The Use of Presuppositions in the Short Story of Zilkê Şixatê (Matchstick)

This study explores the use of presuppositions in the Kurdish short story, Zilkê Şixatê (The Matchstick), which is written in Northern Kurmanji dialect (hence, NK) by Isma’il Hajani. It attempts to determine which type of presupposition is the most recurring one in the short story and why it is so. The data in this study are analyzed descriptively and qualitatively. Yule’s (2006) classification which divides presupposition into six types has been employed: existential, factive, non-factive, lexical, structural, and counterfactual. The data of the research are sentences which contain presupposition triggers (i.e. linguistic forms to mark presuppositions). Applying the formula presented by Oktoma and Mardiyono (2013: 79), the results obtained throughout this paper show that different types of presuppositions have different percentages from the total number of presuppositions. They are (94) in number. It is noted that the most dominant type of presupposition used in the short story is the existential presupposition, manifesting definite descriptions of facts about real life, while the structural presuppositions have the lowest percentage. This shows that much of the story text is written to definitely describe the main theme, the characters and the events as they are. Finally, this study is particularly important because no other such studies have been conducted on the use of presuppositions in any literary work in NK. Therefore, this study occupies a crucial place in the research literature into pragmatic aspects of NK

La pregunta por el sentido de la vida: la articulación esencial entre razón y fe

La filosofía contemporánea parece que ha renunciado pensar racionalmente los grandes temas humanos, incluidos los religiosos, no sólo por desconfiar de la capacidad de solucionarlos, sino por una cuestión más medular: la negación de la racionalidad como principio radical de la realidad. Se analiza este proceso, que conduce a un nihilismo que decepciona incluso a sus mismos autores. Intentamos poner de manifiesto la perenne validez de la cuestión del sentido de la vida examinando lo que supone no plantearla. La identificación de esos supuestos delinea las respuestas posibles a esa pregunta y reclama la recuperación de un saber filosófico sustancial que comience a trazar respuestas.During a process that lasted almost five centuries, philosophers gradually renounced thinking about the great questions that still concern humanity, including the religious ones. The problem is not just a lack of trust in the human ability to solve them but in a kind of conviction that there is no rationality at the base of reality. We deal both with the historical process that led to nihilism and the fact that nihilism was taken as a starting point never proven as valid. We show the validity of the enquiry into the meaning of human existence, some of the philosophical implications in the very fact that we can’t help but posing the question, and the need for philosophy to rediscover herself as a useful discipline for finding significant answers

An Inquisitive Perspective on Modals and Quantifiers

Inquisitive semantics enriches the standard truth-conditional notion of meaning, in order to facilitate an integrated semantic analysis of statements and questions. Taking this richer view on meaning as a starting point, this review presents a new perspective on modal operators and quantifiers, one that has the potential to address a number of challenges for standard semantic analyses of such operators. To illustrate the new perspective, we present an inquisitive take on the semantics of attitude verbs and on quantifiers taking scope out of questions

On Philosophical Heuristics

Philosophy can be regarded as a type of conceptual research subjected to the usual standards of rationality. However, there seems to be no objective and accepted criteria for evaluating and comparing philosophical theories. From a heuristic- and erotetic-based approach, philosophy is here considered a set of second-order reflections that are presupposed by more specific theories; and evaluated by their informativeness, adequateness, cogency, generality, novelty, and presuppositional nature. As a practice, one can proceed upwards (from problems to presuppositions) or downwards (from presuppositions as meaning conditions for assertions under question). But as a product, a philosophical theory is to be assessed as how it helps foster knowledge and assists in learning, posing, and solving new queries

Lifting conditionals to inquisitive semantics

This paper describes how any theory which assigns propositions to conditional sentences can be lifted to the setting of inquisitive semantics, where antecedents and consequents may be associated with multiple propositions. We show that the lifted account improves on the original account in two ways: first, it leads to a better analysis of disjunctive antecedents, which are treated as introducing multiple assumptions; second, it extends the original account to cover two further classes of conditional constructions, namely, unconditionals and conditional questions.

¿Es la Pregunta Compleja una falacia?

