Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

Intention-based Semantics

By Emma Borg

If we want to develop an intention-based semantics for natural language, it seems that we should follow the weaker, A-style approach (here attributed to Grice) rather than assign any more substantive role to speaker intentions. Yet, if this is the case, a question might now emerge concerning the relation of IBS to other varieties of semantic theory. Specifically, it is no longer clear to what degree IBS constitutes a genuine alternative to the approach of formal semantics (e.g. a truth-conditional approach, such as that instigated by Davidson). According to formal semantic theories the route to semantic content follows an exclusively syntactic path. That is to say, all propositional or truth-conditional semantic content can be traced back to the syntactic level and it is delivered by formal operations over the syntactic representations of sentences. Just as with an A-style IBS approach, the formal theorist will maintain that (formally described) sentences, rather than utterances, are the primary bearers of semantic content.

Source: Online Papers in Philosophy

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

From Semantic Restrictions to Reciprocal Meanings

By Yoad Winter & Sivan Sabato

This paper proposes a new approach to the interpretation of reciprocal expressions using the Strongest Meaning Hypothesis of Dalrymple et al (1998). We propose a system in which reciprocal meanings are derived directly from semantic restrictions using the SMH, and characterize this derivation process. We present methods to construct a linguistic test for the availability of a reciprocal meaning, or otherwise to prove that a specific meaning is not available for reciprocals. These methods are then used to analyze two controversial reciprocal meanings.

Source: Online Papers in Philosophy

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

A Metasemantic Account of Vagueness

By Agustin Rayo

I argue for an account of vagueness according to which the root of vagueness lies not in the type of semantic-value that is best associated with an expression, but in the type of linguistic practice that renders the expression meaningful. I suggest, in particular, that conventions about how to use sentences involving attributions of vague predicates to borderline cases prevail to a lesser degree than conventions about how to use sentences involving attributions of vague predicates to clear cases.

Source: PhOnline

See also.

Topic: PARACONSISTENCY

An Inconsistency in Direct Reference Theory

By George Bealer

My goal [here] is to expose a series of internal difficulties in direct reference theory, ultimately revealing an inconsistency which concerns neither meaning nor the propositional attitudes but rather our standard logic of identity itself. I will not focus on specific formulations, such as those put forward at one time or another by David Kaplan, John Perry, Jon Barwise, Nathan Salmon, Scott Soames, Mark Richard, Mark Crimmins, and many others. By the end it should nonetheless be evident that direct reference theory’s basic tenets make this inconsistency inevitable.

Source: Online Papers in Philosophy

Topic: Cognition & Epistemology

Machine Learning and the Cognitive Basis of Natural Language

By Shalom Lappin

Machine learning and statistical methods have yielded impressive results in a wide variety of natural language processing tasks. These advances have generally been regarded as engineering achievements. In fact it is possible to argue that the success of machine learning methods is significant for our understanding of the cognitive basis of language acquisition and processing. Recent work in unsupervised grammar induction is particularly relevant to this issue. It suggests that knowledge of language can be achieved through general learning procedures, and that a richly articulated language faculty is not required to explain its acquisition.

Source: Online Papers in Philosophy

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

Uncertainty and the suppression of inferences

By Guy Politzer

The explanation of the suppression of Modus Ponens inferences within the framework of linguistic pragmatics and of plausible reasoning (i.e., deduction from uncertain premises) is defended.

First, this approach is expounded, and then it is shown that the results of the first experiment of Byrne, Espino and Santamaría (1999) support the uncertainty explanation but fail to support their counterexample explanation.

Second, two experiments are presented. In the first one, aimed to refute one objection regarding the conclusions observed, the additional conditional premise (if N, C) was replaced with a statement of uncertainty (it is not certain that N); the answers produced by the participants remained qualitatively and quantitatively similar in both conditions. In the second experiment, a fine-grained analysis of the responses and justifications to an evaluation task was performed. The results of both experiments strongly supported the uncertainty explanation.

Source: Jean Nicod, Online Papers in Philosophy

Mood:  happy
Topic: SCIENCE & NEWS

LOGIC NEWS

Greg Restall is talking about his participation in the Logic Colloquium 2005. Here is a report about the second day.

