexibly about the comparison class intended by the speaker and test the qualitative predictions of this model using a large-scale free-production experiment. We then quantitatively synthesize the model and data using Bayesian data analysis, which further reveals that usage frequency and a preference for basic-level categories are two main contributors to comparison class inference. The methods and results we present open the door to studying richer aspects of context-sensitive language understanding.

scholarly journals Gradable adjectives, vagueness, and optimal language use: A speaker-oriented model

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ciyang Qing ◽  
Michael Franke
Keyword(s):  
Degree Distribution ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Gradable Adjectives ◽  
New Model ◽  
Comparison Class ◽  
Exact Degree ◽  
Standard Of Comparison ◽  
The Way

<p>This paper addresses two issues that arise in a degree-based approach to the semantics of positive forms of gradable adjectives such as tall in the sentence “John is tall” (e.g., <span>Kennedy &amp; McNally 2005</span>; <span>Kennedy 2007</span>): First, how the standard of comparison is contextually determined; Second, why gradable adjectives exhibit the relative-absolute distinction. Combining ideas of previous evolutionary and probabilistic approaches (e.g., <span>Potts 2008</span>; <span>Franke 2012</span>; <span>Lassiter 2011</span>; <span>Lassiter &amp; Goodman 2013</span>), we propose a new model that makes exact and empirically testable probabilistic predictions about speakers’ use of gradable adjectives and that derives the relative-absolute distinction from considerations of optimal language use. Along the way, we distinguish between vagueness and loose use, and argue that, within our approach, vagueness can be understood as the result of uncertainty about the exact degree distribution within the comparison class.</p>

scholarly journals Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems: Organizational and Political Consequences

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-107
Author(s):  
Paul Dumouchel
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
Autonomous Weapons ◽  
The Way ◽  
Weapons Systems

Focusing on existing ‘autonomous’ weapons systems and their uses replaces speculations about future developments and about what robots will or will not be able to do, with attention to the way these weapons are changing and have already changed warfare. The aspects of these transformations that will interest me in this paper are some of the political, organizational and social consequences of the introduction and deployment of various automatic and autonomous weapons systems. Beyond the questions of responsibility and legality, I want to look at the ways in which these weapons change countries’ ability to project power, on how they affect the composition of armed forces, the power relationships within them, and their relations with other major political actors.

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