SemPrag2 - Sentence Meaning, Quantification, Utterance Meaning & Speaker Intentions Flashcards
If sentence meanings are truth conditions (but we are probably actually talking about propositions - what is said!), what do we need to remember when defining those truth conditions?
Yes ‘camels have humps’ is true iff camels have humps. However for any time, t, and individual, i, an utterance by i at t of ‘I’m thirsty’ is true iff i is thirsty at t.
Can also consider location etc…
This basic conception of truth-conditional meaning was proposed by Alfred Tarski, but there must be a set of rules which pairs each sentence with a set of conditions.
Object Language vs Metalanguage
Object language is the language being described, whereas metalanguage is the language used to describe the object language (define truth conditional meaning in these cases). (Examples are propositional logic, set theory, predicate logic).
Propositional logic:
enables us to systematically determine the content of a compound, complex sentence if we know the simplest sentence from which it is formed. (Connective rules)
Set theory
Subject is an item, predicate is a set, item is true if subject belongs to that set (at relevant time whatever).
Predications
‘John is strange’: the property of being strange is predicated of John.
Could say any utterance of an English sentence S of the form NP VP describes a situation in which the referent determined by NP has the property expressed by VP.
You can make these rules for names, one place and two place predicates and syntactic rules.
If we have these rules of predications (Napoleon’s list on lecture 4 notes) why do we need propositional logic?
Propositional logic deals with truth conditional meaning based on sentential connectives.
What are the logical connectives?
Not (very wrong horizontal L) And (upside down v) Inclusive Or (v) (where both is also an option) Exclusive Or (v with a subscript e) if - then (arrow) iff (double headed arrow)
Is sentence meaning the only truth-conditional meaning?
Different viewpoints.
NO. Just because we define sentence meaning (and what is said) using truth conditions is not to say that implicatures could not be defined using truth-conditions.
The minimalist approach applies truth conditions to the ‘what is said level’, which can only apply to declaratives.
The contextualist approach also applies truth conditions to intended and communicated meanings (implicatures and presuppositions - if they are in context) so can also apply to interrogatives and imperatives.
What is implicature?
Speaker meaning. Not implication which could be entailment.
Grice 1975: Conversational implicatures are inferences which arise out of the Gricean maxims of conversation.
How to identify presuppositions?
The Projection test: If the sentence is negated the presupposition will still hold, while an entailment or implicature will be negated.
Presupposition is removed if sentence put after ‘if’.
Another test is Shannon 1976 ‘Hey wait a minute’ test. If your ‘hey wait a minute’ just repeats the content of the statement so feels redundant it was an entailment, whereas if the hey wait a minute feels valid it’s a presupposition.
‘I managed to do it.’
‘Hey i didn’t know you managed to do it’. POINTLESS
‘Hey I didn’t know you were trying to do it’ VALID.
If representing the presupposition from ‘John stopped smoking’ in a truth table, what is the truth value of the sentence if the presupposition is false.
Some would use zero as it could neither be true nor false if he hadn’t smoked in the first place.
Difference between logical ‘and’ and natural language ‘and’.
As a sentential connective, natural language ‘and’ can also indicate causation and/or temporality.
Grice 1975: thinks these additional meanings are implicatures.
Recanati 1989 thinks they are at the What is Said level.
Who’s right?
How to show that logical disjunction is inclusive (which is why if we want to show exclusive we have to add the e).
You can cancel exclusivity?
‘Do you want chicken or pasta? Both.’
You cannot cancel inclusivity.
You can cancel implicatures, so exclusive or is an implicature.
Interesting point about the truth tables of implication (if it rains it’s wet)
even if the ‘if’ statement is false, if the then statement is true, the whole statement is true.
Interesting point about the truth tables of equivalence (i’ll help you if you ask me)
If one of the statements is false, the whole statement is false. But if they are both false or indeed both true, the statement is true.
What can you cancel/negate without creating contradiction.
Implicatures (some cats are not crazy, all of them are), presuppositions (he didn’t manage to do it, it was easy for him), pronunciation/register.