Philosophy Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2799
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Item Semantics and pragmatics in a modular mind(2021) McCourt, Michael Sullivan; Williams, Alexander; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation asks how we should understand the distinction between semantic and pragmatic aspects of linguistic understanding within the framework of mentalism, on which the study of language is a branch of psychology. In particular, I assess a proposal on which the distinction between semantics and pragmatics is ultimately grounded in the modularity or encapsulation of semantic processes. While pragmatic processes involved in understanding the communicative intentions of a speaker are non-modular and highly inferential, semantic processes involved in understanding the meaning of an expression are modular and encapsulated from top-down influences of general cognition. The encapsulation hypothesis for semantics is attractive, since it would allow the semantics-pragmatics distinction to cut a natural joint in the communicating mind. However, as I argue, the case in favor of the modularity hypothesis for semantics is not particularly strong. Many of the arguments offered in its support are unsuccessful. I therefore carefully assess the relevant experimental record, in rapport with parallel debates about modular processing in other domains, such as vision. I point to several observations that raise a challenge for the encapsulation hypothesis for semantics; and I recommend consideration of alternative notions of modularity. However, I also demonstrate some principled strategies that proponents of the encapsulation hypothesis might deploy in order to meet the empirical challenge that I raise. I conclude that the available data neither falsify nor support the modularity hypothesis for semantics, and accordingly I develop several strategies that might be pursued in future work. It has also been argued that the encapsulation of semantic processing would entail (or otherwise strongly recommend) a particular approach to word meaning. However, in rapport with the literature on polysemy—a phenomenon whereby a single word can be used to express several related concepts, but not due to generality—I show that such arguments are largely unsuccessful. Again, I develop strategies that might be used, going forward, to adjudicate among the options regarding word meaning within a mentalistic linguistics.Item THE SEMANTICS OF PROPER NAMES AND OTHER BARE NOMINALS(2012) Izumi, Yu; Pietroski, Paul M; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research proposes a unified approach to the semantics of the so-called bare nominals, which include proper names (e.g., `Mary'), mass and plural terms (e.g., `water', `cats'), and articleless noun phrases in Japanese. I argue that bare nominals themselves are monadic predicates applicable to more than one particular, but they can constitute complex referential phrases when located within an appropriate linguistic environment. Bare nominals used as the subjects or objects of sentences are some or other variant of definite descriptions, which are analyzed as non-quantificational, referential expressions. The overarching thesis is that the semantic properties of bare nominal expressions such as rigidity are not inherent in the words themselves, but derived from the basic features of complex nominal phrases.Item On Utterance Interpretation and Metalinguistic-Semantic Competence(2012) Erickson, Kent Wayne; Pietroski, Paul M; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study explores the role of what I call metalinguistic-semantic competence (MSC) in the processes of utterance interpretation, and in some cases expression interpretation. MSC is so-called because it is grounded in a speaker's explicit knowledge of (or beliefs about) the lexically-encoded meanings of individual words. More specifically, MSC derives, in part, from having concepts of words--or conceptsW as I distinguish them--whose representational contents, I propose, are corresponding items in a speaker's mental lexicon. The leading idea is that once acquired speakers use their conceptsW to form explicit beliefs about the meanings of words in terms of which extralinguistic concepts those words can (and cannot) coherently be used to express in ordinary conversational situations as constrained by their linguistically-encoded meanings. Or to put the claim differently, I argue that a speaker's explicit conception of word-meanings is a direct conscious reflection of his/her tacit understanding of the various ways in which lexical meanings guide and constrain without fully determining what their host words can (and cannot) be used/uttered to talk about in ordinary discourse. Such metalinguistic knowledge, I contend, quite often plays crucial role in our ability to correctly interpret what other speakers say. The first part of this work details the cognitive mechanisms underlying MSC against the backdrop of a Chomskyan framework for natural language and a Fodorian theory of concepts and their representational contents. The second part explores three ways that MSC might contribute to what I call a speaker's core linguisticsemantic competence. Specifically, I argue that MSC can help explain (i) how competent speakers acquire conceptually underspecified words with their lexical meanings, (ii) the contextual disambiguation of inherently polysemous words, and (iii) the informativeness of true natural language identity statements involving coreferential proper names. The philosophically relevant conclusion is that if any of these proposals pan out then MSC constitutes a proper explanandum of semantic theory, and hence any complete/adequate theory of semantic competence.Item It's Just Semantics: What Fiction Reveals About Proper Names(2008-04-18) Tiedke, Heidi; Pietroski, Paul M; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Sentences like the following entail puzzles for standard systematic theories about language: (1) Bertrand Russell smoked a pipe. (2) Sherlock Holmes smoked a pipe. Prima facie, these sentences have the same semantic structure and contain expressions of the same semantic type; the only difference between them is that they contain different proper names. Intuitively, (1) and (2) are true, but they are made true and false, respectively, in different ways. Presumably (1) is true because the individual, Bertrand Russell, has or had the property of being a pipe smoker. In contrast, (2) is true for a reason something like this: the sentence 'Holmes smokes a pipe' or an equivalent thereof, or a sentence entailing this sentence, was inscribed in the Holmes novels by Arthur Conan Doyle (2002). I show that the existence of fictional names, and the truths uttered using them, are not adequately explained by any extant account of fictional discourse. A proper explanation involves giving a semantics for names that can account for both referential and fictional uses of proper names. To this end, I argue that names should not be understood as expressions that immediately refer to objects. Rather, names should be understood as expressions that encode information about a speaker's act of introducing novel uses for them. Names are not linked to objects, but to what I call "contexts of introduction". I explain how this allows room for an explanation of fictional names, and how it also accommodates Kripkean uses of proper names.