scholarly journals Predicates of personal taste in communication: A case of disagreement

2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-38
Author(s):  
Marián Zouhar
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Personal Taste ◽  
Predicates Of Personal Taste ◽  
Semantic Point ◽  
Context Of Utterance

Abstract The aim of the paper is to defend the idea that, from the semantic point of view, predicates of personal taste behave in communication like ordinary indexical expressions (pronouns, demonstratives, etc.). It means that they express different semantic contents relative to relevantly different contexts of utterances. This is a consequence of the claim that “tasty” (which is our paradigm example of a predicate of personal taste) and “tasty for (someone)” (where “someone” is a placeholder for an agent) express the same, or very similar, semantic contents relative to the same context of utterance. Now this idea can be challenged by pointing to certain communicative phenomena, such as disagreements about matters of personal taste. It is argued, however, that there is an explanation of taste disagreements that is compatible with the indexical nature of predicates of personal taste. Moreover, it is shown that an explanation along these lines is rather natural because it seems to be necessitated by communication-based evidence.

scholarly journals Predicates of personal taste: empirical data

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Kneer
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Taste Preferences ◽  
Personal Taste ◽  
Predicates Of Personal Taste ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
Linguistic Behaviour ◽  
John Macfarlane ◽  
Context Of Utterance

AbstractAccording to contextualism, the extension of claims of personal taste is dependent on the context of utterance. According to truth relativism, their extension depends on the context of assessment. On this view, when the taste preferences of a speaker change, so does the truth value of a previously uttered taste claim, and the speaker might be required to retract it. Both views make strong empirical assumptions, which are here put to the test in three experiments with over 740 participants. It turns out that the linguistic behaviour of ordinary English speakers is consistent with contextualist predictions and inconsistent with the predictions of the most widely discussed form of truth relativism advocated by John MacFarlane.

The notion of “progress” from the philosophy of language perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-24
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Vostrikova
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Personal Taste ◽  
Predicates Of Personal Taste ◽  
Evolution Of The Universe ◽  
Ideal State ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Ideal

This paper discusses the notion of progress and the idea proposed by Alexander Nikiforov that the term “progress” belongs to the same class of words as predicates of personal taste. This claim is based on the observation that our assessment of progress depends on our subjective point of view. The paper argues that there is a substantive difference between terms of personal taste and the term “progress”. Specifically, it is shown that “progress” does not necessarily make reference to a personal point of view. The subjectivity of our assessment of “progress” in certain areas seems to be rooted in the choice of the scale and our ideas of the ideal state of an object that is the endpoint of that scale. The paper also discusses A. Nikiforov’s idea that the evolution of the Universe can provide us with the objective scale for evaluation of progress in all areas. I argue against this idea by showing that it does not help us overcome the subjectivity of progress assessment in many cases.

scholarly journals A Sensibilist Explanation of Imaginative Resistance

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Nils Franzén
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Recent Discussion ◽  
Personal Taste ◽  
Predicates Of Personal Taste ◽  
Imaginative Resistance ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
Evaluative Terms ◽  
The Way

Abstract This article discusses why it is the case that we refuse to accept strange evaluative claims as being true in fictions, even though we are happy to go along with other types of absurdities in such contexts. For instance, we would refuse to accept the following statement as true, even in the context of a fiction: (i) In killing her baby, Giselda did the right thing; after all, it was a girl. This article offers a sensibilist diagnosis of this puzzle, inspired by an observation first made by David Hume. According to sensibilism, the way we feel about things settles their evaluative properties. Thus, when confronted with a fictional scenario where the configuration of non-evaluative facts and properties is relevantly similar to the actual world, we refuse to go along with evaluative properties being instantiated according to a different pattern. It is the attitudes we hold in the actual world that fix the extension of evaluative terms, even in nonactual worlds. When engaging with a fiction, we (to some extent) leave our beliefs about what the world is like behind, while taking our emotional attitudes with us into the fiction. To substantiate this diagnosis, this paper outlines a sensibilist semantics for evaluative terms based on recent discussion regarding predicates of personal taste, and explains how, together with standard assumptions about the nature of fictional discourse, it makes the relevant predictions with respect to engagement with fictions.

