The Story So Far 7/18/17 Acount of Meaning in Natural Language - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Oct 12, 2023 281 likes •438 views

The Story So Far 7/18/17 Acount of Meaning in Natural Language Conventional, construed as knowledge of language Always connected to understanding in context Compositionality Truth-condition (inference, contradiction)

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The Story So Far

7/18/17

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Acount of   Meaning in Natural Language

Conventional, construed as knowledge of language
Always connected to understanding in context
Compositionality
Truth-condition (inference, contradiction)
Represents Ambiguity
Vs. Vagueness, indexicality
Driven to resolve in context

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Methodological  Use of Logic

Formal language: well-defined, interpreted
Model-theoretic (aboutness)
Truth-conditional (connection to intuitions)
A foil to NL
Non-immaculate translation
Syntax-semantics interface as translation
Direct interpretation (NL as a FL)

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Doing Semantics

Building and interpreting alternative formal languages
Understanding frameworks relating NL structures to logic
Understanding frameworks relating NL intuitions to logic
Evalute what the fit-gap tells us about NL
In particular constructions
In particular languages
In NL more generally

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This Week  From Predicates to Arguments

Predicates as unsaturated propositions
“Logical form” of eventuality descriptions
Relating argument phrases to entities
Names
Definite descriptions
Indefinite descriptions
Quantification

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How far can we get with the idea that arguments are names that refer to entities?

Presumed to refer
Community-based familiarity
Uniqueness in context of use
Consider: John, Fido, Trump, the president
Consider: my dog, my father, my son, my friend

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Is it entities that saturate the predicates?

Substitutivity  salva veritate

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Some Classic Puzzles

The morning star and the evening star
The king of France
Smith’s murderer, and the man with the martini

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Responses

Frege’s sense and reference (Sinn und Bedeutung)
Presupposition, truth-value gaps, and the constancy test
Semantic reference (denotation) vs. speaker’s meaning

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Indefinite Descriptions

A student is ill.
A student is not ill.
Is a student ill?
Every student answered a question.

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Two Basic Logical Quantifiers

Expanding L1

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