scholarly journals Homogeneity in donkey sentences

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 684 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas Champollion
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Theory ◽  
Pragmatic Theory ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
Donkey Pronouns ◽  
Error State

Donkey sentences have existential and universal readings, but they are not often perceived as ambiguous. I extend the pragmatic theory of homogeneity in plural definites by Križ (2016) to explain how context disambiguates donkey sentences. I propose that a semantic theory produces truth value gaps in certain scenarios, and a pragmatic theory fills these gaps in context-dependent ways. By locating the parallel between donkey pronouns and definite plurals is located in the pragmatics rather than in the semantics, I avoid problems known to arise for some previous accounts according to which donkey pronouns and definite plurals both have plural referents (Krifka 1996; Yoon 1996). I sketch an extension of plural compositional DRT (Brasoveanu 2008) that delivers the required truth value gaps by building on concepts from error-state semantics and supervaluation quantifiers. 

Contextualism, minimalism, and situationalism

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eros Corazza
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Truth Values ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
True False

After discussing some difficulties that contextualism and minimalism face, this paper presents a new account of the linguistic exploitation of context, situationalism. Unlike the former accounts, situationalism captures the idea that the main intuitions underlying the debate concern not the identity of propositions expressed but rather how truth-values are situation-dependent. The truth-value of an utterance depends on the situation in which the proposition expressed is evaluated. Hence, like in minimalism, the proposition expressed can be truth-evaluable without being enriched or expanded. Along with contextualism, it is argued that an utterance’s truth-value is context dependent. But, unlike contextualism and minimalism, situationalism embraces a form of relativism in so far as it maintains that semantic content must be evaluated vis-à-vis a given situation and, therefore, that a proposition cannot be said to be true/false eternally.

Truth, pragmatic theory of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Kirkham
Keyword(s):  
John Dewey ◽  
William James ◽  
True Proposition ◽  
Pragmatic Theory ◽  
Consensus Theory ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Truth Value

Two distinctly different kinds of theories parade under the banner of the ‘pragmatic theory of truth’. First, there is the consensus theory of C.S. Peirce, according to which a true proposition is one which would be endorsed unanimously by all persons who had had sufficient relevant experiences to judge it. Second, there is the instrumentalist theory associated with William James, John Dewey, and F.C.S. Schiller, according to which a proposition counts as true if and only if behaviour based on a belief in the proposition leads, in the long run and all things considered, to beneficial results for the believers. (Peirce renamed his theory ‘pragmaticism’ when his original term ‘pragmatism’ was appropriated by the instrumentalists.) Unless they are married to some form of ontological anti-realism, which they usually are, both theories imply that the facts of the matter are not relevant to the truth-value of the proposition.

scholarly journals Rhetorical meaning

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-64
Author(s):  
Susan F. Schmerling
Keyword(s):  
Critical Role ◽  
Semantic Theory ◽  
Classical Rhetoric ◽  
White House ◽  
Napoleon Bonaparte ◽  
American President ◽  
Context Dependent

AbstractThis paper introduces rhetorical meaning to semantic theory; we use the term by analogy to tropes like metonymy in classical rhetoric, which yields ‘the American president’ from the White House—that is, it substitutes one referential meaning for another. Here we focus on two rhetorical meanings: intensification and attenuation. Intensification is expressed in English and many other languages by total reduplication (an old old man); attenuation is exemplified by Spanish ‘synthetic’ diminutive forms (hombrecito ‘little man’; cf. hombre ‘man’) and English and French ‘analytic’ formations (My Little Chickadee (film); petit caporal ‘Little Corporal’ (Napoléon Bonaparte)). Formally, a rhetorical meaning is a relation with one referential meaning as its domain and, as its codomain, a set of related referential meanings, the particular set specified by the rhetorical meaning at hand. The selection from among elements of the codomain, which can even seem contradictory out of context, is in fact highly context-dependent and indicates a critical role for pragmatics in an overall account of this meaning type.

scholarly journals THE EQUIVALENT OF THE JAPANESE VERBS SONAERU, SASHIAGERU, AND SAZUKERU INTO INDONESIAN

Lire Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-292
Author(s):  
Made Ratna Dian Aryani
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Theory ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Lexical Meaning ◽  
Pragmatic Theory ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Contextual Theory ◽  
Qualitative Descriptive ◽  
Data Source ◽  
Descriptive Method

This research focuses on the verb equivalent of  'giving' Japanese into Indonesian. Japanese and Indonesian have different expressions of the 'giving' verb, both syntactically and pragmatically. The method used in this study is a qualitative descriptive method. In this study, the theory used is semantic theory from Chaer which states lexical meaning and grammatical meaning. The pragmatic theory used in this study is the contextual theory from Pateda which is supported by the politeness level factor approach of Mizutani & Mizutani. The data source of this study uses data from the Japanese corpus, namely www.kotonoha.gr.jp/shonagon/. The results of this study indicate that (1) sentence structure with sonaeru verb in Japanese, does not require the appearance of three arguments that express datif. And the sentence structure with the sashiageru and sazukeru verbs must use three arguments which state datif (ni) which indicates the existence of a giver, recipient, and something given. (2) the equivalent of the Japanese verb sonaeru, sashiageru, and sazukeru in the Indonesian sentence structure shows that the three verbs are lexically, namely sonaeru, sashiageru, and sazukeru are both meaningful giving. In addition, the sonaeru verb has a broader lexical meaning that can express offer, present, provide, prepare, present from someone who is positioned down to the boss. The sashiageru verb has a lexical meaning only to give both goods and services from subordinates to superiors. Verb sazukeru has a lexical meaning bestowed, teach, offered. The use of these three verbs in grammatical meaning will be adjusted to the context of the sentence.   Keywords: datif, giving, sashiageru, sazukeru, sonaeru

