DOCSLIB.ORG

Analyzing Meaning an Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

Analyzing meaning An introduction to semantics and pragmatics Paul R. Kroeger language Textbooks in Language Sciences 5 science press Textbooks in Language Sciences Editors: Stefan Müller, Martin Haspelmath Editorial Board: Claude Hagège, Marianne Mithun, Anatol Stefanowitsch, Foong Ha Yap In this series: 1. Müller, Stefan. Grammatical theory: From transformational grammar to constraint-based approaches. 2. Schäfer, Roland. Einführung in die grammatische Beschreibung des Deutschen. 3. Freitas, Maria João & Ana Lúcia Santos (eds.). Aquisição de língua materna e não materna: Questões gerais e dados do português. 4. Roussarie, Laurent. Sémantique formelle : Introduction à la grammaire de Montague. 5. Kroeger, Paul. Analyzing meaning: An introduction to semantics and pragmatics. ISSN: 2364-6209 Analyzing meaning An introduction to semantics and pragmatics Paul R. Kroeger language science press Paul R. Kroeger. 2018. Analyzing meaning: An introduction to semantics and pragmatics (Textbooks in Language Sciences 5). Berlin: Language Science Press. This title can be downloaded at: http://langsci-press.org/catalog/144 © 2018, Paul R. Kroeger Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY 4.0): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ISBN: 978-3-96110-034-7 (Digital) 978-3-96110-035-4 (Hardcover) 978-3-96110-067-5 (Softcover) ISSN: 2364-6209 DOI:10.5281/zenodo.1164112 Source code available from www.github.com/langsci/144 Collaborative reading: paperhive.org/documents/remote?type=langsci&id=144 Cover and concept of design: Ulrike Harbort Typesetting: Felix Kopecky, Paul Kroeger, Sebastian Nordhoff Proofreading: Aleksandrs Berdicevskis, Andreas Hölzl, Anne Kilgus, Bev Erasmus, Carla Parra, Catherine Rudin, Christian Döhler, David Lukeš, David Nash, Eitan Grossman, Eugen Costetchi, Guohua Zhang, Ikmi Nur Oktavianti, Jean Nitzke, Jeroen van de Weijer, José Poblete Bravo, Joseph De Veaugh, Lachlan Mackenzie, Luigi Talamo, Martin Haspelmath, Mike Aubrey, Monika Czerepowicka, Myke Brinkerhoff, Parviz Parsafar, Prisca Jerono, Ritesh Kumar, Sandra Auderset, Torgrim Solstad, Vadim Kimmelman, Vasiliki Foufi Fonts: Linux Libertine, Arimo, DejaVu Sans Mono, AR PL UMing Typesetting software:Ǝ X LATEX Language Science Press Unter den Linden 6 10099 Berlin, Germany langsci-press.org Storage and cataloguing done by FU Berlin Contents Preface xi Abbreviations xiii I Foundational concepts 1 1 The meaning of meaning 3 1.1 Semantics and pragmatics ..................... 3 1.2 Three “levels” of meaning ...................... 5 1.3 Relation between form and meaning ................ 6 1.4 What does mean mean? ....................... 7 1.5 Saying, meaning, and doing .................... 9 1.6 “More lies ahead” (a roadmap) ................... 11 2 Referring, denoting, and expressing 15 2.1 Talking about the world ....................... 15 2.2 Denotational semantics vs. cognitive semantics ......... 16 2.3 Types of referring expressions ................... 17 2.4 Sense vs. denotation ......................... 21 2.5 Ambiguity .............................. 23 2.6 Expressive meaning: Ouch and oops ................ 25 2.6.1 Independence ........................ 26 2.6.2 Nondisplaceability ..................... 26 2.6.3 Immunity .......................... 26 2.6.4 Scalability and repeatability ................ 27 2.6.5 Descriptive ineffability ................... 27 2.6.6 Case study: Expressive uses of diminutives ........ 29 2.7 Conclusion .............................. 30 3 Truth and inference 35 3.1 Truth as a guide to sentence meaning ............... 35 Contents 3.2 Analytic sentences, synthetic sentences, and contradictions ... 36 3.3 Meaning relations between propositions ............. 37 3.4 Presupposition ............................ 40 3.4.1 How to identify a presupposition ............. 41 3.4.2 Accommodation: a repair strategy ............ 44 3.4.3 Pragmatic vs. semantic aspects of presupposition .... 45 3.5 Conclusion .............................. 47 4 The logic of truth 53 4.1 What logic can do for you ..................... 53 4.2 Valid patterns of inference ..................... 55 4.3 Propositional logic .......................... 58 4.3.1 Propositional operators .................. 58 4.3.2 Meaning relations and rules of inference ......... 62 4.4 Predicate logic ............................ 67 4.4.1 Quantifiers (an introduction) ............... 68 4.4.2 Scope ambiguities ...................... 72 4.5 Conclusion .............................. 72 II Word meanings 77 5 Word senses 79 5.1 Introduction ............................. 79 5.2 Word meanings as construals of external reality ......... 79 5.3 Lexical ambiguity .......................... 80 5.3.1 Ambiguity, vagueness, and indeterminacy ........ 