scholarly journals Grounding semantic transparency in context

Morphology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossella Varvara ◽  
Gabriella Lapesa ◽  
Sebastian Padó
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Distributional Semantics ◽  
Semantic Transparency ◽  
Inclusion Measure ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Semantic Point ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractWe present the results of a large-scale corpus-based comparison of two German event nominalization patterns: deverbal nouns in -ung (e.g., die Evaluierung, ‘the evaluation’) and nominal infinitives (e.g., das Evaluieren, ‘the evaluating’). Among the many available event nominalization patterns for German, we selected these two because they are both highly productive and challenging from the semantic point of view. Both patterns are known to keep a tight relation with the event denoted by the base verb, but with different nuances. Our study targets a better understanding of the differences in their semantic import.The key notion of our comparison is that of semantic transparency, and we propose a usage-based characterization of the relationship between derived nominals and their bases. Using methods from distributional semantics, we bring to bear two concrete measures of transparency which highlight different nuances: the first one, cosine, detects nominalizations which are semantically similar to their bases; the second one, distributional inclusion, detects nominalizations which are used in a subset of the contexts of the base verb. We find that only the inclusion measure helps in characterizing the difference between the two types of nominalizations, in relation with the traditionally considered variable of relative frequency (Hay, 2001). Finally, the distributional analysis allows us to frame our comparison in the broader coordinates of the inflection vs. derivation cline.

scholarly journals Deutsches auch und italienisches anche im Vergleich

2021 ◽  
Vol 111 (6) ◽  
pp. 187-208
Author(s):  
Manuela Caterina Moroni ◽  
Ermenegildo Bidese
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Usage Patterns ◽  
Basic Functions ◽  
Semantic Point

The focus of our contribution is the German particle auch ‘also’ and its Italian counterpart anche. From a semantic point of view, auch and anche convey the same additive meaning in both languages: through them an element, called ‘domain of association’, is added to a list of further elements for which the auch/anche phrase applies. From a syntactical point of view, auch and anche can occupy different positions in the sentence by modifying the type and the scope of the domain of association. This results in four basic usage patterns which are similar in both languages and correspond to just as many functions of auch/anche: (i) additivity, (ii) sentence connection, (iii) focus domain, and (iv) modality. Despite these common functions, auch and anche interact with the syntax and the information structure of the sentence in German and in Italian differently. Furthermore, they are used in conversation contexts, which are distinctive in both languages. By starting from the current description of auch and anche in the literature, the first aim of our contribution is to provide evidence for the above-mentioned four basic functions despite their language-specific usage contexts. As a second aim, we want to validate our systematization through the analysis of spoken data for German and Italian, explaining why some functions are more likely to be found in the former than in the latter.

TRANSLATION OF HUMOR IN SUBTITLING. A CASE STUDY OF THE ARMENIAN FILM “LOST AND FOUND IN ARMENIA”

2021 ◽  
pp. 62-73
Author(s):  
NARINE GISHYAN
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Complete Loss ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
Lost And Found ◽  
Semantic Point

NARINE GISHYAN - TRANSLATION OF HUMOR IN SUBTITLING. A CASE STUDY OF THE ARMENIAN FILM “LOST AND FOUND IN ARMENIA” The article touches upon the translation peculiarities of humor into Armenian and the ways of their preservation in English through the use of translation strategies. A contemporary Armenian movie “Lost and Found in Armenia” is selected to give the general insight of the transfer of Armenian humor in subtitling. As a result of the study, we can state that from a semantic point of view, the translator was able to convey the meaning, often through partial or complete loss of humor. Deviations were mainly associated with interjections, which were omitted in the English translation. In all the extracted examples, interjections and sound effects, partially providing the humor of the episodes, were omitted. However, their restoration did not create an additional technical obstacle, since it corresponded to the spatial and temporal standards of subtitling.

