One Word, Many Concepts (To appear in the Oxford
Handbook to Contemporary Philosophy of Language,
E.Lepore and U. Stojnić, eds.).
Polysemy
runs deep. But if polysemy runs deep, meanings do not map
contexts to extensions--and sentences do not express
propositions, or mappings from contexts to propositions--not
even if each sense of a polysemous expression maps contexts (of
using the expression with that sense) to extensions or
proposition-constituents. A word like 'window', which has more
than one sense, can be used neutrally without using it to
express any particular sense.
Fostering Liars
(Topoi 40:5-25, 2021)
This paper--like I-Languages
and T-sentences
Meanings via Syntactic Structures (Syntactic
Structures after 60 Years, edited by N. Hornstein et.al.,
De Gruyter: Mouton 2017)
This short essay was prompted by teaching Syntactic Structures, in an
undergraduate course, and paying attention to the (often
ignored) remarks about meaning.
Semantic Internalism (The Cambridge Companion to Chomsky,
edited by Jim McGilvray, CUP 2017)
This essay discusses some of Chomsky's views about meaning,
contrasting them with some of Putnam's claims in "The Meaning of
'Meaning' ".
I-Languages and T-sentences
This paper, about the relevance of Liar Paradoxes for truth
conditional semantics, and the paper below are companions.
Bottom line for this one: sentences of a human language don't
have truth conditions. No sentence of a human language is true.
The previous sentence isn't true, and neither is this one. Snow is white isn't true,
and neither is 'Snow is
white.' is true if and only if snow is white.
Framing Event Variables
Slides for the talk, at a conference in Erfurt, can be found here.
This paper is about the relevance of puzzles concerning event
individuation for semantics. Bottom line: event analyses of
'Alvin chased Thedore' are good; truth-theoretic constuals of
such analyses are bad. Together with the paper above, and Meaning Before Truth listed below, the
larger conclusion is that Davidsonian conceptions of meaning are
in big trouble. Even bracketing concerns about specific
constructions, and focusing on cases that are supposed to
motivate truth conditional semantics, foundational problems
quickly emerge if you focus on truth, predication, or reference.
Concepts, Meanings, and Truth: First Nature,
Second Nature, and Hard Work (Mind and Language 25: 247-78, 2010)
The idea is that lexical expressions of a human I-language let
children use available concepts to introduce formally distinct
"I-concepts," which can then be combined
via operations invoked by phrasal syntax. So while
"prelexical" concepts may not exhibit the kind of systematicity
required for truth, I-concepts do. But various empirical
considerations suggest that I-concepts are massively
monadic, and that the relevant "I-operations" are fundamentally
conjunctive. This, I claim, makes it implausible that I-concepts
are true of language-independent things. Meanings can be viewed
as instructions to assemble concepts that make it possible for
humans to have truth-evaluable thoughts. But forming such
concepts requires independent cognitive work, not just a
language with a compositional semantics. This paper, which
abstracts from the technical details, forms a pair with Minimal Semantic
Instructions (listed under Compositional Semantics)
Meaning Before Truth (Contextualism in
Philosophy, edited by G. Preyer and G. Peters, OUP 2005).
This paper extends the line of thought in "The Character of
Natural Language Semantics." A running theme is that Chomsky
offers a conception of semantics that lets us preserve what is
right about truth-conditional semantics--and this has less to do
with truth than the usual rhetoric suggests--while also
preserving late-Wittgensteinian/Austinian insights about the
relation between truth, meaning, and context. There are three
main sections: one about the relevance of negative facts (and
nativism) for semantics, and why this tells against both
"deflationary" conceptions of meaning and Quine-Davidson
"interpretability" conceptions; one that reviews some familiar
reasons for rejecting the hypothesis that names denote things in
the environment; and one that concedes externalism about truth,
while noting that externalism about linguistic meaning does not
follow. The paper ends with a brief tour of some alternatives,
and some familiar reasons for rejecting the hypothesis that
predicates are satisfied by things in the environment. A handout elaborates this line of
thought (in a handouty way).
Semantic
Types: Two is Better than Too Many.
(New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, edited by
M. Sakamoto et. al., Springer LNCS/LNAI 12331, 2020. LENLS-16
conference proceedings.)
In this paper and the one below, I
discuss the motivations and prospects for the very spare
semantic typology employed in Conjoining
Meanings.