80 5.3.2 Distinguishing ambiguity from vagueness and indeter- minacy ............................ 84 5.3.3 Polysemy vs. homonymy .................. 89 5.3.4 One sense at a time ..................... 92 5.3.5 Disambiguation in context ................. 94 5.4 Context-dependent extensions of meaning ............ 97 5.4.1 Figurative senses ...................... 98 5.4.2 How figurative senses become established ........ 99 5.5 “Facets” of meaning ......................... 100 5.6 Conclusion .............................. 102 iv Contents 6 Lexical sense relations 107 6.1 Meaning relations between words ................. 107 6.2 Identifying sense relations ..................... 107 6.2.1 Synonyms .......................... 108 6.2.2 Antonyms .......................... 109 6.2.3 Hyponymy and taxonomy ................. 113 6.2.4 Meronymy .......................... 115 6.3 Defining words in terms of sense relations ............ 115 6.4 Conclusion .............................. 117 7 Components of lexical meaning 119 7.1 Introduction ............................. 119 7.2 Lexical entailments ......................... 120 7.3 Selectional restrictions ....................... 121 7.4 Componential analysis ....................... 124 7.5 Verb meanings ............................ 126 7.6 Conclusion .............................. 131 III Implicature 137 8 Grice’s theory of Implicature 139 8.1 Sometimes we mean more than we say .............. 139 8.2 Conversational implicatures .................... 140 8.3 Grice’s Maxims of Conversation .................. 141 8.4 Types of implicatures ........................ 146 8.4.1 Generalized Conversational Implicature ......... 146 8.4.2 Conventional Implicature ................. 148 8.5 Distinguishing features of conversational implicatures ..... 149 8.6 How to tell one kind of inference from another .......... 151 8.7 Conclusion .............................. 156 9 Pragmatic inference after Grice 161 9.1 Introduction ............................. 161 9.2 Meanings of English words vs. logical operators ......... 161 9.2.1 On the ambiguity of and .................. 164 9.2.2 On the ambiguity of or ................... 165 9.3 Explicatures: bridging the gap between what is said vs. what is implicated .............................. 167 v Contents 9.4 Implicatures and the semantics/pragmatics boundary ...... 170 9.4.1 Why numeral words are special .............. 172 9.5 Conclusion .............................. 175 10 Indirect Speech Acts 179 10.1 Introduction ............................. 179 10.2 Performatives ............................ 180 10.3 Indirect speech acts ......................... 185 10.4 Indirect speech acts across languages ............... 191 10.5 Conclusion .............................. 192 11 Conventional implicature and use-conditional meaning 197 11.1 Introduction ............................. 197 11.2 Distinguishing truth-conditional vs. use-conditional meaning . 198 11.2.1 Diagnostic properties of conventional implicatures ... 198 11.2.2 Speaker-oriented adverbs ................. 200 11.3 Japanese honorifics ......................... 204 11.4 Korean speech style markers .................... 206 11.5 Other ways of marking politeness ................. 208 11.6 Discourse particles in German ................... 209 11.7 Conclusion .............................. 212 IV Compositional semantics 215 12 How meanings are composed 217 12.1 Introduction ............................. 217 12.2 Two simple examples ........................ 218 12.3 Frege on compositionality and substitutivity ........... 220 12.4 Propositional attitudes ....................... 223 12.5 De dicto vs. de re ambiguity ..................... 225 12.6 Conclusion .............................. 226 13 Modeling compositionality 229 13.1 Introduction ............................. 229 13.2 Why a model might be useful ................... 230 13.3 Basic concepts in set theory .................... 232 13.3.1 Relations and functions .................. 234 13.3.2 Operations and relations on sets ............. 236 vi Contents 13.4 Truth relative to a model ...................... 240 13.5 Rules of interpretation ....................... 242 13.6 Conclusion .............................. 246 14 Quantifiers 253 14.1 Introduction ............................. 253 14.2 Quantifiers as relations between sets ............... 254 14.3 Quantifiers in logical form ..................... 257 14.4 Two types of quantifiers ...................... 261 14.5 Scope ambiguities .......................... 264 14.6 Conclusion .............................. 267 15 Intensional contexts 273 15.1 Introduction ............................. 273 15.2 When substitutivity fails ...................... 274 15.3 Non-intersective adjectives ....................
Recommended publications
  • Semantic Analysis on Sense of Ambiguity in the Headline Printed the Jakarta Post Published on March 13Th– April 13Th , 2015