СРАВНИТЕЛЬНО-ИСТОРИЧЕСКИЙ АНАЛИЗ ПОНУДИТЕЛЬНОГО ЗАЛОГА (на материале кыргызского и турецкого языков)

2020 ◽  
pp. 8-12
Author(s):  
Айгүл Турсунова
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
The Real ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Semantic Point ◽  
Linguistic Methods ◽  
The Relationship

Баарыбызга маалым болгондой аркылуу мамиле этишке мүнөздүү категория. Мамиле категорияларынын эӊ негизги өзгөчөлүгү - кыймыл-аракеттин субъектиси менен объектисинин ортосундагы мамиле, б.а. сүйлөмдө ээлик милдет аткарган сөздүн же кыймыл-аракеттин чыныгы аткаруучусунун субъект же объект экендигин аныктайт. Алардын ичинен аркылуу мамиле кыймыл-аракеттин башка бирөө тарабынан иштелгенин билдирет. Биз бул эмгегибизде кыргыз тилиндеги мамиле категорияларынан - аркылуу мамилени тарыхый жана маанилик жактан анализдемекчибиз. Маанилерди аныктоодо бул мамиленин байыркы Көктүркчөдөн азыркы убакка чейинки басып өткөн жолу талданып, кандай лигвистикалык методдор менен түзүлөрүнө да кеӊири токтолдук. Макалабызда кыргыз тили менен түрк тили негизге алынды. Категория залога - есть необходимая категория языковой мысли, присущая общению. Важнейшей особенностью категорий залога является отношение между субъектом и объектом действия. В предложении данная категория определяет, является ли реальный исполнитель слова или действия, выполняющий функцию, субъектом или объектом, и означает ли что действие было разработано кем-то другим. В этой статье мы проанализируем категорию залога с исторической и семантической точек зрения в кыргызском языке. Определяя значения, мы будем анализировать историю этих залогов от древнего Коктюрского времени до наших дней и подробно обсуждать лингвистические методы, с помощью которых они сформированы. Наша статья основана на материале кыргызского и турецкого языков. The collateral category is a necessary category of linguistic thought inherent in communication. The most important feature of the categories of collateral is the relationship between the subject and the object of the action. In a sentence, this category determines whether the real performer of a word or action performing a function is a subject or an object, and means that the action was designed by someone else. In this article, we will analyze the category of collateral from a historical and semantic point of view in the Kyrgyz language. By defining the meanings, we will analyze the history of these pledges from ancient Cocturian times to the present day and discuss in detail the linguistic methods by which they were formed. Our article is based on the material of the Kyrgyz and Turkish languages.

scholarly journals Declension of the Latin present participle in connection with its syntactico-semantic use

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Hendrik Christiaan Walvoort
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Semantic Rule ◽  
Semantic Function ◽  
Present Participle ◽  
Semantic Point ◽  
Paradigm Leveling

AbstractThis paper deals with the declension of the Latin present active participle (ppa), which shows several inconsistencies: the ablative singular for instance may end in -eor in -i(sapiente, sapienti) and the genitive plural may end in -umor -ium(sapientum, sapientium). Some grammarians, notably modern ones, assume that there are syntactico-semantic considerations or circumstances, leading to ablative -eending when verbal force is intended (such as in the ablative absolute) or substantival force, and to -iending when there is nominal, notably adjectival force. I have investigated whether ancient, medieval and modern grammarians treat such a phenomenon. In addition, I looked for inconsistencies in the grammarian’s own ppa declension from this syntactico-semantic point of view. It turns out that ancient and medieval grammarians do not formulate declension of the ppa according to its syntactico-semantic function, with the exception of the anonymous author of theArs Ambrosiana, nor do they decline their own ppa’s according to a conventional rule of this kind. This calls for other explanations regarding the declensional inconsistencies observed. Some of the ppa forms may reflect a temporary phenomenon which would have disappeared in due course through diachronic evolution and paradigm leveling. Some forms may have persisted because of their frequency and idiomatic force or because of the compelling analogy with other words and phrases. But these ppa declensional variations do not appear to conform to a syntactico-semantic rule.

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