[PDF] Reference To Abstract Objects In Discourse eBook

Author : Nicholas Asher
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 468 pages
File Size : 47,51 MB
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9401117152

GET BOOK

Reference to Abstract Objects in Discourse presents a novel framework and analysis of the ways we refer to abstract objects in natural language discourse. The book begins with a typology of abstract objects and related entities like eventualities. After an introduction to `bottom up, compositional' discourse representation theory (DRT) and to previous work on abstract objects in DRT (notably work on the semantics of the attitudes), the book turns to a semantic analysis of eventuality and abstract object denoting nominals in English. The book then substantially revises and extends the dynamic semantic framework of DRT to develop an analysis of anaphoric reference to abstract objects and eventualities that exploits discourse structure and the discourse relations that obtain between elements of the structure. A dynamic, semantically based theory of discourse structure (SDRT) is proposed, along with many illustrative examples. Two further chapters then provide the analysis of anaphoric reference to propositions VP ellipsis. The abstract entity anaphoric antecedents are elements of the discourse structures that SDRT develops. The final chapter discusses some logical and philosophical difficulties for a semantic analysis of reference to abstract objects. For semanticists, philosophers of language, computer scientists interested in natural language applications and discourse, philosophical logicians, graduate students in linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science and artificial intelligence.

Author : Friederike Moltmann
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 255 pages
File Size : 41,59 MB
Release : 2013-03-28
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0199608741

GET BOOK

Friederike Moltmann presents an original approach to philosophical issues to do with abstract objects. She focuses on natural language, and finds that reference to abstract objects such as properties, numbers, and propositions is much more restricted than is generally thought, and she offers a substantially new ontological picture.

Author : William Lane Craig
Publisher : Springer
Page : 540 pages
File Size : 19,88 MB
Release : 2017-09-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 3319553844

GET BOOK

This book is an exploration and defense of the coherence of classical theism’s doctrine of divine aseity in the face of the challenge posed by Platonism with respect to abstract objects. A synoptic work in analytic philosophy of religion, the book engages discussions in philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and metaontology. It addresses absolute creationism, non-Platonic realism, fictionalism, neutralism, and alternative logics and semantics, among other topics. The book offers a helpful taxonomy of the wide range of options available to the classical theist for dealing with the challenge of Platonism. It probes in detail the diverse views on the reality of abstract objects and their compatibility with classical theism. It contains a most thorough discussion, rooted in careful exegesis, of the biblical and patristic basis of the doctrine of divine aseity. Finally, it challenges the influential Quinean metaontological theses concerning the way in which we make ontological commitments.

Author : Nancy Hedberg
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 23,93 MB
Release : 2007-05-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9027292434

GET BOOK

This collection of papers celebrates the work of Jeanette K. Gundel, who has contributed to the field of the grammar-pragmatics interface through her publications on the syntactic realization of topic and comment and the cognitive status of referring expressions, as well as by inspiring colleagues to make contributions to the overall field of pragmatics. This volume collects together papers from colleagues and former students on pragmatics and syntax, pragmatics and reference, and pragmatics and social variables. The volume includes papers devoted to explicating the grammar-pragmatics interface, with the focus of the papers ranging from Gricean and post-Gricean pragmatics, construction grammar, and genre theory to formal semantics, as well as papers devoted to expanding on Gundel's own original approach to factors such as the cognitive status decisions underlying speakers' choice of referring expression and the topic and focus decisions underlying speakers' choice of syntactic construction.

Author : Øystein Linnebo
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 31,17 MB
Release : 2018-05-23
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 019255896X

GET BOOK

Are there objects that are "thin" in the sense that not very much is required for their existence? Frege famously thought so. He claimed that the equinumerosity of the knives and the forks suffices for there to be objects such as the number of knives and the number of forks, and for these objects to be identical. The idea of thin objects holds great philosophical promise but has proved hard to explicate. Øystein Linnebo aims to do so by drawing on some Fregean ideas. First, to be an object is to be a possible referent of a singular term. Second, singular reference can be achieved by providing a criterion of identity for the would-be referent. The second idea enables a form of easy reference and thus, via the first idea, also a form of easy being. Paradox is avoided by imposing a predicativity restriction on the criteria of identity. But the abstraction based on a criterion of identity may result in an expanded domain. By iterating such expansions, a powerful account of dynamic abstraction is developed. The result is a distinctive approach to ontology. Abstract objects such as numbers and sets are demystified and allowed to exist alongside more familiar physical objects. And Linnebo also offers a novel approach to set theory which takes seriously the idea that sets are "formed" successively.