    Semantic Analysis on Sense of Ambiguity in the Headline Printed the Jakarta Post Published on March 13Th– April 13Th , 2015

    SEMANTIC ANALYSIS ON SENSE OF AMBIGUITY IN THE HEADLINE PRINTED THE JAKARTA POST PUBLISHED ON MARCH 13TH– APRIL 13TH , 2015 Erisa Kurniati Batanghari University [email protected] ABSTRACT This research was aim to find out the ambiguity which found in the headline of The Jakarta Post based on semantic analysis first classify it which one the most ambiguous (word, phrase or sentence), then the last interpret the sense of ambiguity based on semantic analysis. The researcher collected 100 data of headlines then reduced it into 10 data purposively the most ambiguous. There are 6 data of ambiguity interpreted into two interpretations and 4 data of ambiguity interpreted into three interpretations. From 10 data, the data researcher found a lexical ambiguity in the headlines of The Jakarta Post published on March 13th – April 13th, 2015. Key words: Semantic Analysis, Sense of Ambiguity. A. Background of the Study Nowadays, there are many ways to communicate with other due to the developments of technology. There are many media, whether electronic or printed media to share information and to keep in touch with the other. People can get the information about the development of the world and everything happens in a day from electronic and printed media. Newspaper, especially daily newspaper, has a big contribution for the people to get information about local or international events everyday because the news and information are up to date and accurate. As a consequence, there are many daily newspapers published in Indonesia and one of the daily English Newspaper is The Jakarta Post. Generally, people communicate perfectly and completely.
  • The Meaning of Language

    The Meaning of Language

    01:615:201 Introduction to Linguistic Theory Adam Szczegielniak The Meaning of Language Copyright in part: Cengage learning The Meaning of Language • When you know a language you know: • When a word is meaningful or meaningless, when a word has two meanings, when two words have the same meaning, and what words refer to (in the real world or imagination) • When a sentence is meaningful or meaningless, when a sentence has two meanings, when two sentences have the same meaning, and whether a sentence is true or false (the truth conditions of the sentence) • Semantics is the study of the meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences – Lexical semantics: the meaning of words and the relationships among words – Phrasal or sentential semantics: the meaning of syntactic units larger than one word Truth • Compositional semantics: formulating semantic rules that build the meaning of a sentence based on the meaning of the words and how they combine – Also known as truth-conditional semantics because the speaker’ s knowledge of truth conditions is central Truth • If you know the meaning of a sentence, you can determine under what conditions it is true or false – You don’ t need to know whether or not a sentence is true or false to understand it, so knowing the meaning of a sentence means knowing under what circumstances it would be true or false • Most sentences are true or false depending on the situation – But some sentences are always true (tautologies) – And some are always false (contradictions) Entailment and Related Notions • Entailment: one sentence entails another if whenever the first sentence is true the second one must be true also Jack swims beautifully.
  • David Lewis on Convention

