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Author: Francis Jeffrey Pelletier
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402041101
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
I. MASS TERMS, COUNT TERMS, AND SORTAL TERMS Central examples of mass terms are easy to come by. 'Water', 'smoke', 'gold', etc. , differ in their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties from count terms such as 'man', 'star', 'wastebasket', etc. Syntactically, it seems, mass terms do, but singular count terms do not, admit the quantifier phrases 'much', 'an amount of', 'a little', etc. The typical indefinite article for them is 'some' (unstressed)!, and this article cannot be used with singular count terms. Count terms, but not mass terms, use the quantifiers 'each', 'every', 'some', 'few', 'many'; and they use 'a(n)' as the indefinite article. They can, unlike the mass terms, take numerals as prefixes. Mass terms seem not to have a plural. Semantically, philo sophers have characterized count terms as denoting (classes of?) indi vidual objects, whereas what mass terms denote are cumulative and dissective. (That is, a mass term is supposed to be true of any sum of things (stuff) it is true of, and true of any part of anything of which it is true). Pragmatically, it seems that speakers use count terms when they wish to refer to individual objects, or when they wish to reidentify a particular already introduced into discoursc. Given a "space appropriate" to a count term C, it makes sense to ask how many C's there are in that space.
Author: Francis Jeffrey Pelletier
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402041101
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
I. MASS TERMS, COUNT TERMS, AND SORTAL TERMS Central examples of mass terms are easy to come by. 'Water', 'smoke', 'gold', etc. , differ in their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties from count terms such as 'man', 'star', 'wastebasket', etc. Syntactically, it seems, mass terms do, but singular count terms do not, admit the quantifier phrases 'much', 'an amount of', 'a little', etc. The typical indefinite article for them is 'some' (unstressed)!, and this article cannot be used with singular count terms. Count terms, but not mass terms, use the quantifiers 'each', 'every', 'some', 'few', 'many'; and they use 'a(n)' as the indefinite article. They can, unlike the mass terms, take numerals as prefixes. Mass terms seem not to have a plural. Semantically, philo sophers have characterized count terms as denoting (classes of?) indi vidual objects, whereas what mass terms denote are cumulative and dissective. (That is, a mass term is supposed to be true of any sum of things (stuff) it is true of, and true of any part of anything of which it is true). Pragmatically, it seems that speakers use count terms when they wish to refer to individual objects, or when they wish to reidentify a particular already introduced into discoursc. Given a "space appropriate" to a count term C, it makes sense to ask how many C's there are in that space.
Author: Francis Jeffrey Pelletier
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9789027709318
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 326
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Book Description
I. MASS TERMS, COUNT TERMS, AND SORTAL TERMS Central examples of mass terms are easy to come by. 'Water', 'smoke', 'gold', etc. , differ in their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties from count terms such as 'man', 'star', 'wastebasket', etc. Syntactically, it seems, mass terms do, but singular count terms do not, admit the quantifier phrases 'much', 'an amount of', 'a little', etc. The typical indefinite article for them is 'some' (unstressed)!, and this article cannot be used with singular count terms. Count terms, but not mass terms, use the quantifiers 'each', 'every', 'some', 'few', 'many'; and they use 'a(n)' as the indefinite article. They can, unlike the mass terms, take numerals as prefixes. Mass terms seem not to have a plural. Semantically, philo sophers have characterized count terms as denoting (classes of?) indi vidual objects, whereas what mass terms denote are cumulative and dissective. (That is, a mass term is supposed to be true of any sum of things (stuff) it is true of, and true of any part of anything of which it is true). Pragmatically, it seems that speakers use count terms when they wish to refer to individual objects, or when they wish to reidentify a particular already introduced into discoursc. Given a "space appropriate" to a count term C, it makes sense to ask how many C's there are in that space.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900445781X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 544
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Book Description
The volume deals with ontological and semantical issues concerning things, facts and events. Ontology tells us about what there is, whereas semantics provides answers to how we refer to what there is. Basic ontological categories are commonly accepted along with basic linguistic types, and linguistic types are accepted as basic if and because they refer to acknowledged ontological categories. In that sense, both disciplines are concerned with structure - the structure of the world and the structure of our language. An extended introduction overviews the topic as a whole, presenting in detail its history and the main contemporary approaches and discussions. More than 20 contributions by internationally acknowledged scholars make the volume a comprehensive study of some very fundamental philosophical entities.
Author: Dov M. Gabbay
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400911718
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 726
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Book Description
conceptual, realist) theories of predication. Chapter IV.4 centers on an important class of expressions used for predication in connection with quantities: mass expressions. This chapter reviews the most well-known approaches to mass terms and the ontological proposals related to them. In addition to quantification and predication, matters of reference have constituted the other overriding theme for semantic theories in both philosophical logic and the semantics of natural languages. Chapter IV.5 of how the semantics of proper names and descrip presents an overview tions have been dealt with in recent theories of reference. Chapter IV.6 is concerned with the context-dependence of reference, in particular, with the semantics of indexical expressions. The topic of Chapter IV.7 is related to predication as it surveys some of the central problems of ascribing propositional attitudes to agents. Chap ter IV.8 deals with the analysis of the main temporal aspects of natural language utterances. Together these two chapters give a good indication of the intricate complexities that arise once modalities of one or the other sort enter on the semantic stage. in philosophical Chapter IV.9 deals with another well-known topic logic: presupposition, an issue on the borderline of semantics and prag matics. The volume closes with an extensive study of the Liar paradox and its many implications for the study of language (as for example, self reference, truth concepts and truth definitions).
