Reference fiction, and omission

In this paper, I argue that sentences that contain ‘omission’ tokens that appear to function as singular terms are meaningful while maintaining the view that omissions are nothing at all or mere absences. I take omissions to be fictional entities and claim that the way in which sentences about fictional characters are true parallels the way in which sentences about omissions are true. I develop a pragmatic account of fictional reference and argue that my fictionalist account of omissions implies a plausible account of the metaphysics of omissions

Omissions, causation, and responsibility - A reply to McLachlan and Coggon

In this paper I discuss a recent exchange of articles between Hugh McLachlan and John Coggon on the relationship between omissions, causation and moral responsibility. My aim is to contribute to their debate by isolating a presupposition I believe they both share, and by questioning that presupposition. The presupposition is that, at any given moment, there are countless things that I am omitting to do. This leads them both to give a distorted account of the relationship between causation and moral or (as the case may be) legal responsibility, and, in the case of Coggon, to claim that the law’s conception of causation is a fiction based on policy. Once it is seen that this presupposition is faulty, we can attain a more accurate view of the logical relationship between causation and moral responsibility in the case of omissions. This is important because it will enable us, in turn, to understand why the law continues to regard omissions as different, both logically and morally, from acts, and why the law seeks to track that logical and moral difference in the legal distinction it draws between withholding life-sustaining measures and euthanasia

Null Subjects in Northeast English

This paper presents data and analysis relating to null subjects in spoken colloquial English. While English is not a „pro-drop? language (i.e. subjects must usually be overt), a corpus of speech collected on Tyneside and Wearside in 2007 shows that null subjects are permitted in finite clauses in certain contexts. This paper analyses these examples and follow-up questionnaires, and compares the data with the other types of null subject described in the literature (pro-drop, topic-drop, early null subjects, aphasics? null subjects and „diary-drop?), ultimately concluding that the colloquial English phenomenon is most closely related to diary- drop

ANALYZING THE WORD CHOICE IN RELATION TO THE SEMANTIC ADJUSTMENT IN THE ENGLISH-INDONESIAN TRANSLATION OF DISNEY’S DONALD DUCK SERIAL COMIC BOOK.

This paper is a qualitative study of the word choice in relation to the semantic adjustment in the Indonesian translation of a Disney’s Donald Duck serial comic book entitled “Misteri Anggrek Rawa” (Mystery of the Swamp Orchid). It is revealed that there are six semantic features found, namely situational meaning, semantic adjustment, semantic omission, semantic change, semantic shift, and mistranslation. Those features may help the readers in understanding the text, but they may also create confusion on the readers of what the text actually is about, and that the change and/or the mistranslation can make the readers misinterpret the meaning

“What do you want me to tell?” The inferential texture of Alice Munro’s ‘Postcard’

This paper considers some of the ways in which ideas from pragmatic stylistics (based here on relevance theory) can be applied in exploring aspects of the production and interpretation of Alice Munro’s story ‘Postcard’. It identifies some features of the story, considers the role of inferential processes in reading, writing and evaluating texts in general, and considers how focusing on inference can help in understanding specific effects of the story on readers. Finally, it considers how focusing on inference can help to account for what Stockwell (2009) terms the ‘texture’ of the story, i.e. what it feels like to engage with the story during and after reading it