What Is Linguistics? ERIC Digest. [Revised]
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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 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). -
Philosophical Problems in Child Language Research the Naive
Philosophical Problems in Child Language Research The Naive Realism of Traditional Semantics John Lyons, Oxford linguist, writes in his book (1995) on linguistic semantics: “in my view, it is impossible to evaluate even the most down-to-earth and apparently unphilosophical works in descriptive semantics unless one has some notion of the general philosophical framework within which they are written. This holds true regardless of whether the authors themselves are aware of the philosophical origins or implications of their working principles” (p. 88). One can only agree with Lyons’ position. And one can only admire his honesty when, later, he acknowledges: “throughout this book I have adopted the viewpoint of naive realism, according to which the ontological structure of the world is objectively independent both of perception and cognition and also of language. As we have dealt with particular topics, this view has been gradually elaborated (and to some degree modified); and a more technical metalanguage has been developed in order to formulate with greater precision than is possible in the everyday metalanguage the relations of reference and denotation that hold between language and the world. According to the viewpoint adopted here, the world contains a number of first-order entities (with first-order properties) which fall into certain ontological categories (or natural kinds); it also contains aggregates of stuff or matter(with first-order properties), portions of which can be individuated, quantified, enumerated—and thus treated linguistically as entities—by using the lexical and grammatical resources of particular natural languages. All natural languages, it may be assumed, provide their users with the means of referring to first-order entities and expressing propositions which describe them in terms of their (first-order) properties, actual or ascribed, essential or contingent: such languages have the expressive power of first-order formal languages” (p. -
Lewis on Conventions and Meaning
Lewis on conventions and meaning phil 93914 Jeff Speaks April 3, 2008 Lewis (1975) takes the conventions in terms of which meaning can be analyzed to be conventions of truthfulness and trust in a language. His account may be adapted to state an analysis of a sentence having a given meaning in a population as follows: x means p in a population G≡df (1a) ordinarily, if a member of G utters x, the speaker believes p, (1b) ordinarily, if a member of G hears an utterance of x, he comes to believe p, unless he already believed this, (2) members of G believe that (1a) and (1b) are true, (3) the expectation that (1a) and (1b) will continue to be true gives members of G a good reason to continue to utter x only if they believe p, and to expect the same of other members of G, (4) there is among the members of G a general preference for people to continue to conform to regularities (1a) and (1b) (5) there is an alternative regularity to (1a) and (1b) which is such that its being generally conformed to by some members of G would give other speakers reason to conform to it (6) all of these facts are mutually known by members of G Some objections: • Clause (5) should be dropped, because, as Burge (1975) argued, this clause makes Lewis's conditions on linguistic meaning too strong. Burge pointed out that (5) need not be mutually known by speakers for them to speak a meaningful language. Consider, for example, the case in which speakers believe that there is no possible language other than their own, and hence that there is no alternative regularity to (1a) and (1b). -
The Theory of Descriptions 1. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970): Mathematician, Logician, and Philosopher
Louis deRosset { Spring 2019 Russell: The Theory of Descriptions 1. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970): mathematician, logician, and philosopher. He's one of the founders of analytic philosophy. \On Denoting" is a founding document of analytic philosophy. It is a paradigm of philosophical analysis. An analysis of a concept/phenomenon c: a recipe for eliminating c-vocabulary from our theories which still captures all of the facts the c-vocabulary targets. FOR EXAMPLE: \The Name View Analysis of Identity." 2. Russell's target: Denoting Phrases By a \denoting phrase" I mean a phrase such as any one of the following: a man, some man, any man, every man, all men, the present King of England, the present King of France, the centre of mass of the Solar System at the first instant of the twentieth century, the revolution of the earth round the sun, the revolution of the sun round the earth. (479) Includes: • universals: \all F 's" (\each"/\every") • existentials: \some F " (\at least one") • indefinite descriptions: \an F " • definite descriptions: \the F " Later additions: • negative existentials: \no F 's" (480) • Genitives: \my F " (\your"/\their"/\Joe's"/etc.) (484) • Empty Proper Names: \Apollo", \Hamlet", etc. (491) Russell proposes to analyze denoting phrases. 3. Why Analyze Denoting Phrases? Russell's Project: The distinction between acquaintance and knowledge about is the distinction between the things we have presentation of, and the things we only reach by means of denoting phrases. [. ] In perception we have acquaintance with the objects of perception, and in thought we have acquaintance with objects of a more abstract logical character; but we do not necessarily have acquaintance with the objects denoted by phrases composed of words with whose meanings we are ac- quainted. -
Russell's Theory of Descriptions