Semantic Typology and Composition
(The Science of Meaning,
edited by B. Rabern and D. Ball).
It is
often said that expressions of a human language include (i)
truth-evaluable sentences of a basic semantic type <t>,
(ii) entity designators of a basic semantic type <e>, and
(iii) unsaturated expressions whose semantic types are
characterized by the recursive principle "if <α> and
<β> are types, so is <α, β>." I think this
hypothesis is wrong in three respects.
Minimal Semantic Instructions (in
the Oxford Handbook of
Linguistic Minimalism, edited by Cedric Boeckx, 2011).
This is an attempt work out, for a range of basic constructions,
the idea of meanings as "instructions to assemble conjunctive
concepts." This paper, mainly devoted to technical details and
minimalist reasoning, forms a pair with Concepts,
Meanings, and Truth: First Nature, Second Nature, and Hard
Work (listed under Semantic
Internalism). And with regard to the syntactic details, I
draw on the paper below.
Interrogatives, Instructions, and
I-languages: an I-Semantics for Questions, coauthored with
Terje Lohndal (Linguistic
Analysis 37:459-510, 2011).
The basic idea is simple: an "instructionist" conception of
meaning, along lines developed in the paper above, can easily
accommodate an attractive internalist version of the old
force/content distinction; and there are interesting
implications for the syntax/semantics of relative clauses and
"sentential" expressions. I never intended to have views
about--much less write a paper about--interrogatives. But my
co-author was persuasive.
Describing I-junction
(In
Language and Value,
edited by J. Yi and E. Lepore,
The meaning of a noun phrase like 'brown cow', or 'cow that ate
grass', is somehow conjunctive. But conjunctive in what sense?
Are the meanings of other phrases--e.g, 'ate quickly', 'ate
grass', and 'at noon'--similarly conjunctive? I suggest a
possible answer, in the context of a broader conception of
natural language semantics.
Small
Verbs, Complex Events: Analyticity without Synonymy
(in Chomsky and His Critics, edited [heroically] by
Louise Antony and Norbert Hornstein, Blackwell 2003)
You may need to "Rotate View, Clockwise" to get the .pdf file to
appear properly.
This paper was written in 1998, and so may be past
its use-by date. Updated versions of various bits of the
paper appear elsewhere; see note 1.
More Truth in Advertising: I'm not criticizing Chomsky; though I
am being critical, and Chomsky does figure prominently.
The idea, as the subtitle suggests, is that there are analytic
truths--even if the notion of synonymy is suspect. The trick
involves (can you guess?) combining, in the right way, a
neo-Davidsonian event semantics with a Minimalist syntax.
Blatant Advertising: get hold of the entire book if only for
Chomsky's replies; for anyone interested Chomsky's conception of
meaning (and his semantic
internalism), see especially his replies to Egan, Rey,
Ludlow, Horwich, and Pietroski.
On
Explaining That (Journal of Philosophy 97: 665-62,
2000)
How can a speaker can explain that P without explaining the fact
that P, or explain the fact that P without explaining that P,
even when it is true (and so a fact) that P? Or in formal mode:
what is the semantic contribution of 'explain' such that 'She
explained that P' can be true, while 'She explained the fact
that P' is false (or vice versa), even when 'P' is true?
The proposed answer is that 'explained' is a semantically
monadic predicate, satisfied by events of explaining. But 'the
fact that P' (a determiner phrase) and 'that P' (a
complementizer phrase) get associated with different thematic
roles, corresponding to the distinction between a thing
explained and the content of a speech act.
Does
Every
Sentence Like This Exhibit A Scope Ambiguity? coauthored
with Norbert Hornstein
(In Belief and Meaning, edited by W. Hinzen and H. Rott,
Hansel-Hohenhausen 2002)
The answer is 'no'. Instances of 'every F likes some G' may not,
after all, be examples of scope ambiguity.
Figuring out whether a given expression with multiple
quantifiers is semantically ambiguous is hard.
Quantification
and
Second-Order Monadicity (Philosophical
Perspectives 17: 259-298, 2003).
