Semantics and Ontology:\ud On the Modal Structure of an Epistemic Theory of Meaning

In this paper I shall confront three basic questions.\ud First, the relevance of epistemic structures, as formalized\ud and dealt with by current epistemic logics, for a\ud general Theory of meaning. Here I acknowledge M. Dummett"s\ud idea that a systematic account of what is meaning of\ud an arbitrary language subsystem must especially take into\ud account the inferential components of meaning itself. That\ud is, an analysis of meaning comprehension processes,\ud given in terms of epistemic logics and semantics for epistemic\ud notions.\ud The second and third questions relate to the ontological\ud and epistemological framework for this approach.\ud Concerning the epistemological aspects of an epistemic\ud theory of meaning, the question is: how epistemic logics\ud can eventually account for the informative character of\ud meaning comprehension processes. "Information� seems\ud to be built in the very formal structure of epistemic processes,\ud and should be exhibited in modal and possibleworld\ud semantics for propositional knowledge and belief.\ud However, it is not yet clear what is e.g. a possible world.\ud That is: how it can be defined semantically, other than by\ud accessibility rules which merely define it by considering its\ud set-theoretic relations with other sets-possible worlds.\ud Therefore, it is not clear which is the epistemological status\ud of propositional information contained in the structural\ud aspects of possible world semantics. The problem here\ud seems to be what kind of meaning one attributes to the\ud modal notion of possibility, thus allowing semantical and\ud synctactical selectors for possibilities. This is a typically\ud Dummett-style problem.\ud The third question is linked with this epistemological\ud problem, since it is its ontological counterpart. It concerns\ud the limits of the logical space and of logical semantics for a\ud of meaning. That is, it is concerned with the kind of\ud structure described by inferential processes, thought, in a\ud fregean perspective, as pre-conditions of estentional\ud treatment of meaning itself. The second and third questions\ud relate to some observations in Wittgenstein"s Tractatus.\ud I shall also try to show how their behaviour limits the\ud explicative power of some semantics for epistemic logics\ud (Konolige"s and Levesque"s for knowledge and belief)

Equilibrium Selection Through Incomplete Information in Coordination Games: An Experimental Study

We perform an experiment on a pure coordination game with uncertainty about the payoffs. Our game is closely related to models that have been used in many macroeconomic and financial applications to solve problems of equilibrium indeterminacy. In our experiment, each subject receives a noisy signal about the true payoffs. This game (inspired by the “global” games of Carlsson and van Damme, Econometrica, 61, 989–1018, 1993) has a unique strategy profile that survives the iterative deletion of strictly dominated strategies (thus a unique Nash equilibrium). The equilibrium outcome coincides, on average, with the risk-dominant equilibrium outcome of the underlying coordination game. In the baseline game, the behavior of the subjects converges to the theoretical prediction after enough experience has been gained. The data (and the comments) suggest that this behavior can be explained by learning. To test this hypothesis, we use a different game with incomplete information, related to a complete information game where learning and prior experiments suggest a different behavior. Indeed, in the second treatment, the behavior did not converge to equilibrium within 50 periods in some of the sessions.We also run both games under complete information. The results are sufficiently similar between complete and incomplete information to suggest that risk-dominance is also an important part of the explanation.Publicad

The use of colloquial words in advanced French interlanguage

This article addresses the issue of underrepresentation or avoidance of colloquial words in a cross-sectional corpus of advanced French interlanguage (IL) of 29 Dutch L1 speakers and in a longitudinal corpus of 6 Hiberno-Irish English L1 speakers compared with a control of 6 native speakers of French. The main independent variable analysed in the latter corpus is the effect of spending a year in a francophone environment. This analysis is supplemented by a separate study of sociobiographical and psychological factors that affect the use of colloquial vocabulary in the cross-sectional corpus. Colloquial words are not exceptionally complex morphologically and present no specific grammatical difficulties, yet they are very rare in our data. Multivariate regression analyses suggest that only active authentic communication in the target language (TL) predicts the use of colloquial lexemes in the cross-sectional corpus. This result was confirmed in the longitudinal corpus where a t-test showed that the proportion of colloquial lexemes increased significantly after a year abroad