Philosophy and Linguistics

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-216
Author(s):  
Ekaterina V. Vostrikova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Propositional Attitude ◽  
Proper Names ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
General Question ◽  
Belief Reports ◽  
Linguistic Rules ◽  
Language Semantics ◽  
Pointing Gesture

This paper is an overview of the contemporary discussions in interdisciplinary studies of meaning of natural language expressions. The paper discusses the latest work published in two interdisciplinary journals «Linguistics and Philosophy» and «Natural Language Semantics» most relevant for philosophy of language. The paper focuses on two general topics: the semantics of singular terms (proper names, pronouns, demonstratives) and the semantics of belief-reports. The paper discusses the recent proposal about the interpretation of pronouns by [Stojnic et al., 2019] according to which such interpretation is strictly determined by the linguistic rules and does not depend on the context. According to this proposal, the referent of a pronoun is determined by a specific coherence relationship the sentence it occurs in has to the previous sentence in a discourse unless it is preceded by a pointing gesture. The paper discuses some issues with this proposal. Specifically, it discusses its difficulties with explaining the cases where the referent of a pronoun stands out in a context and, thus, no pointing gesture or previous discourse is required for the referent identification. It also discusses cases where a coherence relationship (such as Narration) between two sentences allows flexibility with respect to the referent identification and points at pragmatic factors that can be relevant in this respect. The paper also presents some other recent research on proper names, demonstratives and pronouns both linguistically and philosophically oriented.The paper also presents informally some work on belief-reports in linguistics and discussed its relevance for philosophy of language. It discusses the recent work on restrictions on the types of embeddings of propositional attitude verbs and the general approach that derives those restrictions from the predicted meanings of the relevant sentences, such as [Theiler et al., 2019]. The paper discussed the relevance of this issue to a more general question about the nature of a natural language and the relationship between language and logic.

scholarly journals Triviality and grammatical cor­rectess: contemporary issues in intensional semantics

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 52-68
Author(s):  
Ekaterina V. Vostrikova ◽  
◽  
Petr S. Kusliy ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Propositional Attitude ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Embedded Questions ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Attitude Verbs ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Interrogative Clauses ◽  
Key Aspects

The article is devoted to the study of the semantics of embedded questions (interrogative subordinate clauses), as well as the nature of restrictions on the licensing of declarative and interrogative clauses as complements of propositional attitude verbs. The authors show that this topic goes back to the key aspects of the semantic and cognitive program of G. Frege and is of key importance for the philosophy of language. Using the analytical apparatus of contemporary semantics, the authors investigate this topic on the material of the most recent theoretical works. They show how the semantics of embedded questions contributes to the development of a new perspective on the structure of meaning and the cognitive potential of natural language users. The authors also identify a number of theoretical shortcomings and empirical limitations of several theories of the semantics of embedded questions and point at some directions for future research.

scholarly journals Experimental Philosophy and the Philosophy of Language: A Defence of the Ambiguity Thesis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Katharine Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Proper Names ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Definite Descriptions ◽  
Natural Kind Terms ◽  
Kind Terms ◽  
Cross Cultural Differences

<p>In this thesis I employ the experimental method to inform three important debates within the philosophy of language. These three debates can loosely be characterised as the following: Strawsonianism vs. Russellianism about the meaning of definite descriptions (Chapter 2), Millianism vs. Descriptivism about the meaning of proper names (Chapter 3), and Internalism vs. Externalism about natural kind terms (Chapter 4). To investigate these debates I use surveys to test the intuitions of ordinary language users, that is, non-philosophers, about the meaning of various terms and phrases in natural language. This included New Zealand undergraduate students, students in China, and participants in the US in order to investigate any cross-cultural differences. The results of these three studies indicate substantial variation in the intuitions held among ordinary language users. I use this variation to defend an ambiguity thesis. According to this thesis, some terms and phrases as they occur in natural language (specifically, proper names, natural kind terms, and definite descriptions) have multiple meanings associated them. No one disambiguation is correct outside of a context of utterance. If the ambiguity thesis is accepted, various philosophical puzzles disappear. I will also address a number of objections that face the general program of this thesis.</p>

Introduction to the Science of Meaning

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Ball ◽  
Brian Rabern
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Dynamic Semantics ◽  
Formal Semantic ◽  
Natural Language Semantics ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Compositional Model ◽  
Language Semantics ◽  
Theoretical Apparatus

