scholarly journals Incomplete descriptions and the underdetermination problem

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-367
Author(s):  
Andrei Moldovan
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Definite Descriptions ◽  
Domain Restriction ◽  
The One ◽  
Quantifier Domain Restriction

The purpose of this paper is to discuss two phenomena related to the semantics of definite descriptions: that of incomplete uses of descriptions, and that of the underdetermination of  referential uses of descriptions. The Russellian theorist has a way of accounting for incomplete uses of descriptions by appealing to an account of quantifier domain restriction, such as the one proposed in Stanley and Szabó (2000a). But, I argue, the Russellian is not the only one in a position to appeal to such an account of incomplete uses of descriptions. Proponents of other theories, such as the Fregean, which does not treat descriptions as quantifiers, might benefit from this account of domain restriction. In the second part of the paper I discuss referential uses of incomplete definite descriptions. Relative to such uses, Wettstein (1981) and others have argued that the Russellian theory faces a problem of underdetermination of semantic content. Neale (2004) has replied to this objection showing why it does not pose a threat to the Russellian theory. Again, I argue that not only the Russellian, but also the Fregean can subscribe to Neale’s (2004) suggestion.

scholarly journals From holism to compositionality: memes and the evolution of segmentation, syntax, and signification in music and language

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEVEN JAN
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Logical Form ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Information Encoding ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Conceptual Structures ◽  
Music And Language ◽  
Initial Support ◽  
The One ◽  
Universal Darwinism

abstractSteven Mithen argues that language evolved from an antecedent he terms “Hmmmmm, [meaning it was] Holistic, manipulative, multi-modal, musical and mimetic”. Owing to certain innate and learned factors, a capacity for segmentation and cross-stream mapping in early Homo sapiens broke the continuous line of Hmmmmm, creating discrete replicated units which, with the initial support of Hmmmmm, eventually became the semantically freighted words of modern language. That which remained after what was a bifurcation of Hmmmmm arguably survived as music, existing as a sound stream segmented into discrete units, although one without the explicit and relatively fixed semantic content of language. All three types of utterance – the parent Hmmmmm, language, and music – are amenable to a memetic interpretation which applies Universal Darwinism to what are understood as language and musical memes. On the basis of Peter Carruthers’ distinction between ‘cognitivism’ and ‘communicativism’ in language, and William Calvin’s theories of cortical information encoding, a framework is hypothesized for the semantic and syntactic associations between, on the one hand, the sonic patterns of language memes (‘lexemes’) and of musical memes (‘musemes’) and, on the other hand, ‘mentalese’ conceptual structures, in Chomsky’s ‘Logical Form’ (LF).

The Birth of New Russian Meanings (the 10th – Beginning of the 13th Centuries)

2020 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 381-410
Author(s):  
Sergey V. Perevezentsev
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
The Other ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

The article examines the development of Christian truths by ancient Russian thinkers in the first centuries after the Baptism of Russia – from the end of the 10th to the 13th centuries. On the one hand, it shows the contradictory process of Christianization of different social groups of ancient Russian society. On the other hand, Russian spiritual and political thought of this period is analyzed, and the semantic content of the first Russian Christian writings is revealed, from the “Words on Law and Grace” by Metropolitan Hilarion of Kiev to Vladimir Monomakh’s “Teachings” and Daniel Zatochnik’s “Word”. The research allows us to say that in the course of understanding the main Christian dogmas, Russian spiritual and political thinkers substantiated new and eternal meanings of historical and posthumous existence.

Restrictionism and Expansionism

2019 ◽  
pp. 87-119
Author(s):  
J. P. Studd
Keyword(s):  
Domain Restriction ◽  
Absolute Generality ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Quantifier Domain Restriction ◽  
Universe Of Discourse

If her view is to diffuse charges of mystical censorship, the relativist needs a well-motivated account of what prevents our quantifying over an absolutely comprehensive domain. But relativists may seek to meet this challenge in different ways. One option is to draw on more familiar cases of quantifier domain restriction in order to motivate the thesis that a quantifier’s domain is always subject to restriction. An alternative is to permit unrestricted quantifiers but maintain that even these fail to attain absolute generality on the grounds that the universe of discourse is always open to expansion. This chapter outlines restrictionist and expansionist variants of relativism and argues that the importance of the distinction comes out in two influential objections that have been levelled against relativism.