    David Lewis on Convention

    David Lewis on Convention Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone Center for Cognitive Science Rutgers University David Lewis’s landmark Convention starts its exploration of the notion of a convention with a brilliant insight: we need a distinctive social competence to solve coordination problems. Convention, for Lewis, is the canonical form that this social competence takes when it is grounded in agents’ knowledge and experience of one another’s self-consciously flexible behavior. Lewis meant for his theory to describe a wide range of cultural devices we use to act together effectively; but he was particularly concerned in applying this notion to make sense of our knowledge of meaning. In this chapter, we give an overview of Lewis’s theory of convention, and explore its implications for linguistic theory, and especially for problems at the interface of the semantics and pragmatics of natural language. In §1, we discuss Lewis’s understanding of coordination problems, emphasizing how coordination allows for a uniform characterization of practical activity and of signaling in communication. In §2, we introduce Lewis’s account of convention and show how he uses it to make sense of the idea that a linguistic expression can come to be associated with its meaning by a convention. Lewis’s account has come in for a lot of criticism, and we close in §3 by addressing some of the key difficulties in thinking of meaning as conventional in Lewis’s sense. The critical literature on Lewis’s account of convention is much wider than we can fully survey in this chapter, and so we recommend for a discussion of convention as a more general phenomenon Rescorla (2011).
  • University Interscholastic League Literary Criticism Contest • Invitational a • 2021

    University Interscholastic League Literary Criticism Contest • Invitational a • 2021

    University Interscholastic League Literary Criticism Contest • Invitational A • 2021 Part 1: Knowledge of Literary Terms and of Literary History 30 items (1 point each) 1. A line of verse consisting of five feet that char- 6. The repetition of initial consonant sounds or any acterizes serious English language verse since vowel sounds in successive or closely associated Chaucer's time is known as syllables is recognized as A) hexameter. A) alliteration. B) pentameter. B) assonance. C) pentastich. C) consonance. D) tetralogy. D) resonance. E) tetrameter. E) sigmatism. 2. The trope, one of Kenneth Burke's four master 7. In Greek mythology, not among the nine daugh- tropes, in which a part signifies the whole or the ters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, known collectively whole signifies the part is called as the Muses, is A) chiasmus. A) Calliope. B) hyperbole. B) Erato. C) litotes. C) Polyhymnia. D) synecdoche. D) Urania. E) zeugma. E) Zoe. 3. Considered by some to be the most important Irish 8. A chronicle, usually autobiographical, presenting poet since William Butler Yeats, the poet and cele- the life story of a rascal of low degree engaged brated translator of the Old English folk epic Beo- in menial tasks and making his living more wulf who was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize for through his wit than his industry, and tending to Literature is be episodic and structureless, is known as a (n) A) Samuel Beckett. A) epistolary novel. B) Seamus Heaney. B) novel of character. C) C. S. Lewis. C) novel of manners. D) Spike Milligan. D) novel of the soil.
  • Performative Speech Act Verbs in Present Day English

    Performative Speech Act Verbs in Present Day English

    PERFORMATIVE SPEECH ACT VERBS IN PRESENT DAY ENGLISH ELENA LÓPEZ ÁLVAREZ Universidad Complutense de Madrid RESUMEN. En esta contribución se estudian los actos performativos y su influencia en el inglés de hoy en día. A partir de las teorías de J. L. Austin, entre otros autores, se desarrolla un panorama de esta orientación de la filosofía del lenguaje de Austin. PALABRAS CLAVE. Actos performativos, enunciado performativo, inglés. ABSTRACT. This paper focuses on performative speech act verbs in present day English. Reading the theories of J. L. Austin, among others,. With the basis of authors as J. L. Austin, this paper develops a brief landscape about this orientation of Austin’s linguistic philosophy. KEY WORDS. Performative speech act verbs, performative utterance, English. 1. INTRODUCCIÓN 1.1. HISTORICAL THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1.1. The beginnings: J.L. Austin The origin of performative speech acts as we know them today dates back to the William James Lectures, the linguistic-philosophical theories devised and delivered by J.L. Austin at Harvard University in 1955, and collected into a series of lectures entitled How to do things with words, posthumously published in 1962. Austin was one of the most influential philosophers of his time. In these lectures, he provided a thorough exploration of performative speech acts, which was an extremely innovative area of study in those days. In the following pages, Austin’s main ideas (together with some comments by other authors) will be presented. 1.1.1.1. Constative – performative distinction In these lectures, Austin begins by making a clear distinction between constative and performative utterances.
  • Honorificity, Indexicality and Their Interaction in Magahi