Author: Friederike Moltmann
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027260435
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 235
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Book Description
The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. In many ways, the topic remains under-researched, though, across languages and with respect to particular phenomena within a given language, with respect to its connection to cognition, and with respect to the way it may be understood ontologically. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on the topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns (furniture, police force, clothing).The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. In many ways, the topic remains under-researched, though, across languages and with respect to particular phenomena within a given language, with respect to its connection to cognition, and with respect to the way it may be understood ontologically. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on the topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns (furniture, police force, clothing).
Author: Steven Davis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198031335
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 936
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Book Description
Semantics: A Reader contains a broad selection of classic articles on semantics and the semantics/pragmatics interface. Comprehensive in the variety and breadth of theoretical frameworks and topics that it covers, it includes articles representative of the major theoretical frameworks within semantics, including: discourse representation theory, dynamic predicate logic, truth theoretic semantics, event semantics, situation semantics, and cognitive semantics. All the major topics in semantics are covered, including lexical semantics and the semantics of quantified noun phrases, adverbs, adjectives, performatives, and interrogatives. Included are classic papers in the field of semantics as well as papers written especially for the volume. The volume comes with an extensive introduction designed not only to provide an overview of the field, but also to explain the technical concepts the beginner will need to tackle before the more demanding articles. Semantics will have appeal as a textbook for upper level and graduate courses and as a reference for scholars of semantics who want the classic articles in their field in one convenient place.
Author: Nicholas Waghorn
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472534565
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 313
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Book Description
What is the meaning of life? Does anything really matter? In the past few decades these questions, perennially associated with philosophy in the popular consciousness, have rightly retaken their place as central topics in the academy. In this major contribution, Nicholas Waghorn provides a sustained and rigorous elucidation of what it would take for lives to have significance. Bracketing issues about ways our lives could have more or less meaning, the focus is rather on the idea of ultimate meaning, the issue of whether a life can attain meaning that cannot be called into question. Waghorn sheds light on this most fundamental of existential problems through a detailed yet comprehensive examination of the notion of nothing, embracing classic and cutting-edge literature from both the analytic and Continental traditions. Central figures such as Heidegger, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Nozick and Nagel are drawn upon to anchor the discussion in some of the most influential discussion of recent philosophical history. In the process of relating our ideas concerning nothing to the problem of life's meaning, Waghorn's book touches upon a number of fundamental themes, including reflexivity and its relation to our conceptual limits, whether religion has any role to play in the question of life's meaning, and the nature and constraints of philosophical methodology. A number of major philosophical traditions are addressed, including phenomenology, poststructuralism, and classical and paraconsistent logics. In addition to providing the most thorough current discussion of ultimate meaning, it will serve to introduce readers to philosophical debates concerning the notion of nothing, and the appendix engaging religion will be of value to both philosophers and theologians.
Author: Carlos Enrique Caorsi
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1666960357
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
In Europe, and later in the United States, the revitalization of the philosophy of language emerged from the need to address certain perplexities concerning formal disciplines and to work out certain complexities found within philosophy. In Uruguay, philosophy of language began with Carlos Vaz Ferreira as an analysis of the common and argumentative uses of language but then expanded to address typically philosophical questions. Edited by Carlos Enrique Caorsi and Ricardo J. Navia, Philosophy of Language in Uruguay: Language, Meaning, and Philosophy demonstrates the different directions in which philosophy of language has developed in Uruguay in the last twenty years, giving a representative picture of how philosophical approaches from a linguistic perspective have developed in this Latin American country. Uruguayan philosophy has a very small international presence, but it has long produced works within the philosophical explorations of language that are worthy of being better known. The contributors dissect these explorations through epistemology, linguistics, argumentation, and cognitive sciences to discover how philosophers of language such as Vaz Ferreira have grown to understand the complexities of language and how it affects us today.
Author: Aleksy Molczanow
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004222693
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
Drawing on the original conception of Kant’s synthetic a priori and the relevant related developments in philosophy, this book presents a reconstruction of the intellectual history of the conception of quantity and offers an entirely novel transcendental-metaphysical account of quantification.
Author: Manuel García-Carpintero
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191502588
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
It is the linguistic job of singular terms to pick out the objects that we think or talk about. But what about singular terms that seem to fail to designate anything, because the objects they refer to don't exist? We can employ these terms in meaningful thought and talk, which suggests that they are succeeding in fulfilling their representational task. A team of leading experts presents new essays on the much-debated problem of empty reference and thought. In the 1960s and 1970s Keith Donnellan, David Kaplan, Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam initiated a revolution in the then standard conception of reference—a concept at the core of philosophical inquiry. The repercussions of the revolution, particularly felt in metaphysics and epistemology, were soon refined by other influential writers such as Tyler Burge, Gareth Evans, and John Perry. They argued that some linguistic and mental representations have contents individuated by what they are about—by ordinary referents of expressions such as proper names, indexicals, definite descriptions and common nouns, i.e. by planets, people or natural kinds. The view was at odds with a central philosophical presumption at that time: that cognitive and linguistic access to objective reality is indirect and accidental, mediated by general descriptive characterizations, the only constitutive semantic feature of the expressions; hence its ontological and epistemological repercussions. A turning-point in the debate about how linguistic and mental representation reach external contents concerned the nature of empty mental and linguistic representations, framed by means of the very same expressions crucially invoked in the Donnellan-Kaplan-Kripke-Putnam arguments. The papers in this volume address different aspects of reference and thought about the (apparently) non-existent.
