Abstract:Truth, or accuracy, is widely thought to be the centerpiece of any formal theory of meaning, at least in the study of language. This paper argues for a theory of pictorial accuracy, with attention to the relationship between accuracy and pictorial content. Focusing on cases where pictures are intended to convey accurate information, the theory distinguishes between two fundamental representational relations: on one hand, a picture expresses a content; on the other, it aims at a target scene. Such a picture is … Show more
“…Greenberg , develops a pioneering approach to picture semantics, crucially based on the notion of a geometric projection. In a nutshell, a picture is true in a world w relative to a viewpoint v if w projects onto the picture relative to v. In Greenberg's words (), a simple type of PERSPECTIVE PROJECTION is illustrated in [(32)a]. Here we begin with a concrete 3‐dimensional region of spacetime (possible or actual), which I'll think of as a possible world.…”
Section: Beyond Language I: Pictorial Semanticsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Finally, a PICTURE PLANE is introduced into this spray of lines, and they are used to map spatially distributed features of the scene back to surface features of the picture plane itself— in this case, the lines of the line drawing. The result of such a projection is displayed at right below. Examples of a projection‐based semantics for pictures (Greenberg ) a. Perspective projection b.…”
Section: Beyond Language I: Pictorial Semanticsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The viewpoint includes both the projection source and the position of the picture. The relevant projection lines are given by the system of projection assumed: a system of “linear projection” is represented in (32)a, and is “characterized by the fact that the projection source is a point, to which all projection lines converge” (Greenberg ); other systems can be used, for instance “parallel projection”, illustrated in (32)b, whereby “the projection lines, rather than converging on a single point, all run perpendicular to the projection source, hence parallel to one another” (Greenberg ).…”
Section: Beyond Language I: Pictorial Semanticsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Simplifying somewhat, this allows Greenberg to define the content of a picture relative to a system of projection. Content of a picture ( Greenberg ) Relative to system of projection S (such as linear projection, or parallel projection), the content of a picture P (notated as [[P]] S ) is the set of pairs of the form <w, v> such that:w is a world and v is a viewpoint (specifying a projection source and a projection plane)and w projects to P from viewpoint v along the system of projection S (notated as: proj S (w, v) = P ).Formally, [[P]] S = {<w, v>: proj S (w, v) = P} …”
Section: Beyond Language I: Pictorial Semanticsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Since we have taken truth rather than content to be the primitive notion of semantics and super semantics in this piece, it will be useful to restate things without a notion of content; here we directly adopt the version with time dependency, which will be useful in the analysis of visual animations. Truth of a picture (after Greenberg , adding a time parameter) A picture P is true in world w at time t relative to viewpoint v along the system of projection S iff at time t w projects to P from viewpoint v along S, or in other words:proj S (w, t, v) = P…”
Section: Beyond Language I: Pictorial Semanticsmentioning
Formal semantics was born from an attempt to state explicit rules to predict the truth conditions of natural language sentences. But this goal can be extended beyond language stricto sensu, to a variety of representational systems in nature. This was part of the program of semiotics (e.g. Morris 1938), construed as a general theory of signs; but it never got integrated to the research program of formal semantics. We argue for such an integration, on two general grounds. First, the class of objects that interact with or display uncontroversially linguistic properties is larger than was initially thought. Spoken and especially sign language make use of rich iconic resources which interact with logical structure but cannot be captured without a 'formal semantics with iconicity'. In addition, recent comparisons between sign, speech and gestures strongly suggest that language is multi-modal and that gestures are full citizens of the linguistic world: they trigger familiar inferential types (presuppositions or supplements) when they co-occur with or follow words; and when they fully replace words, their informational content gets divided among familiar slots of the inferential typology, and they even follow a 'gestural grammar' that is in part reminiscent of sign language grammar. Second, independently from these language-internal motivations, the proposed extension leads to a far broader typology of meaning operations in nature, one that includes animal meanings, pictorial meanings, musical meanings, and more.