Author : Jeanette K. Gundel
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 30,23 MB
Release : 2008-01-29
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0190450258

GET BOOK

The ability to produce and understand referring expressions is basic to human language use and human cognition. Reference comprises the ability to think of and represent objects (both real and imagined/fictional), to indicate to others which of these objects we are talking about, and to determine what others are talking about when they use a nominal expression. The articles in this volume are concerned with some of the central themes and challenges in research on reference within the cognitive sciences - philosophy (including philosophy of language and mind, logic, and formal semantics), theoretical and computational linguistics, and cognitive psychology. The papers address four basic questions: What is reference? What is the appropriate analysis of different referring forms, such as definite descriptions? How is reference resolved? and How do speaker/writers select appropriate referring forms, such as pronouns vs. full noun phrases, demonstrative vs. personal pronouns, and overt vs. null/zero pronominal forms? Some of the papers assume and build on existing theories, such as Centering Theory and the Givenness Hierarchy framework; others propose their own models of reference understanding or production. The essays examine reference from a number of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, informed by different research traditions and employing different methodologies. While the contributors to the volume were primarily trained in one of the four represented disciplines-computer science, linguistics, philosophy and psychology, and use methodologies typical of that discipline, each of them bridges more than one discipline in their methodology and/or their approach.

Author : Nicholas Asher
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 556 pages
File Size : 45,9 MB
Release : 2003-06-19
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9780521650588

GET BOOK

Table of contents

Author : Zsolt Novák
Publisher : Central European University Press
Page : 315 pages
File Size : 41,28 MB
Release : 2011-09-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9639776920

GET BOOK

The volume presents the material of the first Oxford-Budapest Conference on Truth, Reference and Realism held at CEU in 2005. The problem addressed by the conference, famously formulated by Paul Benacerraf in a paper on Mathematical Truth, was how to understand truth in the semantics of discourses about abstract domains whose objects and properties cannot be observed by sense perception. The papers of the volume focus on this semantic issue in four major fields: logic, mathematics, ethics and the metaphysics of properties in general. Beyond marking an important event, the collected papers are also substantial contributions to the above topic, from the most distinguished authors in these areas.

Author : Keith Allan
Publisher : Elsevier
Page : 1103 pages
File Size : 15,99 MB
Release : 2010-04-06
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0080959695

GET BOOK

Concise Encyclopedia of Semantics is a comprehensive new reference work aiming to systematically describe all aspects of the study of meaning in language. It synthesizes in one volume the latest scholarly positions on the construction, interpretation, clarification, obscurity, illustration, amplification, simplification, negotiation, contradiction, contraction and paraphrasing of meaning, and the various concepts, analyses, methodologies and technologies that underpin their study. It examines not only semantics but the impact of semantic study on related fields such as morphology, syntax, and typologically oriented studies such as ‘grammatical semantics’, where semantics has made a considerable contribution to our understanding of verbal categories like tense or aspect, nominal categories like case or possession, clausal categories like causatives, comparatives, or conditionals, and discourse phenomena like reference and anaphora. COSE also examines lexical semantics and its relation to syntax, pragmatics, and cognitive linguistics; and the study of how ‘logical semantics’ develops and thrives, often in interaction with computational linguistics. As a derivative volume from Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Second Edition, it comprises contributions from 150 of the foremost scholars of semantics in their various specializations and draws on 20+ years of development in the parent work in a compact and affordable format. Principally intended for tertiary level inquiry and research, this will be invaluable as a reference work for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as academics inquiring into the study of meaning and meaning relations within languages. As semantics is a centrally important and inherently cross-cutting area within linguistics it will therefore be relevant not just for semantics specialists, but for most linguistic audiences. The first encyclopedia ever published in this fascinating and diverse field Combines the talents of the world’s leading semantics specialists The latest trends in the field authoritatively reviewed and interpreted in context of related disciplines Drawn from the richest, most authoritative, comprehensive and internationally acclaimed reference resource in the linguistics area Compact and affordable single volume reference format

Author : Alexis Burgess
Publisher :
Page : 378 pages
File Size : 26,36 MB
Release : 2014
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0199669597

GET BOOK

Metasemantics comprises new work on the philosophical foundations of linguistic semantics, by a diverse group of established and emerging experts in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and the theory of content. The science of semantics aspires to systematically specify the meanings of linguistic expressions in context. The paradigmatic metasemantic question is accordingly: what more basic or fundamental features of the world metaphysically determine these semantic facts? Efforts to answer this question inevitably raise others. Where are the boundaries of semantics? What is the essence of the meaning relation? Which framework should we use for semantic theorizing? What are the intrinsic natures of semantic values? Are the semantic facts metaphysically determinate? What is semantic competence? Metasemantic inquiry has long been recognized as a central part of the philosophy of language, but recent developments in metaphysics and semantics itself now allow us to approach these classic questions with an unprecedented degree of precision. The essays collected here provide promising new perspectives on old problems, pose questions that suggest novel research projects, and taken together, greatly sharpen our understanding of linguistic representation.