The proper treatment of egophoricity in Kathmandu Newari

We develop a theory of so-called 'conjunct-disjunct marking', also known as 'egophoricity', in Kathmandu Newari. The signature pattern of egophoricity looks a bit like person agreement: In declaratives, there is a special marker that goes on first person verbs, but not second or third person (e.g. 'I drank-EGO too much'). But in interrogatives, the same marker goes on second person (e.g. 'Did you-EGO drink too much?'). This is called interrogative flip. Egophoric marking also interacts interestingly with the presence of evidential markers, and comes with an implication of knowing self-reference (emphasized in Newari by a restriction to volitional action). Our paper discusses two previous approaches, which we label indexical and evidential, and motivate our account, which we label egophoric. Along the way, we develop a theory of how de se attitudes are communicated.http://eecoppock.info/egophoricity-oup.pdfAccepted manuscrip

A unified non monstrous semantics for third person pronouns

It is common practice in formal semantics to assume that the context specifies an assignment of values to variables and that the same variables that receive contextually salient values when they occur free may also be bound by quantifiers and λs. These assumptions are at work to provide a unified account of free and bound uses of third person pronouns, namely one by which the same lexical item is involved in both uses. One way to pursue this account is to treat quantifiers and λs as monsters in Kaplan’s sense. We argue that this move should be avoided and explore an alternative route based on the idea that there is a variable assignment coordinate in the context and a variable assignment coordinate in the circumstance of evaluation, with the definition of truth in context identifying them. One fundamental challenge that arises in pursuing a unified account is to explain the difference in the way the gender presuppositions of bound and free pronouns project. The proposal that emerges from the attempt to meet this challenge is a non-indexical account of free third person pronouns and a new conception of the role and structure of assignment function

From Semantics to Pragmatics

The topic of this thesis is the distinction between semantics and pragmatics. Semantics is concerned with the literal meanings of expressions, what is explicitly expressed with expressions and providing truth conditions for sentences. While the subject matter of pragmatics, being the more nebulous one, is focused on non-literal meanings of expressions, what is implicitly conveyed with expressions and non-truth-conditional content. In this thesis I will present two theories: David Kaplan’s theory of indexicals and demonstratives and Robert Stalnaker’s assertion theory. The guiding question of this work is how these theorists distinguish semantics from pragmatics. How does the distinction appear in their theories? To point out, neither of the theories is aimed to specifically solve how the distinction is to be made. Kaplan’s aim is to create semantics for indexical expressions, whereas Stalnaker wants to explain how necessary a posteriori identity statements can be informative according to his two-dimensional semantic theory. Despite the differing goals underlying their theories, Kaplan and Stalnaker are not oblivious of the distinction between semantics and pragmatics. In fact, how the distinction is eventually made by these theorists, strongly depends on how each of the theories is built.Tutkielmassani käsittelen semantiikan ja pragmatiikan välistä erottelua. Karkeasti ottaen semantiikalla tarkoitetaan tutkimusalaa, joka käsittelee ilmaisujen kirjaimellista merkitystä, mitä ilmaisuilla eksplisiittisesti ilmaistaan sekä lauseiden totuusehtojen muodostamista. Pragmatiikan alaan lasketaan perinteisesti kuuluvan ilmaisujen ei-kirjaimellisen merkityksen tarkastelun, mitä ilmaisuilla implisiittisesti välitetään sekä lauseiden ei-totuusehdollisen sisällön tarkastelun. Esittelen tutkielmassani kaksi teoriaa: David Kaplanin teorian indeksikaaleista ja demonstratiiveista sekä Robert Stalnakerin teorian siitä, miten väittämä vaikuttaa kontekstiin. Tutkielmani keskeinen kysymys on, miten semantiikan ja pragmatiikan välinen erottelu ilmenee Kaplanin ja Stalnakerin teorioissa. Mainittakoon, että kumpikaan teoria ei ensisijaisesti pyri vastaamaan asettamaani kysymykseen. Kaplanin tarkoitus on osoittaa, että indeksikaalisille ilmaisuille voidaan luoda semantiikka. Stalnaker pyrkii puolestaan esittämään, miten välttämättömät a posteriori identiteettiväitteet voivat olla informatiivisia hänen kehittämän kaksiulotteisen semanttisen teorian mukaan. Erilaisista päämääristä huolimatta sekä Kaplan että Stalnaker ovat varsin tietoisia erottelusta semantiikan ja pragmatiikan välillä, mikä ilmenee erityisesti luvussa 4

Monsters begat by quantifiers?