Russell’s theory of descriptions PHIL 83104 September 5, 2011 1. Denoting phrases and names ...........................................................................................1 2. Russell’s theory of denoting phrases ................................................................................3 2.1. Propositions and propositional functions 2.2. Indefinite descriptions 2.3. Definite descriptions 3. The three puzzles of ‘On denoting’ ..................................................................................7 3.1. The substitution of identicals 3.2. The law of the excluded middle 3.3. The problem of negative existentials 4. Objections to Russell’s theory .......................................................................................11 4.1. Incomplete definite descriptions 4.2. Referential uses of definite descriptions 4.3. Other uses of ‘the’: generics 4.4. The contrast between descriptions and names [The main reading I gave you was Russell’s 1919 paper, “Descriptions,” which is in some ways clearer than his classic exposition of the theory of descriptions, which was in his 1905 paper “On Denoting.” The latter is one of the optional readings on the web site, and I reference it below sometimes as well.] 1. DENOTING PHRASES AND NAMES Russell defines the class of denoting phrases as follows: “By ‘denoting phrase’ I mean a phrase such as any one of the following: a man, some man, any man, every man, all men, the present king of England, the centre of mass of the Solar System at the first instant of the twentieth century, the revolution of the earth around the sun, the revolution of the sun around the earth. Thus a phrase is denoting solely in virtue of its form.” (‘On Denoting’, 479) Russell’s aim in this article is to explain how expressions like this work — what they contribute to the meanings of sentences containing them. -
What Is Philosophy.Pdf
I N T R O D U C T I O N What Is Philosophy? CHAPTER 1 The Task of Philosophy CHAPTER OBJECTIVES Reflection—thinking things over—. [is] the beginning of philosophy.1 In this chapter we will address the following questions: N What Does “Philosophy” Mean? N Why Do We Need Philosophy? N What Are the Traditional Branches of Philosophy? N Is There a Basic Method of Philo- sophical Thinking? N How May Philosophy Be Used? N Is Philosophy of Education Useful? N What Is Happening in Philosophy Today? The Meanings Each of us has a philos- “having” and “doing”—cannot be treated en- ophy, even though we tirely independent of each other, for if we did of Philosophy may not be aware of not have a philosophy in the formal, personal it. We all have some sense, then we could not do a philosophy in the ideas concerning physical objects, our fellow critical, reflective sense. persons, the meaning of life, death, God, right Having a philosophy, however, is not suffi- and wrong, beauty and ugliness, and the like. Of cient for doing philosophy. A genuine philo- course, these ideas are acquired in a variety sophical attitude is searching and critical; it is of ways, and they may be vague and confused. open-minded and tolerant—willing to look at all We are continuously engaged, especially during sides of an issue without prejudice. To philoso- the early years of our lives, in acquiring views phize is not merely to read and know philoso- and attitudes from our family, from friends, and phy; there are skills of argumentation to be mas- from various other individuals and groups. -
7. Pragmatics
Oxford Handbook of Computational Linguistics, 2nd edn. Drafted Apr 20, 2011; revised Mar 4, 2014 7. Pragmatics Christopher Potts Department of Linguistics, Stanford University Abstract This chapter reviews core empirical phenomena and technical concepts from linguistic pragmatics, including context dependence, common ground, indexicality, conversational implicature, presupposition, and speech acts. I seek to identify unifying themes among these concepts, provide a high-level guide to the primary literature, and relate the phenomena to issues in computational linguistics. Keywords context dependence, common ground, indexicality, conversational implica- ture, presupposition, speech acts 7.1 Introduction The linguistic objects that speakers use in their utterances vastly underdetermine the contributions that those utterances make to discourse. To borrow an analogy from Levinson(2000: 4), “an utterance is not [... ] a veridical model or ‘snapshot’ of the scene it describes”. Rather, the encoded content merely sketches what speakers intend and hearers perceive. The fundamental questions of pragmatics concern how semantic content, contextual information, and general communicative pressures interact to guide discourse participants in filling in these sketches: (i) How do language users represent the context of utterance, and which aspects of the context are central to communication? (ii) We often “mean more than we say”. What principles guide this pragmatic enrichment, and how do semantic values (conventional aspects of meaning) enable and constrain -
Unit 3 Looking at Data-2
UNIT 3 LOOKING AT DATA-2 Structure Objectives Formal Linguistics - An Introduction Generative Grammar 3.2.1 Principal Goals Generativists and Structuralists 3.3.1 Generativists and Bloomfieldians Tranformational Generative Grammar Let Us Sum Up Key Words Questions Suggested Readings 3.0 OBJECTIVES , In this unit, we will discuss o the Generative framework of grammar o its differences with the Structuralists We will also briefly talk about Transformational Generative Grammar. Some of these ideas may appear difficult but they will be clear to you as you read the course. Don't get discouraged if some concepts appear difficult and complex. They will be clarified as we proceed along. 3.1 FORMAL LINGLTISTICS - AN INTRODUCTION In the early 1950fs,signs of restiveness began to disturb the calm of structuralism, and by the end of the decahe new ideas emerged in a big way. Chomsky, a student of Zellig Harris was concerned with discovering a general theory of grammatical structure. He believed that an adequate grammar should provide a basis for explaining how sentences are used and understood. He reproaches the Bloonlfieldeans for "their satisfaction with description [and] their refusal to explain" ( 198 1:38). According to him, as other 'developing sciences, linguistics should also endeavour to establish a more ambitious goal than mere description and classification. Linguists should aim at developing methods not just for the description of language but also for understanding the nature of language. And this was possible only if one takes recourse to intuition of native speakers. Intuition had, however, remained a source of discomfiture for Bloomfield. -
