Predication and cognitive context: Between minimalism and contextualism

FREGE AND THE JUSTIFICATION OF LOGICAL LAWS In recent work on Frege, one of the most salient issues has been whether he was prepared to make serious use of semantic notions such as reference and truth. Those not familiar with this debate are often surprised to hear of it. Surely, they say, Frege's post-1891 writings are replete with uses of 'true' and 'refers'. But no one wants to deny that Frege makes use of such terms: Rather, what is at issue is how Frege understood them; more precisely, what is at issue is whether Frege employed them for anything like the purposes for which philosophers now employ them. What these purposes are, or should be, is itself a matter of philosophical dispute, and, although I shall discuss some aspects of this issue, my goal here is not to address it directly. My purpose here, rather - one of them, anyway - is to argue that Frege did make very serious use of semantic concepts: In particular, he offered informal mathematical arguments, making use of semantic notions, for semantic claims. For example, he argues that all of the axioms of the Begriffsschrift - the formal system in which he proves the basic laws of arithmetic - are true, that its rules of inference are truth-preserving, and that every well-formed expression in Begriffsschrift has been assigned a reference by the stipulations he makes about the references of its primitive expressions. Let me say at the outset that Frege was not Tarski and did not produce, as Tarski did, a formal semantic theory, a mathematical definition of truth. But that is not of any significance here. One does not have to provide a formal semantic theory to make serious use of semantic notions. At most, the question is whether Frege would have been prepared to offer such a theory, or whether he would have accepted the sort of theory Tarski provided (or some alternative), had he known of it. On the other hand, the issue is not whether Frege would have accepted Tarski’s theory of truth, or Godel ’ s proof that first-order logic is complete, as a piece of mathematics; it is whether he would have taken these results to have the kind of significance we (or at least some of us) would ascribe to them. Tarski’s argument in ‘The concept of truth in formalized languages’ shows that all axioms of the calculus of classes are true; the completeness theorem shows that every valid first-order schema is provable in certain formal systems.

Metaphor and formal semantic theory

Unlocking the complexity of phrasal composition: An interplay between semantic features and linguistic relations

The main argument of this paper is that language, like cognition, is basically intensional, i.e. expression of thoughts. The philosophical and logical consequences of this view are discussed and partly elaborated. The paper implies a fundamental critique of the study of language during the 20th century, which failed to recognize the essential cognitive (intensional) nature of language. A plea is made for a re-appraisal of late 19th century approaches in philosophy (e.g. Meinong, Stout), which are said to have been on the right track though lacking in formal precision. The 20th century extensional view of logic and language, which goes back to the early 1900s, is subjected to a fundamental critique. The intensional nature of language is shown to have far-reaching consequences for the theory of grammar and meaning. The formal grammatical and semantic theories developed during the 20th century from an extensional point of view are best seen as a prelude to more adequate intensional formal theories.

The pioneering work of Davidson (1967) gave rise to a productive and exciting tradition within formal semantics and especially at the interface between syntax and semantics, whereby event variables were exploited as elements of the referential ontology in the expression of the semantics of natural language. The existence of such logical elements (events, or eventuality variables) cannot seriously now be doubted, in my opinion, although many aspects of the formal theory of syntax and semantics have changed in the nearly forty years since Davidson’s seminal article. The time has definitely come for a more critical and nuanced understanding of the use of eventuality variables, in the light of recent research in the field. Maienborn (this volume) is an important example of this kind of work. She takes a new look at the idea of eventuality variables and argues that the case has been overstated, that there are both empirical and conceptual reasons for denying the existence of events in the Davidsonian sense for a certain class of statives and copular predications. I wish to show in this article that Maienborn both goes too far and not far enough in deconstructing the traditional Davidsonian assumptions. Instead, I propose a Davidson-inspired method of representation which fits better with current syntactic understanding, but which is liberated from some of the assumptions and methodologies of earlier work – I call this ‘Post-Davidsonianism’. I will argue that once one makes the adjustments in the Davidsonian tradition to make the idea coherent, Maienborn’s arguments for introducing a new ontological type (‘Kimian states’) into the system disappear.

Grounding information in thermodynamics and the ungroundedness of language: A missing aspect of anthropogenesis.

Pietroski successfully dismantles the idea of a formal semantic theory based on direct truth conditions and offers new and formally constrained alternatives. In this paper, I summarize the arguments but also provide a number of test cases to show that refusing to accept Pietroski's conclusions condemns the field to constantly restating and technically evading its own self‐created paradoxes. In the final section, I offer some positive proposals in the spirit of the Pietroskian enterprise with respect to thematic roles.

This article addresses the following problem: which is the format and scope of a formal semantic theory adequate to the description and explanation of semantic phenomena present in natural languages​​? The first section exposes the main principles for a semantics of natural languages, given the criticisms of Contextualism. The second section presents the main features of the research program proposed by P.M. Pietroski. Finally, it is presented a brief evaluation of this program in the light of the criteria presented in the previous sections. I argue that this program has considerable methodological virtues, because it adopts as explanandum substantial empirical generalizations, syntactic phenomena which must be explained. It is therefore a proposal that does not merely describe the intuitions of speakers and encode them in logical-mathematical notation.

