The Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction: What It Is and Why It Matters

Bach, Kent

doi:10.1007/978-3-663-11116-0_3

Cited by 73 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…† † † Cf. Bach [1999] for a useful overview of the history of the distinction and some of the debates. ‡ ‡ ‡ Bach [1999], pp.…”

Section: Three Kinds Of Context Dependencementioning

confidence: 99%

Contextual Logic With Modalities for Time and Space

Gaifman

2008

The Review of Symbolic Logic

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We develop a formal apparatus to be used as a tool in analyzing common kinds of context dependence in natural language, and their interaction with temporal and spatial modalities. It is based on context-operators, which act on wffs. The interplay between the various modalities and the context-operators is one of the main targets of the analysis. Statements made by different people at different times in different places, using the same personal temporal and spatial indexicals, can be represented in the system, and can be combined by sentential connectives and be subject to quantification. The use of spatial modality and the suggested treatment of adverbial phrases are new as far as we know. So is a certain variant of temporal modality. In the nontechnical part, consisting of Sections 1 and 2, we discuss the role that formalisms can, in principle, play in the analysis of linguistic usage; this is followed by a philosophical discussion of various kinds of context dependence. The semitechnical part, Section 3, introduces the system's components, the context, and the modal operators, and explains their use via natural language examples. In Section 4 the formal language and its semantics are defined, in full detail. The temporal and spatial sublanguages constitute separate sorts, which interact through the modal operators and the context-operators. A sound deductive system is given and a completeness result is stated, without proof.

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“…† † † Cf. Bach [1999] for a useful overview of the history of the distinction and some of the debates. ‡ ‡ ‡ Bach [1999], pp.…”

Section: Three Kinds Of Context Dependencementioning

confidence: 99%

Contextual Logic With Modalities for Time and Space

Gaifman

2008

The Review of Symbolic Logic

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“…Thus, if we insist on positing a single notion of literal meaning, we are left with two options. One option is to give up the conflicting requirements and hence relax the definition of literal meaning (Bach, 1994a(Bach, , 1999Berg, 1993;Dascal, 1987;Searle, 1978). I discuss such proposals in Section 2.…”

Section: Problems With Positing One Concept Of Literal Meaningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, different researchers have relaxed different requirements imposed on literal meaning, and also to different extents. Searle (1978), Re´canati (1989), Berg (1993Berg ( , 2002, and Bach (1994aBach ( , 1999 are exceptional in remaining relatively faithful to the classical notion of literal meaning (to different degrees). Literal meaning is fairly linguistic (semantic) for them.…”

Section: Weakening the Concept Of Literal Meaningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This principle guarantees the completion of grammatically deleted sentential parts as well as the finding of the intended referents of referring expressions. Bach (1994aBach ( , 1999 thinks that these enrichments rely on a very narrow type of context, which can be clearly delimited. Berg (personal communication), however, is more restrictive.…”

Section: Giving Up Full Truth-conditionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The demise of a unique concept of literal meaning

Ariel

2002

Journal of Pragmatics

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Literal meaning has been defined as linguistic meaning, i.e., as nonfigurative, coded, fully compositional, context-invariant, explicit, and truth conditional (Katz, Jerrold J., 1977. Propositional structure and illocutionary force. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell). Nonliteral meaning is seen as its counterpart, i.e., as extralinguistic, figurative, indirect, inferred, noncompositional, context-dependent, and cancelable. I argue that the requirements made on literal meaning conflict with each other (e.g., coded vs. truth condtional; figurative vs. coded; inferred vs. literal). I then propose to replace the one concept of literal meaning with three concepts of minimal meanings. Each, I argue, reflects a different respect in which a meaning can be minimal. A meaning can be minimal because it is coded, compositional, and contextinvariant-the linguistic meaning. A meaning can be minimal because psycholinguistically it is the one foremost on our mind-Giora's (Giora, Rachel, 1997

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“…It is part of the common wisdom that ellipsis cannot occur without 2 See Bach (1999) and Bach and Harnish (1982). They are replying to Katz (1977) and Katz and Fodor (1963), who appeal to a notion of null context to try to isolate aspects of meaning that fall within the scope of linguistic competence.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A New Puzzle about Discourse-initial Contexts*

Glanzberg¹

2013

Brevity

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The Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction: What It Is and Why It Matters

Cited by 73 publications

References 17 publications

Contextual Logic With Modalities for Time and Space

Contextual Logic With Modalities for Time and Space

The demise of a unique concept of literal meaning

A New Puzzle about Discourse-initial Contexts*

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