Content and Modality

Content and Modality PDF Author: Judith Thomson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199282803
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Eleven distinguished philosophers have contributed specially written essays on a set of topics much debated in recent years, including physicalism, qualia, semantic competence, conditionals, presuppositions, two-dimensional semantics, and the relation between logic and metaphysics. All these topics are prominent in the work of Robert Stalnaker, a major presence in contemporary philosophy, in honour of whom the volume is published. It also contains a substantial new essay in whichStalnaker replies to his critics, and sets out his current views on the topics discussed.Contributors: Richard Heck, Frank Jackson, William Lycan, Vann McGee, John Perry, Paul Pietroski, Sydney Shoemaker, Scott Soames, Daniel Stoljar, Timothy Williamson, and Stephen Yablo.

Content and Modality

Content and Modality PDF Author: Judith Thomson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199282803
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Eleven distinguished philosophers have contributed specially written essays on a set of topics much debated in recent years, including physicalism, qualia, semantic competence, conditionals, presuppositions, two-dimensional semantics, and the relation between logic and metaphysics. All these topics are prominent in the work of Robert Stalnaker, a major presence in contemporary philosophy, in honour of whom the volume is published. It also contains a substantial new essay in whichStalnaker replies to his critics, and sets out his current views on the topics discussed.Contributors: Richard Heck, Frank Jackson, William Lycan, Vann McGee, John Perry, Paul Pietroski, Sydney Shoemaker, Scott Soames, Daniel Stoljar, Timothy Williamson, and Stephen Yablo.

Modality-aspect Interfaces

Modality-aspect Interfaces PDF Author: Werner Abraham
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027229929
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
The main topics pursued in this volume are based on empirical insights derived from Germanic: logical and typological dispositions about aspect-modality links. These are probed in a variety of non-related languages. The logically establishable links are the following: Modal verbs are aspect sensitive in the selection of their infinitival complements – embedded infinitival perfectivity implies root modal reading, whereas embedded infinitival imperfectivity triggers epistemic readings. However, in marked contexts such as negated ones, the aspectual affinities of modal verbs are neutralized or even subject to markedness inversion. All of this suggests that languages that do not, or only partially, bestow upon full modal verb paradigms seek to express modal variations in terms of their aspect oppositions. This typological tenet is investigated in a variety of languages from Indo-European (German, Slavic, Armenian), African, Asian, Amerindian, and Creoles. Seeming deviations and idiosyncrasies in the interaction between aspect and modality turn out to be highly rule-based.

Modality and Subordinators

Modality and Subordinators PDF Author: Jackie Nordström
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027288607
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
This book connects two linguistic phenomena, modality and subordinators, so that both are seen in a new light, each adding to the understanding of the other. It argues that general subordinators (or complementizers) denote propositional modality (otherwise expressed by moods such as the indicative-subjunctive and epistemic-evidential modal markers). The book explores the hypothesis both on a cross-linguistic and on a language-branch specific level (the Germanic languages). One obvious connection between the indicative-subjunctive distinction and subordinators is that the former is typically manifested in subordinate clauses. Furthermore, both the indicative-subjunctive and subordinators determine clause types. More importantly, however, it is shown, through data from various languages, that subordinators themselves often denote the indicative-subjunctive distinction. In the Germanic languages, there is variation in many clause types between both the indicative and the subjunctive and that and if depending on the speaker’s and/or the subject’s certainty of the truth of the proposition.

Multimedia Learning

Multimedia Learning PDF Author: Richard E. Mayer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521514126
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
An evidence based, rigorous text reviewing 12 principles of experimental studies grounded in cognitive theory of multi-media learning.

Epistemic Modality, Language, and Conceptualization

Epistemic Modality, Language, and Conceptualization PDF Author: Jan Nuyts
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027223579
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
The relationship between language and conceptualization remains one of the major puzzles in language research. This monograph addresses this issue by means of an in depth corpus based and experimental investigation of the major types of expressions of epistemic modality in Dutch, German and English. By adopting a systematic functional orientation, the book explains a whole range of peculiarities of epistemic expression forms (synchronically and diachronically), and it offers a clear perspective on which cognitive systems are needed to get from the concept of epistemic modality to its linguistic expression. On that basis the author postulates a sophisticated, layered view of human conceptualization. This book is of interest both to scholars working on modality and related semantic dimensions, and to the interdisciplinary field of researchers concerned with the cognitive systems involved in language use.