The first part of this paper reviews some developments regarding
the apparent mismatch between the logical and grammatical forms
of quantificational constructions like 'Pat kicked every
bottle'. I suggest that (even given quantifier-raising) many
current theories still posit an undesirable mismatch. But all is
well if we can treat
determiners (words like 'every', 'no', and 'most') as
second-order monadic predicates without treating them as predicates satisfied
by ordered pairs of sets.
Drawing on George Boolos's construal of second-order
quantification as plural quantification, I argue that we can and
should view determiners as predicates satisfied (plurally) by
ordered pairs each of which associates an entity with a
truth-value (t or f). The idea is 'every' is
satisfied by some pairs iff every one of them associates its
entity with t. It turns
out that this provides a kind of explanation for the
"conservativity" of determiners. And it lets us say that
concatenation signifies predicate-conjunction even in phrases
like 'every bottle' and 'no brown dog'.
To Be a
Value of a Plural Variable, You Don't Have to Be Plural
(You Just Have to Be)
This is something between a handout and a paper. It focusses on
an idea, acquired from George Boolos, discussed in the papers
immediately above and below. For purposes of giving a
compositional semantic theory for a natural language, we can and
should allow for genuinely plural variables; where a genuinely
plural variable is one that has more than one value relative to
each assignment of values to variables.
Induction
and
Comparison (Maryland
Working Papers in Linguistics, 15: 157-90, 2006)
This speculative paper is an attempt to say why Frege's Theorem
might bear, in interesting ways, on several issues in
linguistics.
Function
and
Concatenation (in Logical Form, edited by G.
Preyer and G. Peters, OUP 2002).
Explores the idea that concatenating natural language
expressions corresponds to predicate-conjunction, as opposed to
function-application. The proposal is developed in more detail
in Events and Semantic Architecture (OUP 2005). But the
paper gives the main idea, in the context of questions about how
natural language syntax is related to Logical Form.
Interpreting
Concatenation
and Concatenates (Philosophical
Issues 16:221-45, 2006).
This paper presents a slightly modified version of the
compositional semantics proposed in Events and Semantic Architecture.
Some readers may find this shorter version, which ignores issues
about vagueness and causal constructions, easier to digest. The
emphasis is on the treatments of plurality and quantification,
and I assume at least some familiarity with more standard
approaches. Space constraints caused the final document to be
considerably shorter than drafts with homophonous titles. The
paper above (Systematicity
via Monadicity) is a kind of companion piece, showing how
to locate the proposed conception of semantic composition in the
context of more general attempts to simplify (or "minimize")
theories of linguistic competence, with the aim of isolating the
distinctively human aspects of the human language faculty. There
are points of contact with recent suggestions by Elizabeth
Spelke and her colleagues; see also the BBS
paper
by Peter Carruthers, my colleague in philosophy at
Maryland.
Systematicity
via Monadicity (Croatian
Journal of Philosophy 7:343-374, 2007)
This is the written version of a conference presentation in
Dubrovnik (Fall 2006). I argue that a "Conjunctivist" conception
of semantic composition, of the sort articulated in some of the
papers above, helps explain many otherwise puzzling features of
natural language. More speculatively, a Conjunctivist language
faculty might also help explain why human thought is as
systematic as it is.
Semantic Monadicity with Conceptual
Polyadicity (In the Oxford
Handbook of Compositionality, M. Werning, W. Hinzen,
and E. Machery, eds., 2012).
Another paper in the same vein.
Language and Conceptual Reanalysis (In Towards a Biolinguistic
Understanding of Grammar: Essays on Interfaces, edited by A. DiSciullo,
John Benjamin 2012).
Like the paper above, but more detailed, and drawing some
connections to Frege's notion of fruitful definitions.
Here is a video of a 2014 talk in the Defining Cognitive Science series at Simon Fraser
University.
My thanks to my hosts, especially Endre Begby. In the talk, I discuss some
of the findings reported in the papers below. There are also
pictures of my collaborators.
Observers
efficiently extract the min and max in perceptual magnitudes
sets: evidence for a bipartite format.
Authors: Darko Odic,
Tyler
Knowlton, Alexis Wellwood,
Paul Pietroski, Jeff Lidz, and
Justin Halberda
To appear in Psychological
Science.
Psycholinguistic
evidence
for restricted quantification.
Authors:
Tyler Knowlton, Paul
Pietroski, Alexander Williams, Justin Halberda, and
Jeff Lidz.
Natural
Language Semantics 31:219–251 (2023).