In this paper we explore how compositional semantics, discourse structure, and the cognitive states of participants all contribute to pragmatic constraints on answers to questions in dialogue. We synthesise formal semantic theories on questions and answers with techniques for discourse interpretation familiar from computational linguistics, and show how this provides richer constraints on responses in dialogue than either component can achieve alone.

Counterfactual attitudes like imagining, dreaming, and wishing create a problem for the standard formal semantic theory of de re attitude ascriptions. I show how the problem can be avoided if we represent an agent's attitudinal possibilities using multi-centered worlds, possible worlds with multiple distinguished individuals, each of which represents an individual with whom the agent is acquainted. I then present a compositional semantics for de re ascriptions according to which singular terms are assignment-sensitive expressions and attitude verbs are assignment shifters. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.5.5 BibTeX info

This guide accompanies the following article: Lynsey Wolter. ‘Demonstratives in Philosophy and Linguistics’, Philosophy Compass 4 (2009): 451–68, doi: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2009.00205.x Author’s Introduction Demonstrative noun phrases (e.g. this; that guy over there ) are intimately connected to the context of use in that their reference is determined by demonstrations and/or the speaker’s intentions. The semantics of demonstratives therefore has important implications not only for theories of reference, but for questions about how information from the context interacts with formal semantics. First treated by Kaplan as directly referential , demonstratives have recently been analyzed as quantifiers by King, and the choice between these two approaches is a matter of ongoing controversy. Meanwhile, linguists and psychologists working from a variety of perspectives have gathered a wealth of data on the form, meaning, and use of demonstratives in many languages. Demonstratives thus provide a fruitful topic for graduate study for two reasons. On the one hand, they serve as an entry point to foundational issues in reference and the semantics–pragmatics interface. On the other hand, they are an especially promising starting point for interdisciplinary research, which brings the results of linguistics and related fields to bear on the philosophy of language. Author Recommends Kaplan, David. ‘Demonstratives.’ 1977. Themes from Kaplan . Ed. J. Almong, J. Perry, and H. Wettstein. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989. 481–563. The seminal work on the semantics of demonstratives and indexicals, such as I, here , and now . Kaplan introduces a distinction between content (which maps from possible circumstances to extensions) and character (which maps from possible contexts to contents). He argues that demonstratives and indexicals are directly referential : given a possible context, their character fixes their extension. Kaplan, David. ‘Afterthoughts.’ Themes from Kaplan . Ed. J. Almong, J. Perry, and H. Wettstein. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989. 565–614. An elaboration on the theory developed in ‘Demonstratives.’ Kaplan considers the connection between direct reference and rigid designation; raises the issue of whether demonstratives depend on demonstrations or speaker intentions; and discusses implications of the analysis for formal semantics and for epistemology. King, Jeffrey C. Complex Demonstratives . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. In perhaps the most influential challenge to date to the direct reference theory of demonstratives, King argues that complex demonstratives (i.e. demonstrative determiners with nominal complements) are best analyzed as quantifiers. Braun, David. ‘Complex Demonstratives and Their Singular Contents.’ Linguistics and Philosophy 31 (2008): 57–99. This recent Kaplanian analysis of complex demonstratives shows the ‘state of the art’ of direct reference approaches and responds to some of the objections to such approaches raised by King. Elbourne, Paul. ‘Demonstratives as Individual Concepts.’ Linguistics and Philosophy 31 (2008): 409–466. The most recent analysis of demonstratives as individual concepts, contrasting with both the direct reference and quantificational approaches. Fillmore, Charles. Lectures on Deixis . Stanford, CA: CSLI, 1997. In this collection of lectures, originally delivered in 1971, Fillmore considers demonstratives and indexical expressions in many languages to describe the types of information about the context (e.g. locations in space, time, and discourse) that are encoded in natural language. Gundel, Jeanette K., Nancy Hedberg, and Ron Zacharski. ‘Cognitive Status and the Form of Referring Expressions in Discourse.’ Language 69 (1993): 274–307. Perhaps the most detailed pragmatic alternative to formal semantic theories of demonstratives and other referring expressions. The authors argue that demonstratives are best described as imposing a condition of use in which the referent of the demonstrative has a certain level of salience for the interlocutors. Online Materials http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/indexicals/ Indexicals (David Braun) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reference/ Reference (Marga Reimer) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rigid‐designators/ Rigid designators (Joseph LaPorte) http://philpapers.org/browse/indexicals‐and‐demonstratives/ Online bibliography of papers on indexicals and demonstratives Sample Syllabus The following syllabus can be used in entirety for a survey course on demonstratives; in addition, each of the three units is self‐contained and can be used alone. Unit 1: Demonstratives and Indexicality Week 1: Indexicals 1. Kaplan, Demonstratives 2. Kaplan, Afterthoughts Week 2: Issues for Indexical Reference 1. Reimer, Marga. ‘Do Demonstrations Have Semantic Significance?’ Analysis 51 (1991): 177–83. 2. Bach, Kent. ‘Intentions and Demonstrations.’ Analysis 52 (1992): 140–46. 3. Nunberg, Geoffrey. ‘Indexicality and Deixis.’ Linguistics and Philosophy 16.1 (1993): 1–43. Week 3: Optional detour: Monsters 1. Schlenker, Philippe. ‘A Plea for Monsters.’ Linguistics and Philosophy 26 (2003): 29‐120. Week 4: Demonstratives as Quantifiers