    Honorificity, Indexicality and Their Interaction in Magahi

    SPEAKER AND ADDRESSEE IN NATURAL LANGUAGE: HONORIFICITY, INDEXICALITY AND THEIR INTERACTION IN MAGAHI BY DEEPAK ALOK A dissertation submitted to the School of Graduate Studies Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Linguistics Written under the direction of Mark Baker and Veneeta Dayal and approved by New Brunswick, New Jersey October, 2020 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Speaker and Addressee in Natural Language: Honorificity, Indexicality and their Interaction in Magahi By Deepak Alok Dissertation Director: Mark Baker and Veneeta Dayal Natural language uses first and second person pronouns to refer to the speaker and addressee. This dissertation takes as its starting point the view that speaker and addressee are also implicated in sentences that do not have such pronouns (Speas and Tenny 2003). It investigates two linguistic phenomena: honorification and indexical shift, and the interactions between them, andshow that these discourse participants have an important role to play. The investigation is based on Magahi, an Eastern Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the state of Bihar (India), where these phenomena manifest themselves in ways not previously attested in the literature. The phenomena are analyzed based on the native speaker judgements of the author along with judgements of one more native speaker, and sometimes with others as the occasion has presented itself. Magahi shows a rich honorification system (the encoding of “social status” in grammar) along several interrelated dimensions. Not only 2nd person pronouns but 3rd person pronouns also morphologically mark the honorificity of the referent with respect to the speaker.
  • Bramwell, Ellen S. (2012) Naming in Society: a Cross-Cultural Study of Five Communities in Scotland

    Bramwell, Ellen S. (2012) Naming in Society: a Cross-Cultural Study of Five Communities in Scotland

    Bramwell, Ellen S. (2012) Naming in society: a cross-cultural study of five communities in Scotland. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3173/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ENGLISH LANGUAGE, COLLEGE OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW Naming in Society A cross-cultural study of five communities in Scotland Ellen Sage Bramwell September 2011 © Ellen S. Bramwell 2011 Abstract Personal names are a human universal, but systems of naming vary across cultures. While a person’s name identifies them immediately with a particular cultural background, this aspect of identity is rarely researched in a systematic way. This thesis examines naming patterns as a product of the society in which they are used. Personal names have been studied within separate disciplines, but to date there has been little intersection between them. This study marries approaches from anthropology and linguistic research to provide a more comprehensive approach to name-study. Specifically, this is a cross-cultural study of the naming practices of several diverse communities in Scotland, United Kingdom.
  • Denotational Semantics

    Denotational Semantics

    Denotational Semantics CS 6520, Spring 2006 1 Denotations So far in class, we have studied operational semantics in depth. In operational semantics, we define a language by describing the way that it behaves. In a sense, no attempt is made to attach a “meaning” to terms, outside the way that they are evaluated. For example, the symbol ’elephant doesn’t mean anything in particular within the language; it’s up to a programmer to mentally associate meaning to the symbol while defining a program useful for zookeeppers. Similarly, the definition of a sort function has no inherent meaning in the operational view outside of a particular program. Nevertheless, the programmer knows that sort manipulates lists in a useful way: it makes animals in a list easier for a zookeeper to find. In denotational semantics, we define a language by assigning a mathematical meaning to functions; i.e., we say that each expression denotes a particular mathematical object. We might say, for example, that a sort implementation denotes the mathematical sort function, which has certain properties independent of the programming language used to implement it. In other words, operational semantics defines evaluation by sourceExpression1 −→ sourceExpression2 whereas denotational semantics defines evaluation by means means sourceExpression1 → mathematicalEntity1 = mathematicalEntity2 ← sourceExpression2 One advantage of the denotational approach is that we can exploit existing theories by mapping source expressions to mathematical objects in the theory. The denotation of expressions in a language is typically defined using a structurally-recursive definition over expressions. By convention, if e is a source expression, then [[e]] means “the denotation of e”, or “the mathematical object represented by e”.
  • VERBAL BEHAVIOR by B. F. Skinner William James Lectures Harvard