What Tends to Be

What Tends to Be PDF Author: Rani Lill Anjum
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351009788
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
People tend to enjoy listening to music or watching television, sleeping at night and celebrating birthdays. Plants tend to grow and thrive in sunlight and mild temperatures. We also know that tendencies are not perfectly regular and that there are patterns in the natural world, which are reliable to a degree, but not absolute. What should we make of a world where things tend to be one way but could be another? Is there a position between necessity and possibility? If there is, what are the implications for science, knowledge and ethics? This book explores these questions and is the first full-length treatment of the philosophy of tendencies. Anjum and Mumford argue that although the philosophical language of tendencies has been around since Aristotle, there has not been any serious commitment to the irreducible modality that they involve. They also argue that the acceptance of an irreducible and sui generis tendential modality ought to be the fundamental commitment of any genuine realism about dispositions or powers. It is the dispositional modality that makes dispositions authentically disposition-like. Armed with this theory the authors apply it to a variety of key philosophical topics such as chance, causation, epistemology and free will.

Modality and Meaning

Modality and Meaning PDF Author: W.G. Lycan
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792330066
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Part I of this book presents a theory of modal metaphysics in the possible-worlds tradition. `Worlds' themselves are understood as structured sets of properties; this `Ersatzist' view is defended against its most vigorous competitors, Meinongianism and David Lewis' theory of existent concrete worlds. Related issues of essentialism and linguistic reference are explored. Part II takes up the question of lexical meaning in the context of possible-world semantics. There are skeptical analyses of analyticity and the notion of a logical constant; and an `infinite polysemy' thesis is defended. The book will be of particular interest to metaphysicians, possible-world semanticists, philosophers of language, and linguists concerned with lexical semantics.

The Oxford Handbook of Modality and Mood

The Oxford Handbook of Modality and Mood PDF Author: Jan Nuyts
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191646342
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 762

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Book Description
This handbook offers an in depth and comprehensive state of the art survey of the linguistic domains of modality and mood. An international team of experts in the field examines the full range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the many facets of the phenomena involved. Parts 1 and 2 of the volume present the basic linguistic facts about the systems of modality and mood in the languages of the world, covering the semantics and the expression of different subtypes of modality and mood respectively. The authors also examine the interaction of modality and mood, mutually and with other semantic categories such as aspect, time, negation, and evidentiality. In Part 3, authors discuss the features of the modality and mood systems in five typologically different language groups, while chapters in Part 4 deal with wider perspectives on modality and mood: diachrony, areality, first language acquisition, and sign language. Finally, Part 5 looks at how modality and mood are handled in different theoretical approaches: formal syntax, functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics and construction grammar, and formal semantics.

Mood and Modality

Mood and Modality PDF Author: Frank Robert Palmer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521804790
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Palmer investigates the category of modality, drawing on a wealth of examples from a wide variety of languages.

The Semantics of Aspect and Modality

The Semantics of Aspect and Modality PDF Author: Galia Hatav
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027281963
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
“The semantics of aspect and modality” will be of interest both to linguists working on temporality, as a general phenomenon in language, and Hebraists investigating the semantics of the verbal forms in biblical Hebrew. Tense, aspect and modality are among the most challenging discussed areas of language. Similarly, the semantics of the verbal system in biblical Hebrew has been investigated since the Middle Ages. Galia Hatav provides extensive critical overviews of research in both areas, and suggests a new approach for analyzing the biblical Hebrew verb system, showing it to be tenseless. The overall approach adopted in the book is basically of truth conditional semantics, and adheres closely to Kamp’s DRT (Discourse Representation Theory). For each phenomenon covered, the relevant literature is surveyed and critically discussed, with reference to English, and when relevant to other languages, too. The conclusions arrived at are then applied to biblical Hebrew. However, despite the sophisticated semantic theory the book is also meticulous in its attention to philological details of the Hebrew text, lending to a particulary harmonious combination of formal and discourse approach. The biblical Hebrew part of the book will be of interest mainly to Hebraists, but linguists dealing with temporality in general may find it useful as an interesting illustration for a tenseless exotic language.