This Introduction aims to acquaint the reader with some of the main views on the foundations of natural language semantics, to discuss the type of phenomena semanticists study, and to give some basic technical background in compositional model-theoretic semantics necessary to understand the chapters in this collection. Topics discussed include truth conditions, compositionality, context-sensitivity, dynamic semantics, the relation of formal semantic theories to the theoretical apparatus of reference and propositions current in much philosophy of language, what semantic theories aim to explain, realism, the metaphysics of language and different views of the relation between languages and speakers, and the epistemology of semantics.

scholarly journals Experimental Philosophy and the Philosophy of Language: A Defence of the Ambiguity Thesis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Katharine Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Proper Names ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Definite Descriptions ◽  
Natural Kind Terms ◽  
Kind Terms ◽  
Cross Cultural Differences

<p>In this thesis I employ the experimental method to inform three important debates within the philosophy of language. These three debates can loosely be characterised as the following: Strawsonianism vs. Russellianism about the meaning of definite descriptions (Chapter 2), Millianism vs. Descriptivism about the meaning of proper names (Chapter 3), and Internalism vs. Externalism about natural kind terms (Chapter 4). To investigate these debates I use surveys to test the intuitions of ordinary language users, that is, non-philosophers, about the meaning of various terms and phrases in natural language. This included New Zealand undergraduate students, students in China, and participants in the US in order to investigate any cross-cultural differences. The results of these three studies indicate substantial variation in the intuitions held among ordinary language users. I use this variation to defend an ambiguity thesis. According to this thesis, some terms and phrases as they occur in natural language (specifically, proper names, natural kind terms, and definite descriptions) have multiple meanings associated them. No one disambiguation is correct outside of a context of utterance. If the ambiguity thesis is accepted, various philosophical puzzles disappear. I will also address a number of objections that face the general program of this thesis.</p>

What is—or, for that Matter, isn’t—‘Experimental’ Semantics?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline Jacobson
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Natural Language Semantics ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
Language Semantics ◽  
Experimental Semantics

This chapter examines the currently fashionable notion of ‘experimental semantics’, and argues that most work in natural language semantics has always been experimental. The oft-cited dichotomy between ‘theoretical’ (or ‘armchair’) and ‘experimental’ is bogus and should be dropped form the discourse. The same holds for dichotomies like ‘intuition-based’ (or ‘thought experiments’) vs. ‘empirical’ work (and ‘real experiments’). The so-called new ‘empirical’ methods are often nothing more than collecting the large-scale ‘intuitions’ or, doing multiple thought experiments. Of course the use of multiple subjects could well allow for a better experiment than the more traditional single or few subject methodologies. But whether or not this is the case depends entirely on the question at hand. In fact, the chapter considers several multiple-subject studies and shows that the particular methodology in those cases does not necessarily provide important insights, and the chapter argues that some its claimed benefits are incorrect.

scholarly journals The Rare Word Issue in Natural Language Generation: A Character-Based Solution

Informatics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Giovanni Bonetta ◽  
Marco Roberti ◽  
Rossella Cancelliere ◽  
Patrick Gallinari
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Error Probability ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
Proper Names ◽  
Neural Model ◽  
Natural Language Generation ◽  
Training Phase ◽  
Tabular Data ◽  
Rare Word ◽  
Language Generation

In this paper, we analyze the problem of generating fluent English utterances from tabular data, focusing on the development of a sequence-to-sequence neural model which shows two major features: the ability to read and generate character-wise, and the ability to switch between generating and copying characters from the input: an essential feature when inputs contain rare words like proper names, telephone numbers, or foreign words. Working with characters instead of words is a challenge that can bring problems such as increasing the difficulty of the training phase and a bigger error probability during inference. Nevertheless, our work shows that these issues can be solved and efforts are repaid by the creation of a fully end-to-end system, whose inputs and outputs are not constrained to be part of a predefined vocabulary, like in word-based models. Furthermore, our copying technique is integrated with an innovative shift mechanism, which enhances the ability to produce outputs directly from inputs. We assess performance on the E2E dataset, the benchmark used for the E2E NLG challenge, and on a modified version of it, created to highlight the rare word copying capabilities of our model. The results demonstrate clear improvements over the baseline and promising performance compared to recent techniques in the literature.

A Metalogical Theory of Natural Language Semantics

2005 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-116
Author(s):  
Michael Mccord ◽  
Arendse Bernth
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Natural Language Semantics ◽  
Language Semantics
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