Resolving the Puzzles: Plasticity and Plenitude

This chapter develops a strategy for resolving Tolerance Puzzles based on two central ideas. The first idea is a principle of ‘plenitude’, according to which any given material objects coincides with innumerably many others differing from it in a wide variety of modal respects. The second idea is that because of this plenitude of candidate referents, the singular terms (like ‘this table’) and common nouns (like ‘table’) that feature in Tolerance Puzzles are subject to a high degree of semantic plasticity: small changes in the world, e.g. in the selection of parts to be made into tables, suffice to make a difference to what we refer to with these words. Such plasticity undermines the Security Argument for Non-contingency developed in chapter 2, by suggesting that even though Tolerance could easily have been false, Tolerance speeches robustly express truths.

Bare singulars and singularity in Turkish

This paper explores the semantics of bare singulars in Turkish, which are unmarked for number in form, as in English, but can behave like both singular and plural terms, unlike in English. While they behave like singular terms as case-marked arguments, they are interpreted number neutrally in non-case-marked argument positions, the existential copular construction, and the predicate position. Previous accounts (Bliss, in Calgary Papers in Linguistics 25:1–65, 2004; Bale et al. in Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 20:1–15, 2010; Görgülü, in: Semantics of nouns and the specification of number in Turkish, Ph.d. thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2012) propose that Turkish bare singulars denote number neutral sets and that morphologically plural marked nouns denote sets of pluralities only. This approach leads to a symmetric correlation of morphological and semantic (un)markedness. However, in this paper, I defend a strict singular view for bare singulars and show that Turkish actually patterns with English where this correlation is exhibited asymmetrically. I claim that bare singulars in Turkish denote atomic properties and that bare plurals have a number neutral semantics as standardly assumed for English. I argue that the apparent number neutrality of bare singulars in the three cases arises via singular kind reference, which I show to extend to the phenomenon called pseudo-incorporation and a construction that I call kind specification. I argue that pseudo-incorporation occurs in non-case-marked argument positions following Öztürk (Case, referentiality, and phrase structure, Amsterdam, Benjamins, Publishing Company, 2005) and the existential copular construction, whereas kind specification is realized in the predicate position. The different behaviors of bare singulars in Turkish and English stem from the fact that singular kind reference is used more extensively in Turkish than in English. Furthermore, while there are well-known asymmetries between singular and plural kind reference cross-linguistically, Turkish manifests a more restricted distribution for bare plurals than English in the positions where pseudo-incorporation and kind specification are in evidence. I explain this as a blocking effect, specific to Turkish, by singular kind terms on plural kind terms.

Homotopy perturbation method with three expansions for Helmholtz-Fangzhu oscillator

This paper shows that the Toda oscillator can be converted to a new Helmholtz-Fangzhu equation, which is solved by the homotopy perturbation method with three expansions. The solution, the negative frequency and the damping rate are expanded into power forms in the homotopy parameter, the solution process is given step by step, and the results are of high accuracy. This paper gives a general approach to damp vibrations with singular terms,especially to the Helmholtz-Fangzhu oscillator.

Politics of Identity in Maloti-Drakensberg Rock Art Research

The contexts of hunter-gatherer rock arts of the southern Maloti-Drakensberg are characterized by enduring patterns of cultural acquisition and social transformation, resulting in communities with highly contextual identities and cultural possessions, but with nonlinear relationships between the two. Attempts to mitigate discontinuities between ethnographic source and interpretive subject, however, have left interpretive methodologies to represent authorship in more singular terms, to the exclusion of potential contextual sources who express identities not outwardly San, despite ancestral trajectories overlapping those of the artists. Recognition of the inheritances of the communities of the present Maloti-Drakensberg, and their transformative histories, necessitates their inclusion not only as sources, but as contributors to ethnoarchaeological process.

The Things We Do with Empty Names

This chapter undertakes to apply the previously developed theory of objective representational content to our thought and talk about apparently non-existent objects. It aims to show that we need not construe the referents of singular terms within fiction and within mathematics as possessing bona fide existence (or non-existence) while also providing a robust understanding of our singular representations when we think with such terms. The arguments depend on the trio of distinctions between merely objectual and fully objective linguistic and mental representations; non-veridical and veridical language games; and truth-similitude and literal truth. With these distinctions, the chapter exhibits the explanatory power of a theory on which empty singular terms are merely objectual yet are fundamental to our non-veridical language and thought games, possessing truth-similitude while falling short of literal truth.

NOT-AT-ISSUE CONTENT IN THE REFLEXIVE-REFERENTIAL THEORY

ABSTRACT The Reflexive-Referential Theory is a multi-content approach to utterance interpretation. Its main proponent, John Perry, assumes that utterances of sentences with singular terms express several contents, depending on how their utterers and interpreters harness information from the situations in which they are produced. However, the theory says little to nothing about implied content, like presuppositions. Here, I discuss the possibility of including presuppositions, defined in terms of the concept of not-at-issue content, in this view. I begin with a brief characterization of the Reflexive-Referential theory in what regards its theoretical motivations and main thesis, followed by a study case of presuppositional not-at-issue content associated to a specific class of singular terms, proper names. To conclude, I ponder over a few consequences of this overall project of theoretical expansion.