Semantics

2019 ◽  
pp. 46-77
Author(s):  
Bryan R. Weaver ◽  
Kevin Scharp
Keyword(s):  
Formal Semantics ◽  
Semantic Theory ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Pragmatic Theory ◽  
Semantic Framework ◽  
Question Under Discussion ◽  
Neutral Agent

Chapter 3 presents a semantic theory for reasons locutions. The semantic theory pairs a Kaplanian semantic framework with Craige Roberts’s question under discussion (QUD) pragmatic theory. The result is QUD Reasons Contextualism, which specifies eight distinct kinds of contexts of utterance for reasons locutions and the truth conditions for each one. The chapter then explains how each of the six reasons distinctions surveyed in Chapter 1 is related to the semantics for reasons locutions. In particular, the chapter shows that the agent neutral/agent relative distinction is a presemantic distinction, the normative/motivating/explanatory, objective/subjective, and permissive/obligatory distinctions are content distinctions, the adaptive/evaluative/practical and internal/external distinctions are domain distinctions, and the contributory/conclusive/sufficient distinction is a nonsemantic distinction. In addition, the chapter presents an extended example and an analogy with love locutions to illustrate the results. Finally, the chapter suggests a formal semantics for reasons locutions in the style of Kratzer’s semantics for modals.

scholarly journals How Do We Decide Which of Two Case Formulations Is Correct? Commentary on Westerman and Critchfield et al.

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-108
Author(s):  
Stanley B. Messer
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Case ◽  
Correspondence Theory ◽  
Relative Accuracy ◽  
Coherence Theory ◽  
Pragmatic Theory ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
Client Progress

This commentary takes a meta-view of the articles in this module by Westerman (2021a), and by Critchfield, Dobner-Pereira and Stucker (2021a), which offer two overlapping but also different formulations of the same case. It raises the question of whether there is only one true formulation of a clinical case (correspondence theory), or whether any one of several would qualify as accurate (coherence theory). A third alternative is that the truth-value of a formulation is a function of its ability to predict which therapist interventions will most help the client (pragmatic theory). A study is described in which the relative accuracy of two different formulations of the same case was put to the test in predicting which therapist interventions led to client progress. I propose that the current authors compare the pragmatic value of their formulations in a similar manner.

Forming Impressions of Personality

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 153-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanne Nauts ◽  
Oliver Langner ◽  
Inge Huijsmans ◽  
Roos Vonk ◽  
Daniël H. J. Wigboldus
Keyword(s):  
Impression Formation ◽  
Context Dependent

Asch’s seminal research on “Forming Impressions of Personality” (1946) has widely been cited as providing evidence for a primacy-of-warmth effect, suggesting that warmth-related judgments have a stronger influence on impressions of personality than competence-related judgments (e.g., Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007 ; Wojciszke, 2005 ). Because this effect does not fit with Asch’s Gestalt-view on impression formation and does not readily follow from the data presented in his original paper, the goal of the present study was to critically examine and replicate the studies of Asch’s paper that are most relevant to the primacy-of-warmth effect. We found no evidence for a primacy-of-warmth effect. Instead, the role of warmth was highly context-dependent, and competence was at least as important in shaping impressions as warmth.

Memorial Consequences of Environmental Context Change in Children and Adults

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (6) ◽  
pp. 455-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alp Aslan ◽  
Anuscheh Samenieh ◽  
Tobias Staudigl ◽  
Karl-Heinz T. Bäuml
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Middle Childhood ◽  
First Graders ◽  
Fourth Graders ◽  
Environmental Context ◽  
Context Change ◽  
Context Dependent

Changing environmental context during encoding can influence episodic memory. This study examined the memorial consequences of environmental context change in children. Kindergartners, first and fourth graders, and young adults studied two lists of items, either in the same room (no context change) or in two different rooms (context change), and subsequently were tested on the two lists in the room in which the second list was encoded. As expected, in adults, the context change impaired recall of the first list and improved recall of the second. Whereas fourth graders showed the same pattern of results as adults, in both kindergartners and first graders no memorial effects of the context change arose. The results indicate that the two effects of environmental context change develop contemporaneously over middle childhood and reach maturity at the end of the elementary school days. The findings are discussed in light of both retrieval-based and encoding-based accounts of context-dependent memory.

Contextual Forgetting and Context Dependent Memory

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Herbert ◽  
Sharon Bertsch
Keyword(s):  
Context Dependent
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