Scope or Pseudoscope? Choice Functions in Context

2003

Kratzer 1998 proposes that certain indefinite determiners (at least in some of their uses) might be variables for (Skolemized) choice functions that receive a value from the utterance context. What does it mean for a choice function variable to receive a value from the context of utterance? How can a context provide such a function? To sharpen intuitions, here is an example describing a custom from my home town Mindelheim. After every funeral, all the mourners gathered around the still open grave say a prayer that starts with the words: “And now let us pray for the person among us who will die next. ” Suppose an anthropologist attended one or more funerals in Mindelheim, and reports on what she found out in a lecture using (1), or the more general (2): (1) After the funeral, the mourners prayed for some (particular) person among them. (2) After every funeral in Mindelheim, the mourners pray for some (particular) person among them. On a referential theory of “some”, the anthropologis...

University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 2003

Kratzer 1998 proposes that certain indefinite determiners (at least in some of their uses) might be variables for (Skolemized) choice functions that receive a value from the utterance context. What does it mean for a choice function variable to receive a value from the context of utterance? How can a context provide such a function? To sharpen intuitions, here is an example describing a custom from my home town Mindelheim. After every funeral, all the mourners gathered around the still open grave say a prayer that starts with the words:“And ...

2019

The broad theoretical context for this paper is a debate between two approaches to intensionality that differ with respect to the status of world variables in grammar. According to the SCOPE THEORY of intensionality (see Keshet 2011 and references therein), world variables are incorporated into content word denotations and valued by a parameter of interpretation, in such a way that an expression’s evaluation world is determined by its structural position. For example, on this theory, the denotation for a common noun like cat looks like (1). It is a function from individuals to truth values that returns the value true if and only if the individual it applies to is a cat in the evaluation world w. In a simple sentence like Garfield is a cat, the evaluation world is identified with the actual world (or the world indexically associated with the utterance context), whereas in a sentence with a modal expression like Garfield might be a cat, the evaluation world of every expression in the ...

Research on Language and Computation, 2004

This article argues that definite NPs are interpreted depending on contextual salience, rather than on the uniqueness condition of their descriptive content. The salience structure is semantically reconstructed by a global choice function that assigns to each set one (most salient) element. It is dynamically modified by the context change potential of indefinite and definite NPs. The anaphoric potential of definite NPs can be accounted for by the interaction of the context change potential and contextual salience structure.

American Journal of Immunology

Understanding problems invariably hinges on a carefully written explication, based on experimental evidence or theoretical analysis, exact description of the phenomena, the experimental settings, as well considering existing precedent and advances over existing literature as presented in this report. As with any discourse, presenting all facets of the issue to be probed has become the cornerstone of the success of scholarly advance where fallacies and/or errors in the interpretation of the results can be traced and corrected at a later time, provided the record in question is available for scrutiny, preferably free of charge to the research community and the general public alike. Here, we draw on previous examples to reiterate the advantages of presenting seemingly adversarial points of view in a given study to allow future examination to be carried out in the proper context.

Synthese

Reference may be fixed by stipulation through a speech act, just like bets and marriages. An utterance of Let n refer to an/the F is a speech act by means of which, if successful, a speaker institutes a practice of referring, and a hearer coordinates by choosing a referent from the domain of discourse. We articulate a metasemantics for this view. On our view, the interlocutors can select a referent randomly, if necessary, motivated by the incentive to coordinate on the use of a name. Moreover, we argue that reference fixed by a performative speech act is ‘thin’, or ‘undemanding’. Finally, we defend the thesis that co-reference might not determinately obtain despite reference being fixed. Performative reference makes sense of ordinary speakers’ practices, who appear to be very liberal and unimpressed by skepticism toward causally inert or epistemically indiscernible objects.

Erkenntnis, 2005

Quine and Davidson employ proxy functions to demonstrate that the use of language (behaviouristically conceived) is compatible with indefinitely many radically different reference relations. They also believe that the use of language (behaviouristically conceived) is all that determines reference. From this they infer that reference is indeterminate, i.e. that there are no facts of the matter as to what singular terms designate and what predicates apply to. Yet referential indeterminacy yields rather dire consequences. One thus does wonder whether one can hold on to a Quine-Davidson stance in semantics-cum-metaphysics and still avoid embracing referential indeterminacy. I argue that one can. Anyone adhering to the behaviouristic account pivotal to the Quine-Davidson stance is bound to acknowledge certain facts about verbal behaviour-that some utterances are tied to situations, that some utterances are tied to segments in situations, that some predicates have non-contextualised conditions of application, and that use involves causal dependencies. The restrictions from these facts ensure that only reference relations generated by means of rather exceptional proxy functions are compatible with verbal behaviour. I conclude that this allows one to rebuff the Quine-Davidson argument for the indeterminacy of reference, as it were, from within. I moreover tentatively conclude that the line of thought laid out provides good reason for just about anyone to hold that there are facts about reference after all.

2020

Following Klinedinst & Rothschild (2012), we argue that conjunctive readings of sentences where disjunction takes scope above an existential modal have a different explanation from that needed in the case where the modal has wide scope. When disjunction takes wide scope, we argue, following Meyer (2016b), that the conjunctive reading results from a structure involving an occurrence of the lexical item else in the second disjunct (overt, or covert).

Theoria, 2022

Although the historical-causal picture of reference Kripke sketches in Naming and Necessity is highly influential, Kripke in fact says very little about what reference is and how it comes about. In this paper I point out that the possibility of asking WH-questions (i.e., ‘what?’, ‘who?’, ‘which?’) about a sound or inscription pattern (e.g., what does that refer to?) shows that in case of names especially, their reference, if there is one, will be preserved by a causal-historical chain constituted by transmissions of the (physical) patterns themselves, even in absence of language users or any linguistic intentions. I sketch out a causal-informational theory of reference, that holds that the causal aspect of refence transmission is due to two-factors. On the other hand, there are informational chains constituted by data transmissions, on the other, also communicational rules by which speakers can interpret the data as information of something are needed. In most part the causal-informational theory sketched in the paper can be viewed as complementing Kripke’s original causal picture. However, I will argue that Kripke’s account of fixing the reference of proper names in ‘initial baptisms’ is inadequate. I will argue that most cases of seemingly fixing the reference via use of a definite description (e.g., the naming of Neptune) in fact presuppose a prior causal-informational connection to the named object, thus essentially fixing the reference in the same way as in cases of baptism by ostension. I will further argue that in the cases that do not fall into the previous category, the baptism by definite description simply fail to fix any reference. I thus conclude that there is no such thing as fixing the reference of a proper name by definite description.

Second Pisa Colloquium in Logic, Language and Epistemology, 2014