(Close) the Door, the King (is Going): The Development of Elliptical Resolution in Bha Mīmāṃsā

This paper examines three commentaries on the Śabdapariccheda in Kumārila Bhaṭṭa’s Ślokavārttika, along with the the seventeenth century Bha Mīmāṃsā work, the Mānameyodaya. The focus is the Mīmāṃsā principle that only sentences communicate qualified meanings and Kumārila’s discussion of a potential counter-example to this claim–single words which appear to communicate such content. I argue that there is some conflict among commentators over precisely what Kumārila describes with the phrase sāmarthyād anumeyetvād, although he is most likely describing ellipsis completion through arthāpatti. The paper attempts both a cogent exegesis and philosophical evaluation of the Bha Mīmāṃsā view of ellipsis completion, arguing that there remain internal tensions in the account of ellipsis preferred by the Bha, tensions which are not entirely resolved even by the late date of the Mānameyodaya

The Cow is to be Tied Up: Sort-Shifting in Classical Indian Philosophy

This paper undertakes textual exegesis and rational reconstruction of Mukula Bhaṭṭa’s Abhidhā-vṛttta-mātṛkā, or “The Fundamentals of the Communicative Function.” The treatise was written to refute Ānandavardhana’s claim, made in the Dhvanyāloka, that there is a third “power” of words, vyañjanā (suggestion), beyond the two already accepted by traditional Indian philosophy: abhidhā (denotation) and lakṣaṇā(indication).1 I argue that the explanation of lakṣaṇā as presented in his text contains internal tensions, although it may still be a compelling response to Ānandavardhana

Mukulabhaṭṭa\u27s Defense of LakṣaṆā: How We Use Words to Mean Something Else, But Not Everything Else

We frequently use single words or expressions to mean multiple things, depending upon context. I argue that a plausible model of this phenomenon, known as laks{dot below}aN{dot below}ā by Indian philosophers, emerges in the work of ninth-century Kashmiri Mukulabhat{dot below}t{dot below}a. His model of laks{dot below}aN{dot below}ā is sensitive to the lexical and syntactic requirements for sentence meaning, the interpretive unity guiding a communicative act, and the nuances of creative language use found in poetry. After outlining his model of laks{dot below}aN{dot below}ā, I show how arthāpatti, or presumption, forms the basis of both semantic and pragmatic processes in this approach. I employ a model from contemporary linguist James Pustejovsky as one way of reconstructing Mukulabhat{dot below}t{dot below}a\u27s analysis. Finally, I argue that presumption is responsible for the wide range of interpretations in creative uses of language, and that our interpretations are constrained, through defeasible in a way that our decodings of literal meanings typically are not

Speaking indirectly : theories of non-literal speech in Indian philosophy

textHow do hearers recognize when someone is speaking figuratively, and how do they recover the content--whatever it is--of an utterance? "Speaking Indirectly" explores this question in Indian philosophy, showing along the way that it is a helpful conversation partner with Western philosophy of language. Focusing on the debate between ninth-century Indian philosophers Mukulabhatt̤a and Ānandavardhana about competing explanations of non-literal meaning, I argue that Mukulabhatt̤a's proposal can be understood in the spirit of Gricean pragmatics, and is broadly successful. I also show that he tacitly appeals to reasoning known as arthāpatti to explain the interpretive process, a process which I conclude is a version of inference to the best explanation. I also employ contemporary conceptual tools, such as the theory of sort-shifting, to illustrate the plausibility of Mukulabhatt̤a's analysis of non-literal speech. A significant aspect of my dissertation is a new, philosophically informed, English translation of Mukulabhatt̤a's Sanskrit text, the Abhidhā-vṛtta-mātṛkā (Fundamentals of the Communicative Function).Philosoph

Recall on incompleted and completed sentences by weak and strong ego strength subjects under ambiguous and relaxed conditions.

Thesis (M.S.

Metonymy and Metaphor as Verbal Postulation: The Epistemic Status of Non-Literal Speech in Indian Philosophy

In this paper, I examine Kumārila Bhaṭṭa's account of figurative language in Tantravārttika 1.4.11-17, arguing that, for him, both metonymy (lakṣaṇā) and metaphor (gauṇa-vṛtti) crucially involve verbal postulation (śrutârthāpatti), a knowledge-conducive cognitive process which draws connections between concepts without appeal to speaker intention, but through compositional and contextual elements. It is with the help of this cognitive process that we can come to have knowledge of what is meant by a sentence in context. In addition, the paper explores the relationship between metonymy and metaphor, the extent to which putatively literal language involves metonymy, and the objective constraints for metaphorical interpretation

The Pragma-Dialectics of Dispassionate Discourse: Early Nyāya Argumentation Theory

Analytic philosophers have, since the pioneering work of B.K. Matilal, emphasized the contributions of Nyāya philosophers to what contemporary philosophy considers epistemology. More recently, scholarly work demonstrates the relevance of their ideas to argumentation theory, an interdisciplinary area of study drawing on epistemology as well as logic, rhetoric, and linguistics. This paper shows how early Nyāya theorizing about argumentation, from Vātsyāyana to Jayanta Bhaṭṭa, can fruitfully be juxtaposed with the pragma-dialectic approach to argumentation pioneered by Frans van Eemeren. I illustrate the implications of this analysis with a case study from Jayanta Bhaṭṭa’s satirical play, Much Ado about Religion (Āgamaḍambara)