Linguistic Pragmatism and Weather Reporting

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Collins
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Domain Restriction ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Full Analysis ◽  
The Common ◽  
Quantifier Domain Restriction

Linguistic pragmatism claims that what we literally say goes characteristically beyond what the linguistic properties themselves mandate. In this book, John Collins provides a novel defence of this doctrine, arguing that linguistic meaning alone fails to fix truth conditions. While this position is supported by a range of theorists, Collins shows that it naturally follows from a syntactic thesis concerning the relative sparseness of what language alone can provide to semantic interpretation. Language–and by extension meaning–provides constraints upon what a speaker can literally say, but does not characteristically encode any definite thing to say. Collins then defends this doctrine against a range of alternatives and objections, focusing in particular on an analysis of weather reports: ‘it is raining/snowing/sunny’. Such reporting is mostly location-sensitive in the sense that the utterance is true or not depending upon whether it is raining/snowing/sunny at the location of the utterance, rather than some other location. Collins offers a full analysis of the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of weather reports, including many novel data. He shows that the constructions lack the linguistic resources to support the common literal locative readings. Other related phenomena are discussed such as the Saxon genitive, colour predication, quantifier domain restriction, and object deletion.

Cultural confessions: Law and the racial scrutiny of the Indo-Canadian home in Metro Vancouver

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonar Buffam
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Gang Violence ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Asian Populations ◽  
Metro Vancouver ◽  
Cultural Origins ◽  
Canadian Culture ◽  
The One ◽  
Narrative Forms

In Metro Vancouver, the recurrence of gang violence involving young South Asian men has spawned a series of public explanations about a new threat to public safety: the ‘Indo-Canadian gangster’. This article explicates the racial force of a specific exposé on the putatively ‘cultural’ origins of the Indo-Canadian gangster which identifies the domestic realm of the city’s South Asian populations as the principal cause of this gang violence. By tracking the trajectories of this exposé and other texts that take similar confessional forms, this article provides important insight into the differential capacity of texts to attract public attention and to persuade, by virtue of the narrative forms they assume as well as the semantic content of the knowledges they mobilize. On the one hand, this article documents the tropes of cultural inertia that characterize public knowledges of the ‘Indo-Canadian home’, which is configured as a domestic space that is culturally insulated from putatively Western norms of civility and legality. On the other hand, it explains how this exposé acquires its epistemic force from the confessional form of the knowledges it circulates, which acts as a mechanism of cultural interpellation for South Asian actors who are positioned to renounce and disavow the pathologies of Indo-Canadian culture.

“Softened” voice quality in poetry reading and listener response

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen Gafni ◽  
Reuven Tsur
Keyword(s):  
Voice Quality ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Ordinal Scales ◽  
Poetry Reading ◽  
The One

In the performance of poetry, some performers occasionally use a certain ‘softened’ voice quality, deviating from that of the context, for emotive expression. We explored how listeners perceive such instances through a combined methodology of eliciting open-ended descriptions and ratings of pre-defined terms on ordinal scales. The collected responses confirm our intuitions that listeners are sensitive to this voice quality, which gives rise to impressions, such as affection, yearning, and contemplation. The chosen methodology allowed us, through variations between verbal and numerical responses, to observe the interaction of this voice quality with other factors, such as semantic content and other salient voice qualities. Finally, the responses highlight the distinction between two delivery styles used by performers — an impassive, grave style, typical of poetry recitals, on the one hand, and a more emotional “theatrical” style, on the other hand.

scholarly journals THE LAW AS VALUE

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (88) ◽  
pp. 208
Author(s):  
Aleksandrs Baikovs
Keyword(s):  
Legal Aspect ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Apparent Lack ◽  
A Value ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Fundamental Values

The paper deals with the category of “values”, the right as a value, and fundamental values of law; including freedom, justice, and equality are analyzed.The relevance of the research is determined not only by the apparent lack of exploration of the problem but also by the fact that the value of right and legal values determine direction and meaning, as well as the content of the rules of law, which is their normative expression, and, ultimately, appearing as a kind of basis for the legal culture, the source of the legal consciousness’s formation and establishing a legal order, ensuring the efficiency of legal regulations due to the using the embodiment in reality of freedom, justice, equality.Legal norms themselves acquire the importance of values and become the subject of evaluation. Among values themselves, which act as an ideal justification of the rules of law, the rules of law themselves and assessments, on the one hand, there are not only close ties but also mutual transitions. Therefore, both their interrelated explanations and differentiation are necessary.In this regard, the role and importance of rights and of the abovestated legal values, including the historically-legal aspect, their historical conditionality are disclosed, the semantic content and the importance in the establishment of the legitimacy regime are analyzed, the points of view expressed in the  research literature on the nature of legal values, signs, hierarchy,  the role in social and normative regulation are considered, the difference between value and the object of value or good is emphasized.

