Live Meanings (original) (raw)
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The Live Principle of Compositionality
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In this paper I argue that the principle of compositionality should be thought of as a principle that applies to the live meanings of constituent expressions. Under such a conception of the principle contextualist findings in the philosophy of language can be handled in an intuitive and non-trivial way. Several cases, most of them known from the semantics literature, are addressed in order to illustrate the presence of live meanings. The live principle also grounds a so-called interference principle, that is used as a methodological tool for a fair judgement of proposed semantic explanations of various intricate linguistic phenomena.
Introduction to the Science of Meaning
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018
This Introduction aims to acquaint the reader with some of the main views on the foundations of natural language semantics, to discuss the type of phenomena semanticists study, and to give some basic technical background in compositional model-theoretic semantics necessary to understand the chapters in this collection. Topics discussed include truth conditions, compositionality, context-sensitivity, dynamic semantics, the relation of formal semantic theories to the theoretical apparatus of reference and propositions current in much philosophy of language, what semantic theories aim to explain, realism, the metaphysics of language and different views of the relation between languages and speakers, and the epistemology of semantics.
On “Interactional Semantics” and Problems of Meaning
Human Studies, 2011
This article is a comment on papers being published in this special issue concerned with interactional semantics. As these papers are concerned with abstractions, formulations, generalizations, and other uses of categorizations whereby participants' everyday understandings and interpretations come to the foreground of analysis, I explore the wider issue with which the papers wrestle. That issue is whether problems of meaning-related to subjectivity, intersubjectivity, mutual comprehension, and the like-are pervasive in interaction, or are limited and situational. I examine problems of meaning through the lenses of social theory and ethnomethodology, and take the position that analytic preoccupation with interpretation should be one that follows participants' own orientations to problems of meaning. This is different from but related to what each author argues in his own paper. Keywords Verstehen Á Mutual understanding Á Interpretation Á Semantics Á Ethnomethodology Á Conversation analysis Á Social theory This special issue takes up a provocative topic-the problem of ''semantics in interaction''. The papers are concerned with abstractions, formulations, generalizations, and other uses of categorizations whereby participants' everyday understandings and interpretations come to the foreground of analysis. The papers merit inspection in their own right, and in my brief comment I cannot do justice to each of them; rather I wish to explore the wider issue with which they wrestle. That issue-''semantics in interaction''-consists in whether the so-called problem of meaning is a pervasive one for participants in interaction or whether it is a more limited
Abstract Meaning has been the center of debates in the study of language for centuries. From classical Greek to Cognitive Linguistics. From been partially ignored by modern linguists like Bloomfield, Chomsky, and many others, to been “empirically” studied by Cognitive Linguists. The study of meaning still remain open ended in its conclusions. The open-endedness of the study of meaning has left many questions in its wake than it sets out to answer. That is one of the reasons why Bloomfield called it “weak” and Chomsky ignored it in his “Generative Grammar”. It is as a result of this weak background that Cognitive Linguistics emerged. From its traditional approach (Semantics) to its modern approach (Cognitive Linguistics), the study of meaning is yet to be boldly called an empirical study of language. This article aims at highlighting the weakness of Semantics and Cognitive Linguistics as an introduction to both fields (Semantics and Cognitive Linguistics). This is because both fields are obsessed with meaning in language. Furthermore, because Cognitive Linguistics is an advanced study of Semantics, this article will focus on its weaknesses to highlight the weakness of the study of meaning in general. From there, solutions to some of the problems will be recommended.
This paper examines meaning in language. It is therefore a study in semantics. Semantics is the study of meaning in terms of the linguistics. Semantics begins from the stopping point of syntax and ends from where pragmatics begins. A separate discipline in the study of language, semantics has existed for decades. The term semantics was first used by Breal in 1987 and it does not suggest that there had never been speculations about the nature of meaning (Ogbulogo (2005). Words, phrases and sentences are used to convey messages in natural languages. Semantics is the study of meaning systems in language. If meaning is a system, then language is systematic in nature. In this paper, we investigate the nature of meaning to locate the significance of semantics in contemporary linguistics. Frege, cited in Sandt (1988:1) rightly notes that “... [If ] anything is asserted there is always an obvious presupposition that the simple or compound proper names used have reference.” Hinging on different submissions in the literature, we conclude that meaning is: socio-cultural, dynamic, grammar-driven, conventional, representative (referential), individualistic (non-conventional) and is not exhaustive.
Outline of a theory of meaning: semantical and contextual
Philosophica, 1977
There are several reasons, to some of which I shall refer later, to take meaning serious, i.e. to take it as distinct from syntactically expressible formal properties of linguistic entities, as distinct from denotation or extension, and the like. Among the possible approaches to the study of meaning three seem to be especially important for the philosopher : (a) The study of the meaning of linguistic entities with respect to communication processes properly. This approach is concerned with questions about the relevant belief and knowledge contents on the part of the speaker and hearer respectively, with questions about how to arrive at a consistent interpretation of a "text", etc. (b) The study of the meanings of sentences, respectively propositions, in terms of the observations and actions of the person (individttal, community) who accepts or beliefs them to be true (connected with the dispositional interpretation of belief). Here the meaning of a sentence p is seen as (or at least seen in relation to) a functioll of the verification procedure for p-a procedure which will usually contain observations as well as actions-and a function of the actions that a person will or will not perform, relative to a problem situation and relative to a set of background beliefs, accordillg as he does or does not believe (accept) that p. (c) The study of the meaning of linguistic entities with respect to parts of the world (facts, objects, relations, ...) or possible parts of the world (more accurately: parts of possible worlds). It is with this approacll, i.e. with semantics, that we shall mainly be concerned in this paper. It goes without saying that the philosopher is not interested in 138, Diderik BATENS