“…Greenberg , develops a pioneering approach to picture semantics, crucially based on the notion of a geometric projection. In a nutshell, a picture is true in a world w relative to a viewpoint v if w projects onto the picture relative to v. In Greenberg's words (), a simple type of PERSPECTIVE PROJECTION is illustrated in [(32)a]. Here we begin with a concrete 3‐dimensional region of spacetime (possible or actual), which I'll think of as a possible world.…”
Section: Beyond Language I: Pictorial Semanticsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Finally, a PICTURE PLANE is introduced into this spray of lines, and they are used to map spatially distributed features of the scene back to surface features of the picture plane itself— in this case, the lines of the line drawing. The result of such a projection is displayed at right below. Examples of a projection‐based semantics for pictures (Greenberg ) a. Perspective projection b.…”
Section: Beyond Language I: Pictorial Semanticsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The viewpoint includes both the projection source and the position of the picture. The relevant projection lines are given by the system of projection assumed: a system of “linear projection” is represented in (32)a, and is “characterized by the fact that the projection source is a point, to which all projection lines converge” (Greenberg ); other systems can be used, for instance “parallel projection”, illustrated in (32)b, whereby “the projection lines, rather than converging on a single point, all run perpendicular to the projection source, hence parallel to one another” (Greenberg ).…”
Section: Beyond Language I: Pictorial Semanticsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Simplifying somewhat, this allows Greenberg to define the content of a picture relative to a system of projection. Content of a picture ( Greenberg ) Relative to system of projection S (such as linear projection, or parallel projection), the content of a picture P (notated as [[P]] S ) is the set of pairs of the form <w, v> such that:w is a world and v is a viewpoint (specifying a projection source and a projection plane)and w projects to P from viewpoint v along the system of projection S (notated as: proj S (w, v) = P ).Formally, [[P]] S = {<w, v>: proj S (w, v) = P} …”
Section: Beyond Language I: Pictorial Semanticsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Since we have taken truth rather than content to be the primitive notion of semantics and super semantics in this piece, it will be useful to restate things without a notion of content; here we directly adopt the version with time dependency, which will be useful in the analysis of visual animations. Truth of a picture (after Greenberg , adding a time parameter) A picture P is true in world w at time t relative to viewpoint v along the system of projection S iff at time t w projects to P from viewpoint v along S, or in other words:proj S (w, t, v) = P…”
Section: Beyond Language I: Pictorial Semanticsmentioning
Formal semantics was born from an attempt to state explicit rules to predict the truth conditions of natural language sentences. But this goal can be extended beyond language stricto sensu, to a variety of representational systems in nature. This was part of the program of semiotics (e.g. Morris 1938), construed as a general theory of signs; but it never got integrated to the research program of formal semantics. We argue for such an integration, on two general grounds. First, the class of objects that interact with or display uncontroversially linguistic properties is larger than was initially thought. Spoken and especially sign language make use of rich iconic resources which interact with logical structure but cannot be captured without a 'formal semantics with iconicity'. In addition, recent comparisons between sign, speech and gestures strongly suggest that language is multi-modal and that gestures are full citizens of the linguistic world: they trigger familiar inferential types (presuppositions or supplements) when they co-occur with or follow words; and when they fully replace words, their informational content gets divided among familiar slots of the inferential typology, and they even follow a 'gestural grammar' that is in part reminiscent of sign language grammar. Second, independently from these language-internal motivations, the proposed extension leads to a far broader typology of meaning operations in nature, one that includes animal meanings, pictorial meanings, musical meanings, and more.
This paper develops an account of accuracy and truth in pictorial assertion. It argues that there are two ways in which pictorial assertions can be indirect: with respect to their content and with respect to their target. This twofold indirectness explains how accurate, unedited pictures can be used to make false pictorial assertions. It captures the fishiness of true pictorial assertions involving target-indirectness, such as true pictorial assertions involving outdated pictures. And it raises the question whether target-indirectness may also arise in linguistic assertion.
A semantics of pictorial representation should provide an account of how pictorial signs are associated with the contents they express. Unlike the familiar semantics of spoken languages, this problem has a distinctively spatial cast for depiction. Pictures themselves are two-dimensional artifacts, and their contents take the form of pictorial spaces, perspectival arrangements of objects and properties in three dimensions. A basic challenge is to explain how pictures are associated with the particular pictorial spaces they express. Inspiration here comes from recent proposals that analyze depiction in terms of geometrical projection. In this essay, I will argue that, for a central class of pictures, the projection-based theory of depiction provides the best explanation for how pictures express pictorial spaces, while rival perceptual and resemblance theories fall short. Since the composition of pictorial space is itself the basis for all other aspects of pictorial content, the proposal provides a natural foundation for further pictorial semantics.
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