Understanding language requires the ability to compose the meanings of words into phrase and sentence meanings. Formal theories in semantics have framed the hypothesis that all instances of meaning composition, irrespective of the syntactic and semantic properties of the expressions involved, boil down to a unique formal operation, that is, the application of a function to an argument, a view known as "Frege's Conjecture." We test the processing consequences of this idea using event-related potentials (ERPs) and a novel experimental paradigm where composition versus noncomposition of words from the same grammatical category (nouns) are compared in two different syntactic environments: predication and modification. We found that noun composition in a modification context, where the noun follows an adjective, elicits a reduced N400 component, whereas noun composition in a predication context, where the noun follows a verb, produces an enhanced LAN component. These data challenge the uniqueness thesis, central to formal semantics, and support instead linguistic theories and processing models that posit different composition operations for predicates and modifiers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

If you check the weather prediction on your phone, you might read that there is a 30 percent chance of rain at 4:00 in the afternoon. What does this mean? More precisely, what is the fraction 30/100 a measure of? Probability is a concept that is widespread both in everyday life and in science. Ordinary speakers of English utter and have some understanding of sentences such as “I will probably be late for the meeting,” or “it’s unlikely that Luxembourg will win the next World Cup.” Various sciences make explicit probabilistic claims: “the probability that a radium atom will decay in 1620 years is 0.5”; “the probability that a house mouse whose father is heterozygous for the t haplotype will inherit that trait is 0.9.” Other claims implicitly invoke probability: “the life expectancy of a child born in Japan today is 85.3 years.” Probability theory is also a major branch of mathematics, and it was given its modern formulation by Kolmogorov in 1933. Kolmogorov’s formalism presents a function P that satisfies a set of axioms: it is non-negative, normalized, and additive. These axioms entail a rich set of theorems concerning the behavior of P; together they make up the probability calculus. While the resulting theory is a formal theory in its own right, it is also natural to interpret P—to attach meanings, or truth conditions to claims involving it. “What is P?”, one may ask. This may be understood as a metaphysical question about what kinds of things are probabilities, or more generally as a question about what makes probability statements true or false. The various interpretations of probability attempt to answer this question, one way or another. This article surveys the literature on the interpretations of probability, due to mathematicians and especially philosophers. It divides the interpretations into two broad categories. Epistemological interpretations understand probability in terms of an agent’s beliefs, the strength of evidence in support of a statement, or other epistemological categories. Physical interpretations view probability as a feature of the world that would exist regardless of what evidence exists or what agents believe. This is a natural taxonomy, but others could be adopted, and its sub-categories are also somewhat pliable. The authors would like to thank Kim Border, Chris Bottomley, Kenny Easwaran, Hanti Lin, Michael Nielsen, Charles Sebens, Glenn Shafer, Julia Staffel, Jeremy Strasser, Michael Titelbaum, and an anonymous referee for many helpful suggestions.

Syntactic theories relate sentence structure to the details of morphemes, inflections, and word order. Semantic theories relate sentences to the details of formal logic and model theory. But many of the most successful programs for information extraction (IE) are based on domain-dependent templates that ignore the details at the center of attention of the major theories of syntax and semantics. This paper shows that it is possible to find a more primitive set of operations, called the canonical formation rules, which underlie both the template-filling operations of IE and the more formal operations of parsers and theorem provers. These rules are first stated in terms of conceptual graphs and then generalized to any knowledge representation, including predicate calculus, frames, and the IE templates. As a result, the template-filling operations of IE become part of a more general set of operations that can be used in various combinations to process knowledge of any kind,KeywordsKnowledge RepresentationParse TreeDouble NegationCharacter StringGeneralization RuleThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

There are two main types of B-sentences, date-sentences and token-reflexive sentences. An example of the former is “John (is) born earlier than May 1, 1960,” and of the latter, “John (is) born earlier than this utterance.” The distinction between these two types provides a means for classifying most of the proponents of the old or new versions of the semantic tenseless theory of time. Some of these proponents hold the date-theory of A-sentences, that tokens of A-sentences are translated (in some sense) by tenseless date-sentences, or at least have truth conditions that are completely statable by these date-sentences. Other proponents hold the tokenreflexive theory of A-sentences, that these sentences are translated (in some sense) by token-reflexive tenseless sentences, or at least have truth conditions that are completely statable by these token-reflexive sentences. In this chapter, I shall argue against the date-theory of A-sentences, in chapter 3, against the token-reflexive theory; in chapter 4, I shall argue against the other less frequently espoused versions of the semantic tenseless theory and develop a positive theory of A-sentences that conforms to the tensed theory of time.