It is common practice in formal semantics to assume that the context specifies an assignment of values to variables and that the same variables that receive contextually salient values when they occur free may also be bound by quantifiers and λs. These assumptions are at work to provide a unified account of indexical and bound uses of third person pronouns, namely an account by which the same lexical item is involved in both uses. One apparent consequence of this approach is that quantifiers and λs are monsters in Kaplan's sense. We argue that this consequence can, and should, be avoided. We explore an alternative unified account based on the idea that variable assignments occur both as coordinates of the context and as coordinates of the circumstance of evaluation. The outcome is a non indexical account of free third person pronouns and a new conception of the role and structure of assignment functions

Intellectualism and the argument from cognitive science

Intellectualism is the claim that practical knowledge or ‘know-how’ is a kind of propositional knowledge. The debate over Intellectualism has appealed to two different kinds of evidence, semantic and scientific. This paper concerns the relationship between Intellectualist arguments based on truth-conditional semantics of practical knowledge ascriptions, and anti-Intellectualist arguments based on cognitive science and propositional representation. The first half of the paper argues that the anti-Intellectualist argument from cognitive science rests on a naturalistic approach to metaphysics: its proponents assume that findings from cognitive science provide evidence about the nature of mental states. We demonstrate that this fact has been overlooked in the ensuing debate, resulting in inconsistency and confusion. Defenders of the semantic approach to Intellectualism engage with the argument from cognitive science in a way that implicitly endorses this naturalistic metaphysics, and even rely on it to claim that cognitive science support Intellectualism. In the course of their arguments, however, they also reject that scientific findings can have metaphysical import. We argue that this situation is preventing productive debate about Intellectualism, which would benefit from both sides being more transparent about their metaphilosophical assumptions

Mixed Quotation

The central challenge posed by mixed quotation is that it exhibits both regular semantic use and metalinguistic reference, simultaneously. Semanticists disagree considerably on how to capture the interplay between these two meaning aspects. In this case study I present the various semantic approaches to mixed quotation and compare their predictions with respect to empirical phenomena like indexical shifting, projection, and non‐constituent mixed quotation

Tenses, Dates and Times*

This paper presents a theory of utterance content that is neutral with respect to some of the key issues in the debate about the proper semantics of tense. Elaborating on some ideas from Korta & Perry (2011), we defend a proposal according to which utterances of both temporally specific and temporally unspecific sentences have a systematic variety of contents, from utterance-bound to incremental or referential. This analysis will shed some light on the contribution of tense to what is said by an utterance

Indexical Realism by Inter-Agentic Reference

I happen to believe that though human experiences are to be characterized as pluralistic they are all rooted in the one reality. I would assume the thesis of pluralism but how could I maintain my belief in the realism? There are various discussions in favor of realism but they appear to stay within a particular paradigm so to be called “internal realism”. In this paper I would try to justify my belief in the reality by discussing a special use of indexicals. I will argue for my indexical realism by advancing the thesis that indexicals can be used as an inter-agentic referential term. Three arguments for the thesis will be presented. The first argument derives from a revision of Kaplan-Kvart’s notion of exportation. Their notions of exportation of singular terms can be analyzed as intra-agentic exportation in the context of a single speaker and theirs may be revised so as to be an inter-agentic exportation in the context of two speakers who use the same indexicals. The second is an argument from the notion of causation which is specifically characterized in the context of inter-theoretic reference. I will argue that any two theories may each say “this” in order to refer what is beyond its own theory. Two theories address themselves to ‘this’ same thing though what ‘this’ represents in each theory turn out to be different objects all together. The third argument is an argument which is based on a possibility of natural reference. Reference is used to be taken mostly as a 3-place predicate: Abe refers an object oi with an expression ej. The traditional notion of reference is constructive and anthropocentric. But I would argue that natural reference is a reference that we humans come to recognize among denumerably many objects in natural states: at a moment mi in a natural state there is a referential relation among objects o1, o2, o3, . . , oj, o j+1, . . which interact to each other as agents of information processors. Natural reference is an original reference which is naturally given and to which humans are passive as we derivatively refer it by using ‘this’