Referential Theory of Meaning (Essay) (original) (raw)
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Theories of Semantics: Merits and Limitations
Meaning is so intangible that one group of linguists , the structuralists , preferred not to deal with it or rely on it at all. It is a variable and not to be taken for granted. Nevertheless , many theories have been interested in the study of meaning. Because of the limited scope of this paper, the discussion will cover some of the well–known theories of meaning formulated in the last century. Mainly referential theory of meaning, non– referential theory of meaning and generative grammarian theory of meaning are discussed. Some assumptions, merits and limitations for each theory are also described. The researcher hopes that many people can benefit from this article since meaning is a complex concept and difficult to understand.
This paper critically engages with Jerry Fodor"s (1998, 2008) notion of referential semantics. I argue that Fodor"s referentialism about semantic content is untenable for two reasons. First, it presupposes internalist content in the guise of mind-dependent properties that our minds attribute to mind-external entities. Furthermore, it is these properties that compose and not, as Fodor argues, reference.
Issues in the formal semantics of referentiality
Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, 2015
On October 21 st , and 22 nd , 2013, during the Conference "On Referentiality", which took place in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, the papers that compose this issue were first discussed. The conference is one of the activities of the Cooperation Project CAPES-NUFFIC, between universities in Brazil and the Netherlands, entitled The Effects of Modification on Referentiality (CAPES process number 040/12). The aim of this project is to investigate the effects of modification in the licensing and blocking of nominal phrases. The project's main hypothesis is that "modification" introduces a feature of referentiality, precisely the notion the conference aimed at clarifying. The conference focused on the notion of referentiality as it is constructed by grammar cross-linguistically. Thus, all the papers in this volume discuss, from different perspectives, how referentiality and grammar are related. Several languages are discussed, but special emphasis is placed on Brazilian Portuguese. In a first approximation, referentiality indicates, via grammar, the sort of individual denoted by the nominal phrase. The ontology is then sorted into different types of individuals, identified by different structural/formal relations: object level individuals and kinds are examples. This is precisely what we find in Menuzzi, Figueiredo Silva & Doetjes' paper. In Subject Bare Singulars in Brazilian Portuguese and Information Structure, they argue that the condition of felicity for bare singular subjects in Brazilian Portuguese (BrP), as exemplified in (1), is reference to kinds: * Without the financial support from CAPES-NUFFIC (Cooperation Project "The Effects of Modification on Referentiality", process number 040/12) this issue would not have been possible.
Nondescriptive Meaning and Reference: An Ideational Semantics
Journal of Pragmatics, 2009
This book is available in Oxford Scholarship Online. This book develops what is, in one respect, a Gricean approach to language and thought, but it is Grice with the pragmatics deemphasized. Davis has written previously on implicature (Davis, 1998), but his view is unfavourable and in this volume it plays only a minor role. This volume follows on from a different volume (Davis, 2003) and Part 1 of the current work, the Expression Theory of Meaning, which consists of six chapters and stretches to over 150 pages, provides a summary of its main claims and arguments. This very detailed summary, while valuable for readers not familiar with Davis's general position, does make for a slow start. Part 1 could with equal justice be described as 'The Ideational Theory of Meaning'. For the classic expression of the ideational theory one looks in particular to Locke (1690/1959). The basic notion is that a word is meaningful as the mark of an idea in the speaker's mind that it expresses. Communication occurs when the word produces a similar idea in the hearer's mind. Davis associates himself with that broad picture. Davis's notion of an idea is different from Locke's, though. In Locke's empiricist view, ideas are derived from sensation. Davis's conception is more abstract, as we shall see. Both the ideational theory of meaning and Grice's theory of meaning can be classified as psychological theories and Grice's theory can be construed as an ideational theory (Lycan, 2000:78). Grice's theory bases sentence meaning on speaker's meaning (Grice, 1957). For a speaker to mean something by an utterance is for them to intend to produce an effect in the hearer by means of the recognition of that intention. Grice, like Locke, understands meaning as what a speaker expresses and Davis, in adopting the phrase 'expression theory of meaning', shows links with both. A major flaw with Grice's theory, as originally stated, is that it treats the meaning of utterances as unstructured wholes and thus ignores the compositional structure of the meaning of sentences, although there was a later attempt to acknowledge compositionality (Grice, 1968/1989). Davis defines ideas (or concepts) as being thoughts or cognitive parts of thoughts (p. 40). This allows him to develop an account of the compositionality of thoughts, which later (Chapter 14) is developed formally as a Tarskian theory of thoughts (Tarski, 1944). Amongst the ideas some are atomic (p. 61). This is important when we come on to consider the meaning of proper names. A lot of ground is covered in detail in Part I, but we need to move on. The main theme of this work is how the expression theory of meaning applies to names. Part II, Reference, relates the expression theory to existing approaches to reference and prepares the ground by discussing such topics as speaker's reference, the referential-attributive distinction, the opaque-transparent distinction, causal theories of reference, twin-earth cases, referential theories of meaning and more. The key notion is that a word refers to something if it expresses the idea of that thing. It is in Part III, Names, that we really get to the action. The expression theory of meaning appears diametrically opposed to a Millian view of names (Mill, 1879). Davis distinguishes between the moderate Millian, who thinks that the meaning is simply the referent, and the radical Millian who thinks that names have no meaning, but only reference. Millian views are extensively discussed in chapters 10 and 11. Various objections to Millianism are raised, notably the difficulty in handling names within belief contexts where the Millian view struggles to deal with beliefs involving empty names (Russell's problem) or names where the believer is unaware of the relevant identities (Frege's problem). Chapter 12 deals with the Fregean alternative in which names have a sense as well as a reference and where a sense is often understood as having a descriptive content (Frege, 1892/1952
Referential consistency as a a criterion of meaning
Synthese, 1982
The version made available here is supplemented with an abstract, an updated Note to the Reader (dated May, 2018), internet-searchable keywords, and references to some of the author's subsequent publications that further develop this topic.
Sense, Reference, and Connotation
Logic, Intelligence, and Artifices. Tributes to Tarcísio H. C. Pequeno. London: College Publications, 2018
My purpose in this paper is to combine a fregean account of senses with a kripkean account of reference and a descriptivist account of connotation. The main ideas derive from my book Logical Forms, where my account of senses, thoughts, and truth is developed in some detail.
Is Reference Essential to Meaning?
Metaphysics
Most linguists and philosophers will tell you that whatever meaning is, it determines the reference of names, the satisfaction conditions of nouns and verbs, the truth conditions of sentences; in linguist speak, meaning determines semantic value. So a change in semantic value implies a change in meaning. So the semantic value a meaning determines is essential to that meaning: holding contributions from context constant, if two words have different semantic values they cannot mean the same thing. If this is correct, then in a fairly straightforward sense reference is essential to meaning. In this paper I argue that reference is not essential to meaning by giving an example in which groups in different circumstances use a phrase with the same meaning but a different reference.