Saul Kripke recently visited Argentine and Brazil, and delivered some talks at the Centre for Logic, Epistemology and the History of Science, during a Workshop on Semantics and Meaning. During the same workshop, Jean-Yves Béziau advanced his views on Many-Valued and Kripke Semantics. Itala D'Ottaviano, Zeljko Loparic, Marcelo Coniglio and Walter Carnielli[1], together with their (current and former) advisees, have also made very important contributions. Those contributions will be online sooner or later. The expected debate between Da Costa and Kripke did not take place though, the overall series of debates was very interesting and insightfull. João Marcos' talk on Non-truth functional Logics included things that were new to me and which I shall try to summarise in the near future.

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[1] Soon Carnielli will publish his views on Fitch' paradox, which became the hottest event on Wednesday. (It almost worked as if someone used a gallon of petrol to extinguish a bonfire! :P ) Some of his proposals were not only bold but fresh new and, after the responses of top senior Philosophers and Logicians and a great happy ending, everyone was eager to see what his paper will look like.

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

Where do presuppositions come from

By Richard Zuber
Source: Semantics Archive

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

Free Choice in Romanian

By Donka F. Farkas

This paper explores the determiner corner of the ‘any’ land in Romanian, taking Lee and Horn 1994 and Horn 2000a as tour guides. The immediate interest of the task lies in the fact that the work done in English by the over-employed determiner any is carried out in Romanian by a host of more specialized (and, one fears, lower paid) morphemes, which I review in the rest of this section. My aim is to introduce the details of the Romanian facts onto the scene and to show that an ‘indefinitist’ view that generalizes the scalar approach advocated in Horn’s work is useful in helping us understand the much more crowded Romanian field. The theory of any that serves as my starting point is summarized in Section 2. Section 3 proposes a generalization of the scalar view advocated by Horn in terms of an alternative-based approach in the spirit of Krifka 1995, Giannakidou 2001 and Kratzer and Shimoyama 2002, based on a novel way of defining alternatives. Section 4 looks at the consequences of the proposal, Section 5 considers ways of extending it, and Section 6 is a brief conclusion. The approach suggested here falls under what Horn calls quodlibetic theories. Its claim is that the unifying characteristic of both existentially and universally flavored free choice-like items is that they denote a maximal set of alternatives that verify the expression in which the item occurs. The scalar view is the important special case in which these alternatives form an implicational scale with respect to verifying the relevant expression.

To appear in a Festschrift for Larry Horn edited by Gregory Ward and Betty Birner
Source: Semantics etc.

The Many Presuppositions

The label presupposition covers a variety of ideas and the authors may mean different things when they use it.

Pre-requisites One common feature behind the several different meanings of presupposition is the idea that there are conditions. i.e., pre-requisites to be met or satisfied. One school of thought considers that those conditions have to do with truth-values. Another school of thought says that such conditions are those that allow a statement to function properly, i.e., to achieve its goals or serve its purposes.

Truth conditions One intuitive way to characterise the notion of presupposition in an alethic manner is by separating it from the contents of an utterance, i.e., to distinguish the ‘positus’ (what is proposed or put forward for consideration) from what is presupposed by a sentence.
According to a tradition that goes back to Peter of Spain, the existence of the subject (e.f.; Socrates of sentences like (1):

(1) Socrates wrote no book.

is something that is not explicitly stated by the sentence, so it is not part of its contents, but at the same time is one condition for the proposition expressed by (1) to be true. So the existence of Socrates is presupposed by (1).
There are cases that are more complex. Consider the sentences below:

(2) The Pope is a very good Protestant.
(3) The Pope is not a very good Protestant.

Given that (2) is false and (3) is its negation, then (3) should be true. Yet, intuitively the users of any natural language consider both sentences false. Why? One good reason for such intuitions is that both sentences somehow presuppose that the Pope is Protestant, which is false.
There are many thinkable ways to treat the duo proposition and presupposition. One obvious way to do it is by translating a natural language into a conjunct of the type (∃α)(p&q). So, a sentence like:

(4) The man who discovered the Americas was an Iberian.

can be rephrased in this manner:

(4’) There is an x such as x the Americas and X was an Iberian.

Felicity The notion of situational (in-) appropriateness consists of pre-requisites that are called felicity conditions. Felicity conditions determine under what circumstances it is appropriate to ask questions, give commands, etc.
To be continued…