Why Major in Linguistics (And What Does a Linguist Do)? by Monica Macaulay and Kristen Syrett
1 Why Major in Linguistics (and what does a linguist do)? by Monica Macaulay and Kristen Syrett What is linguistics? Speakers of all languages know a lot about their languages, usually without knowing that they know If you are considering becoming a linguistics it. For example, as a speaker of English, you major, you probably know something about the possess knowledge about English word order. field of linguistics already. However, you may find Perhaps without even knowing it, you understand it hard to answer people who ask you, "What that Sarah admires the teacher is grammatical, exactly is linguistics, and what does a linguist do?" while Admires Sarah teacher the is not, and also They might assume that it means you speak a lot of that The teacher admires Sarah means something languages. And they may be right: you may, in entirely different. You know that when you ask a fact, be a polyglot! But while many linguists do yes-no question, you may reverse the order of speak multiple languages—or at least know a fair words at the beginning of the sentence and that the bit about multiple languages—the study of pitch of your voice goes up at the end of the linguistics means much more than this. sentence (for example, in Are you going?). Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and However, if you speak French, you might add est- many topics are studied under this umbrella. At the ce que at the beginning, and if you know American heart of linguistics is the search for the unconscious knowledge that humans have about language and how it is that children acquire it, an understanding of the structure of language in general and of particular languages, knowledge about how languages vary, and how language influences the way in which we interact with each other and think about the world. -
14 the Linguistic Structure of Discourse
The Linguistic Structure of Discourse 265 14 The Linguistic Structure of Discourse LIVIA POLANYI 0 Introduction We take as the goal of our formal work in discourse analysis explaining how speakers almost without error interpret personal, temporal, and spatial deixis, recover the objects of anaphoric mention, and produce responses which demonstrate that they know what is going on in the talk despite disturbances to orderly discourse develop- ment (Polanyi 1978, 1987, 1996; Polanyi and van den Berg 1996; Polanyi and Scha 1984; Scha and Polanyi 1988). With the informal description of the Linguistic Discourse Model (LDM) in this chapter, we take a first step toward this goal by proposing answers to three basic questions: what are the atomic units of discourse? What kinds of structures can be built from the elementary units? How are the resulting struc- tures interpreted semantically? After sketching machinery to account for discourse segmentation, parsing, and interpretation, we will conclude by addressing the con- cerns readers of the present volume may have about the utility of a formal theory of discourse. What sort of work could such a theory do? To argue for our approach, we will examine the data and discussion presented in Prince’s (1988) account of Yiddish expletive, ES + Subject Postposing. We will use the Yiddish data to show how the LDM analysis allows us to give a much more principled account than has been possible before of what it means for an entity to be “new in the discourse.” In the concluding section of the chapter, we will broaden the discussion to argue for the benefits to sociolinguists and other discourse researchers of the formal methods we have proposed. -
Generative Linguistics Within the Cognitive Neuroscience of Language Alec Marantz
Generative linguistics within the cognitive neuroscience of language Alec Marantz Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT Standard practice in linguistics often obscures the connection between theory and data, leading some to the conclusion that generative linguistics could not serve as the basis for a cognitive neuroscience of language. Here the foundations and methodology of generative grammar are clarified with the goal of explaining how generative theory already functions as a reasonable source of hypotheses about the representation and computation of language in the mind and brain. The claims of generative theory, as exemplified, e.g., within Chomsky’s (2000) Minimalist Program, are contrasted with those of theories endorsing parallel architectures with independent systems of generative phonology, syntax and semantics. The single generative engine within Minimalist approaches rejects dual routes to linguistic representations, including possible extra-syntactic strategies for semantic structure-building. Clarification of the implications of this property of generative theory undermines the foundations of an autonomous psycholinguistics, as established in the 1970’s, and brings linguistic theory back to the center of a unified cognitive neuroscience of language. 2 1. The place of linguistics* The first decade of the 21st century should be a golden era for the cognitive neuroscience of language. Fifty years of contemporary linguistic analysis of language can be coupled with a wide range of brain imaging and brain monitoring machines to test hypotheses and refine theory and understanding. However, there is still a gulf between mainstream linguistics within the generative linguistic tradition and most of those engaged in experimental cognitive neuroscience research. Some have argued that the fault here lies with the linguists, whose generative theories are based in principle on separating the study of linguistic representations from research on the acquisition and use of language in the minds and brains of speakers.