Hand or Hammer? On Formal and Natural Languages in Semantics

The Formal and the Formalized: The Cases of Syllogistic and Supposition Theory

“…11 However, the obvious philosophical question which must be asked is: in what sense is the reworked, regimented version of the argument indeed the same argument as the original, or in any case a sufficiently close counterpart thereof? one may be tempted to say that they have the same 'meaning', but this would presuppose that we have independent access to the meaning of the original argument, and are able to establish that the regimented version has the same meaning despite the linguistic dissimilarity (what Stokhof (2007) calls the 'Availability Assumption'), something that is far from uncontroversial. We may also say that the regimented version in fact depicts more conspicuously the actual, preexisting deep structure of the argument, which is there all along but in need to be discovered.…”

5 the Role of Artificial Languages

“…And they are available in the sense that as semanticists we have access to them independent of and prior to the use to which we put them. (For a more systematic analysis of the determinacy and availability assumptions, including their role in concerns with language reform in the work of Frege, Russell, early Wittgenstein, and others, cf., Stokhof 2007) Notice that we need these determinacy and availability assumption with regard to both the meanings of the natural language expressions to be analyzed as well the meanings of the formal language that are used. Both are needed for otherwise there would be no way to judge the correctness of the translation, and this is essential if the methodology of indirect interpretation via translation is to succeed.…”

Abstractions and idealisations: The construction of modern linguistics

“…Recently other views have started to emerge. In the concluding section we will briefly mention some of them.12 Cf.,Stokhof (2002Stokhof ( , 2007Stokhof ( , 2008 for an analysis of various philosophical distinctions and goals that have shaped and continue to guide formal semantics.…”