scholarly journals Concept WIND in the Texts of Ukrainian Folk Orders

2018 ◽  
pp. 134-147
Author(s):  
S. Shuliak
Keyword(s):  
Mental Model ◽  
Language Model ◽  
Folk Medicine ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Motion Time ◽  
The World ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Physical Disorders ◽  
The One

The essence of the concept WIND is invetigated in the article in the texts of Ukrainian folk orders. The peculiarities of expression and functioning of this concept in orders of different thematic groups are determined. The linguistic means, which form the semantic content of the concept WIND, are described. The language model of the world, reflecting the peculiarities of a certain lingoculture, retains the perceptions inherent to the society. One of the key concepts of Ukrainian ethnoculture is the wind energy, which implements universal and national specifics. Concept WIND is a fragment of the language model of the world of Ukrainians; it preserves the results of cognitive activity and reflects archetypal representations of the mental model. Emotional assessment of the wind in the texts of Ukrainian orders is ambivalent. On the one hand, the wind is conceived as an assistant, and on the other hand – as a dangerous, unmanageable power. For the most part, the concept WIND is verbalized in the texts of orders from pains, from the bite of a snake, and its metaphorical transformations are manifested by epithets that depict sad images. The lexeme wind is associated with the persistent character of the violent. Epithets strong, violent specify the semantics of the wind. Constituents of the concept WIND are tokens on the designation of motion, time and space. In the texts of Ukrainian folk orders the token is accompanied by a number of symbols. Personification of the wind is realized in the appeals, illustrating the connection with the mythical knowledge of our ancestors.Appeal to the wind is an integral part of the spell formula, which manifests itself in the acts of a request, requirement or order. The formula for the protection or prevention is order, in which there are verbs with “guarding” semantics, such as: help, save, and protect. The formulation of the submission is made using the verb in the orderly manner and the circumstances of the place, it is productive in orders, where the disease is sent by the wind and by the smoke. The verbal formulas of the texts of the Ukrainian folk orders, in which the concept WIND operates, reflects the model of the Ukrainian’s world. Orders are an exceptionally important component of the folk medicine of Ukrainians and are among the suggestive means of treating the patient’s mental and physical disorders.

Out-Side Pragmatics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Garrett Millikan
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Definite Descriptions ◽  
Intentional Content ◽  
Informational Content ◽  
Surface Form ◽  
Linguistic Sign

Out-side pragmatics concerns cases in which the referent of a construction is not fixed by the intentional content of the utterance but is a “natural referent,” fixed by the construction’s informational content. Examples are incomplete definite descriptions, clauses with unrestricted quantifiers, possessives. In these cases the linguistic sign contains a marker that conventionally directs a hearer to look outside of semantic content for a natural referent. Other times, although its referent is semantically determinate, the construction’s surface form is ambiguous in a way that requires looking outside for its natural referent, as is the case when someone starts talking about “Jane” or “Mary” without supplying any conventional indication of which Jane or Mary they are talking about.

Domain restriction in child Mandarin: Implications for quantifier spreading

Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (6) ◽  
pp. 1839-1875
Author(s):  
Alan Hezao Ke ◽  
Liqun Gao
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
The Other ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Domain Restriction ◽  
Domain Selection ◽  
Universal Quantifiers ◽  
Quantifier Domain Restriction ◽  
Child Mandarin ◽  
Distributive Operator

AbstractThis study explores Mandarin children’s competence with quantifier domain restriction. We present results from two experiments in which adults and four- to five-year old children evaluated two possible candidates for the domain selection associated with the distributive operator dou ‘all’ in Mandarin Chinese. In the first experiment, we investigated whether children and adults are capable of selecting an appropriate domain when two candidate NPs both appear inside dou’s quantification scope; i.e., both of the NPs c-command dou. In the second experiment, still two candidate NPs were presented, but one within dou’s scope and the other outside its scope. Our results indicate that four- to five-year-old children are capable of basic distributive computation associated with dou, but they may choose an NP that adults do not usually choose as the domain of dou, resulting in non-adult interpretations of distributive computation in certain cases. Based on the results, we propose that four- to five-year-old children are less certain about the domain restriction associated with dou-quantification. This proposal has important implications for the current debate on the acquisition of universal quantifiers, specifically, the problem of quantifier spreading. We explain children’s uncertainty about the domain restriction with a universal grammar-based statistical acquisition model.

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