    VERBAL BEHAVIOR by B. F. Skinner William James Lectures Harvard

    VERBAL BEHAVIOR by B. F. Skinner William James Lectures Harvard University 1948 To be published by Harvard University Press. Reproduced by permission of B. F. Skinner† Preface In 1930, the Harvard departments of psychology and philosophy began sponsoring an endowed lecture series in honor of William James and continued to do so at irregular intervals for nearly 60 years. By the time Skinner was invited to give the lectures in 1947, the prestige of the engagement had been established by such illustrious speakers as John Dewey, Wolfgang Köhler, Edward Thorndike, and Bertrand Russell, and there can be no doubt that Skinner was aware that his reputation would rest upon his performance. His lectures were evidently effective, for he was soon invited to join the faculty at Harvard, where he was to remain for the rest of his career. The text of those lectures, possibly somewhat edited and modified by Skinner after their delivery, was preserved as an unpublished manuscript, dated 1948, and is reproduced here. Skinner worked on his analysis of verbal behavior for 23 years, from 1934, when Alfred North Whitehead announced his doubt that behaviorism could account for verbal behavior, to 1957, when the book Verbal Behavior was finally published, but there are two extant documents that reveal intermediate stages of his analysis. In the first decade of this period, Skinner taught several courses on language, literature, and behavior at Clark University, the University of Minnesota, and elsewhere. According to his autobiography, he used notes from these classes as the foundation for a class he taught on verbal behavior in the summer of 1947 at Columbia University.
  • A Puzzle About Demonstratives and Semantic Competence

    A Puzzle About Demonstratives and Semantic Competence

    A puzzle about demonstratives and semantic competence Jeff Speaks May 11, 2016 1 Compositionality and semantic competence . 1 2 Compositionality and Kaplan's account of context-sensitivity . 4 3 Demonstratives and intentions . 6 4 The problem of conflicting intentions . 11 5 Theories of trumping . 13 5.1 No tolerance theories . 13 5.2 Special intention theories . 14 5.2.1 De re intentions . 14 5.2.2 Demonstrative intentions . 14 5.2.3 Referential intentions . 16 5.3 Relational theories . 17 5.3.1 Salience . 17 5.3.2 Audience uptake theories . 18 5.3.3 Explanatory relations . 18 6 The problem . 22 My aim in this paper is to lay out a number of theses which are very widely held in contemporary philosophy of language and linguistics, and to argue that, given some extra theses for which I'll argue, they are inconsistent. Some of this will involve going through some very well-trodden territory { my hope is that presenting this familiar ground in the way that I do will help to make plain the problem that I aim to identify. 1 Compositionality and semantic competence The central aim of (in one use of that term) the theory of meaning is to give a compo- sitional semantic theory for a natural language. We can think of a theory of this sort as doing two things: ◦ Assigning meanings to the simple expressions of the language. ◦ Giving rules for deriving the meanings of arbitrary complex expressions from the meanings of the expressions of which they are composed, and the way in which those expressions are combined.
  • 9:30 - 11:00 SZB, Room 240

    9:30 - 11:00 SZB, Room 240

    PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE Department of Philosophy, UT, Austin Phil 332, Spring 2013 Unique Number 42755 T/TH: 9:30 - 11:00 SZB, Room 240 INSTRUCTOR Lawrence Ray Buchanan E-mail: [email protected] Phone: (512) 471-7396 Office: Waggener Hall 4th Floor Room # 416B Office hours: Tuesdays 11:30 – 12:30 COURSE SUMMARY The course focuses on various philosophical issues concerning language. Topics to be discussed include, but are not limited to, the following: speaker-meaning, conversational implicature, sentence/expression-meaning, reference, modality, and propositional attitude ascriptions. COURSE REQUIREMENTS Assignments: • Two 6-7 page papers on topics selected from a list of prompts given by instructor. The first of these papers will be worth 20% of the student’s final grade for the course; the second will be worth 25% of the grade for the course. • One in-class midterm worth 25% of the student’s final grade. • A take-home final exam worth 25% of the grade. • Class participation and attendance (5%). Regarding the *participation* component of your grade: I expect regular attendance and participation in our course. Moreover, I expect you to have read the material for lecture carefully in advance. However, should my expectations on either front fail to be met, I reserve the right to assign (short) in-class written assignments regarding the required reading for the day that will then be counted towards the participation component of your grade. Late work: I do not accept work after the due date without a valid documented excuse. Please Note: One of the principal aims of this course is to give students experience with writing in an academic discipline.
  • Representing-Time-An-Essay-On-Temporality-As

    Representing-Time-An-Essay-On-Temporality-As

    Representing Time To commemorate the centenary of J. E. McTaggart’s ‘The unreality of time’ (1908) Representing Time: An Essay on Temporality as Modality K. M. JASZCZOLT 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York # K. M. Jaszczolt 2009 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book