| Description |
1 online resource (230 pages) |
| Contents |
The model of a true demonstrative: extra-linguistic effects on situated meaning -- An alleged ambiguity and the dynamics of context-change -- Pointing things out: prominence and the attentional state of a discourse -- Context and discourse conventions -- Interlude: context and common ground -- Content in context -- The challenge: non-propositionalism -- Dynamic propositionalism -- Content, context, and logic -- Prominence semantics for modality -- The grammar of prominence |
| Summary |
"Natural languages are riddled with context-sensitivity. One and the same string of words can express indefinitely many different meanings on an occasion of use. And yet we understand one another effortlessly, on the fly. What fixes the meaning of context-sensitive expressions, and how are we able to recover this meaning so quickly and without effort? This book offers a novel response: we can do so because we draw on a broad array of subtle linguistic conventions that fully determine the interpretation of context-sensitive items. Contrary to the dominant tradition, which maintains that the meaning of context-sensitive language is underspecified by grammar, and depends on non-linguistic features of utterance situation, this book argues that meaning is determined entirely by discourse conventions, rules of language that have largely been missed, and the effects of which have been mistaken for extra-linguistic effects of an utterance situation on meaning. The linguistic account of context developed in this book sheds a new light on the nature of linguistic content, and the interaction between content and context. At the same time, it provides a novel model of context that should constrain and help evaluate debates across many sub-fields of philosophy where appeal to context has been common, often leading to surprising conclusions: for example, in epistemology, ethics, value theory, metaphysics, metaethics, and logic, among others"--Publisher's description |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and indexes |
| Notes |
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (Oxford Scholarship Online, viewed on June 25, 2021) |
| Subject |
Context (Linguistics)
|
|
Context (Linguistics)
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9780192634825 |
|
0192634828 |
|