Individuals and Ensembles
and each versus every: linguistic framing affects performance
in a change
detection task.
Authors:
Tyler Knowlton, Justin Halberda, Paul
Pietroski, and Jeff Lidz.
(Glossa Psycholinguistics 2 http://dx.doi.org/10.5070/G6011181
(2023).
The sentences Each of the dots is blue and Every one of the dots is blue and All of the dots are blue illustrate distinct ways of expressing universal generalizations. But do the meanings of the words for universal quantification differ? And if so, is the difference between first-order and second-order quantification relevant? Answers: yes and yes.
The
Meaning of 'Most': semantics, numerosity, and psychology:
Paul Pietroski, Jeff Lidz, Justin Halberda, and Tim Hunter
(Mind and Language,
24:554-85, 2009). The title is descriptive. We offer
experimental evidence in support of a certain view about how the
meaning of the English determiner 'most' is related to various
psychological capacities potentially relevant to human
capacities for counting and quantifying. In this first
installment of an ongoing project, we offer experimental
evidence that adult speakers of English do indeed
understand sentences like 'Most of the dots are blue' in
terms of cardinality comparison (as opposed to, say, one-to-one
correspondence). We also make some tentative suggestions about
how the meaning of 'most' is related to potential verification
procedures and the "analog magnitude system" that humans share
with other animals.
Seeing What you Mean, Mostly.
Authors: Paul Pietroski, Jeff Lidz, Justin Halberda, Tim
Hunter, and Darko Odic
(Syntax and Semantics:
Experiments at the Interfaces, edited by J. Runner,
37:187-224, 2011).
Another paper in the same vein, stressing that while our
proposal is not a form of verificationism, meanings are
related to verification strategies in empirically testable
ways--at least with regard to "logical" vocabulary.
The Language Faculty coauthored with
Stephen Crain, in The Handbook for Philosophy of Cognitive
Science (edited by E.Margolis, S. Laurence, and S. Stich,
OUP 2011). An essay on the language faculty, in keeping with the
papers below, but also discussing some new material.
Think of the Children (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86:657-669, 2009). This was a critical notice of Michael Devitt's book, Ignorance of Language. Michael's reply, which you might want to look at, appeared in the same issue.
Brass Tacks in Linguistic Theory
coauthored with Stephen Crain and Andrea Gualmini
(In The Innate Mind:
structure and contents, edited by S. Laurence, P.
Carruthers, and S. Stich, 175-197, Oxford University Press,
2005).
Yes, still arguing for innate constraints on linguistic
meanings. Here, we discuss in more detail some of the individual
phenomena addressed in other papers. And we're not replying to
anyone in particular.
Innate Ideas coauthored with
Stephen Crain, in The Cambridge Companion to Chomsky
(edited by James McGilvray, 164-180, Cambridge Univ. Press
2005). You may need to "Rotate View, Clockwise" to get the .pdf
file to appear properly.
A more general discussion of innateness and universal grammar,
in the context of Chomsky's version of rationalism.
Some of the examples mentioned here are discussed in more detail
in the other papers.
Why Language Acquisition is a Snap
coauthored with Stephen Crain (Linguistic Review, 19:
163-83, 2002).
Presents additional empirical arguments for universal grammar in
reply to a target article by Pullum and Scholz. The main
arguments concerns a cluster of semantic phenomenon concerning
downward entailment, negative polarity, and the "pragmatic"
implicature associated with disjunctive claims.
Nature, Nurture, and Universal Grammar
coauthored with Stephen Crain (Linguistics and Philosophy
24: 139-86, 2001).
Discusses the logic of "poverty of stimulus" arguments and some
specific empirical premises, concerning both adults and
children, in reply to recent empiricist conceptions of language
acquisition--with particular focus on Cowie's book What's
Within.
Twentieth
Century Papers
Actions, Adjuncts, and Agency
(Mind 107: 73-111, 1998)
Experiencing the Facts: critical notice of John McDowell's Mind and World (Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26: 613-36, 1996)
A Defense of Derangement (Canadian Journal of Philosophy 24: 95-118, 1994)
Prima Facie Obligations, Ceteris
Paribus Laws in Moral Theory (Ethics 103: 489-515,
1993)
Intentionality and Teleological Error (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 73: 267-82, 1992)