La Pregunta Compleja (PC) o Múltiple usualmente ilustrada por medio de preguntas semejantes a ‘¿Has dejado de hacer trampa en el examen?’, ha sido tradicionalmente incluida en los distintos catálogos de falacias. Sin embargo, no hay una teoría unificada del concepto de falacia y en consecuencia, resulta problemático determinar si este tipo de preguntas pueden ser consideradas como falacias. Para resolver esta cuestión, se llevará a cabo una revisión bibliográfica que apunta a reconstruir tres conceptos de falacia bastante representativos dentro de la literatura reciente, a saber, la Definición Estándar de Falacia (SDF) modificada por Hans Hansen y acá denominada Real Definición Estándar de Falacia (RDEF), la propuesta de Douglas Walton y aquella emanada desde la Pragma-Dialéctica (PD), para así contrastar dichas definiciones con los elementos característicos de la PC. Así las cosas, se llegará a que la PC no se puede concebir como falacia bajo la RDEF, pero sí bajo los otros dos enfoques. Sin embargo, se mostrará que esto se da de distintas formas y que además la PC no es per se falaz. Finalmente, se sinterizarán estos resultados en aras de subsanar algunas problemáticas que suscitan los enfoques de Walton y la PD.The Complex or Multiple Question (PC), usually illustrated by questions such as "Have you stopped cheating on the exam?", has traditionally been included in different catalogs of fallacies. However, there is no unified theory of the concept of fallacy; consequently, it is problematic to determine whether these types of questions can be considered as fallacies. To solve this matter, a bibliographic review will be carried out that aims to reconstruct three concepts of fallacy quite representative within the recent literature, namely, the Standard Definition of Fallacy (SDF) modified by Hans Hansen and here called the Real Standard Definition of Fallacy (RDEF), the proposal of Douglas Walton, and that emanated from the Pragma-Dialectic (PD), to contrast these definitions with the characteristic elements of the PC. Thus, it will be concluded that the PC cannot be conceived as a fallacy under the RDEF, but it can be, under the other two approaches. Nevertheless, it will be shown that this occurs in different ways, and that the PC is not per se fallacious. Finally, these results will be synthesized with the aim of correcting some problems raised by the Walton and PD approaches.Departamento de Filosofía (Filosofía, Lógica y Filosofía de la Ciencia, Teoría e Historia de la Educación, Filosofía Moral, Estética y Teoría de las Artes)Máster en Lógica y Filosofía de la Cienci

Specification of agents’ activities in past, present and future

The behaviour of a multi-agent system is driven by messaging. Usually, there is no central dispatcher and each autonomous agent, though resource-bounded, can make less or more rational decisions to meet its own and collective goals. To this end, however, agents must communicate with their fellow agents and account for the signals from their environment. Moreover, in the dynamic, permanently changing world, agents’ behaviour, i.e. their activities, must also be dynamic. By communicating with other fellow agents and with their environment, agents should be able to learn new concepts and enrich their knowledge base. Processes and events that happened in the past may be irrelevant in the present or have a significant impact in the future, and vice versa. Therefore, the fine-grained analysis of agents’ activities as well as events within or be- yond the system is very important so that the system can run smoothly without falling into inconsistencies. Moreover, as the system should communicate with its environment, the analysis should be as close to natural language as possible. The goal of this paper is a proposal for such an analysis. To this end, I apply Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL) because TIL is particularly apt for a fine-grained analysis of processes and events specified in the present, past or future tense with reference to the time when they happened, happen or will happen.Web of Science3011016

Asking and Answering

Questions are everywhere and the ubiquitous activities of asking and answering, as most human activities, are susceptible to failure - at least from time to time. This volume offers several current approaches to the systematic study of questions and the surrounding activities and works toward supporting and improving these activities. The contributors formulate general problems for a formal treatment of questions, investigate specific kinds of questions, compare different frameworks with regard to how they regulate the activities of asking and answering of questions, and situate these activities in a wider framework of cognitive/epistemic discourse. From the perspectives of logic, linguistics, epistemology, and philosophy of language emerges a report on the state of the art of the theory of questions