Download or read book Actuality Inferences written by Prerna Nadathur and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-30 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the phenomenon of actuality inferences, in which claims of ability are-in certain temporal contexts-interpreted as descriptions of actual events, instead of as descriptions of potentialities or possibilities. Although actuality inferences evidently arise in the interaction between modality and aspect, they have long resisted compositional explication in standard treatments of these semantic categories. Prerna Nadathur here pursues a new approach, in which actuality inferences are linked to a novel component in the semantics of ability: causal dependence relations. The account is developed through a comparative, crosslinguistic semantic analysis of three predicate classes that license similar inferences: implicative verbs in Finnish and English, enough/too predicates in French and English, and (modal) ability predicates in French, Hindi, and English. Similarities in the inferential profiles of these predicates are tied to their shared causal background structure, while their differences-including in sensitivity to grammatical aspect-derive from differences in asserted content and associated aspectual class contrasts. The central argument is that a complex causal structure for ability interacts with the compositional requirements of aspect to derive the observed actuality-ability ambiguity. The volume shows that causal structure and causal relationships shape patterns of linguistic inference beyond the overtly causal domain, and thus contributes to a new and growing body of research in which formal, computational causal models are employed as an analytic tool for lexical and compositional semantics.

Download or read book Causality Aspect and Modality in Actuality Inferences written by Prerna Nadathur and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crosslinguistically, expressions of ability exhibit a curious duality of interpretation, in some contexts describing the abilities and potential of an agent, and in others simply describing what the agent did on a particular occasion. In languages that mark grammatical aspect, the alternation between ability and action extends to abilitative uses of the possibility modal, and is governed by aspectual marking (Bhatt, 1999). For instance, imperfectively marked uses of the French modal 'pouvoir' ('can') are compatible with pure, potentially unrealized ability interpretations; by contrast, perfectively marked 'pouvoir' gives rise to actuality entailments, requiring the realization of its complement, and seemingly very little else. An influential line of work seeks to derive actuality entailments in the composition of modality and aspect, treating ability as a type of circumstantial possibility operator, and the perfective aspect as imposing temporal boundaries on eventualities in its scope (Hacquard, 2006, a.o.). This dissertation lays the groundwork for an account that links both the ability and actuality interpretations to a novel component in the semantics of ability: causal dependence. The main idea is that ability modals describe a complex causal structure, in which the (circumstantial) possibility that an agent S will realize an event A(S) obtains in view of the causal dependence of A(S) on an available choice or action for S. This proposal is motivated by philosophical work on ability, which suggests that abilitative possibilities have stronger truth conditions than pure circumstantial possibilities (Kenny, 1976; Brown, 1988). I develop the argument for a causal account of ability by comparing actuality inferences to the interpretation of two other types of complement-taking predicates: implicative verbs (e.g., 'manage'; Karttunen, 1971) and 'enough' and 'too' predicates (e.g., 'be fast enough'; Meier, 2003). I show that, in both cases, complement inferences follow from the combination of two things: (i) the presupposition that some prerequisite action for an agent is causally necessary and causally sufficient for the complement, and (ii) a determination of whether or not the prerequisite action occurred. Implicative verbs resolve the prerequisite as asserted content, deriving their characteristic complement entailments as causal consequences. 'Enough' and 'too' constructions, by contrast, simply indicate that the prerequisite action is available to the agent. Drawing on theories of aspectual coercion (Moens and Steedman, 1988, a.o.), I argue that perfective aspect interacts with this 'availability' assertion by systematically forcing an interpretation on which the agent instantiates the prerequisite. As a result, imperfectively marked 'enough' and 'too' constructions imply that their complements are possible, but perfectively marked constructions entail their complements as causal consequences of the prerequisite, in the same way as implicative verbs. 'Enough' and 'too' constructions thus represent a special type of ability attribution, which is specific about the nature of the causal prerequisite for the ability-complement. Pursuing this analysis, the actuality inferences of ability modals result not just from the composition of modality and aspect, but more specifically from the composition of aspect with the specific type of complex causal possibility conveyed by ability predicates. I formalize causal dependence relations over the structure of a causal model which represents causal connections between events as directed links in a graphical network (Pearl, 2000; Schulz, 2011; Kaufmann, 2013). In such a model, the felicity conditions imposed by causal necessity/sufficiency presuppositions depend crucially on the discourse background. Grammatical aspect then selects for a particular interpretation of the abilitative causal structure by selecting for a particular type of background. I argue that this view of ability is a natural extension of the standard modal theory, and suggest that formal models of causation are one way of representing reasoning about the 'normal' developments of situations ('stereotypicality'; Kratzer 1981).

Download or read book Metonymy and Pragmatic Inferencing written by Klaus-Uwe Panther and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2003-07-17 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, conceptual metonymy has been recognized as a cognitive phenomenon that is as fundamental as metaphor for reasoning and the construction of meaning. The thoroughly revised chapters in the present volume originated as presentations in a workshop organized by the editors for the 7th International Pragmatics Conference held in Budapest in 2000. They constitute, according to an anonymous reviewer, "an interesting contribution to both cognitive linguistics and pragmatics." The contributions aim to bridge the gap, and encourage discussion, between cognitive linguists and scholars working in a pragmatic framework. Topics include the metonymic basis of explicature and implicature, the role of metonymically-based inferences in speech act and discourse interpretation, the pragmatic meaning of grammatical constructions, the impact of metonymic mappings on and their interaction with grammatical structure, the role of metonymic inferencing and implicature in linguistic change, and the comparison of metonymic principles across languages and different cultural settings.

Download or read book History and Future written by David J. Staley and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps the most important histiographic innovation of the twentieth century was the application of the historical method to wider and more expansive areas of the past. Where historians once defined the study of history strictly in terms of politics and the actions and decisions of Great Men, historians today are just as likely to inquire into a much wider domain of the past, from the lives of families and peasants, to more abstract realms such as the history of mentalities and emotions. Historians have applied their method to a wider variety of subjects; regardless of the topic, historians ask questions, seek evidence, draw inferences from that evidence, create representations, and subject these representations to the scrutiny of other historians. This book severs the historical method from the past altogether by applying that method to a domain outside of the past. The goal of this book is to apply history-as-method to the study of the future, a subject matter domain that most historians have traditionally and vigorously avoided. Historians have traditionally rejected the idea that we can use the study of history to think about the future. The book reexamines this long held belief, and argues that the historical method is an excellent way to think about and represent the future. At the same time, the book asserts that futurists should not view the future as a scientist might--aiming for predictions and certainties--but rather should view the future in the same way that an historian views the past.

Download or read book Epistemic Uses of Imagination written by Christopher Badura and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-06-13 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores a topic that has recently become the subject of increased philosophical interest: how can imagination be put to epistemic use? Though imagination has long been invoked in contexts of modal knowledge, in recent years philosophers have begun to explore its capacity to play an epistemic role in a variety of other contexts as well. In this collection, the contributors address an assortment of issues relating to epistemic uses of imagination, and in particular, they take up the ways in which our imaginings must be constrained so as to justify beliefs and give rise to knowledge. These constraints are explored across several different contexts in which imagination is appealed to for justification, namely reasoning, modality and modal knowledge, thought experiments, and knowledge of self and others. Taken as a whole, the contributions in this volume break new ground in explicating when and how imagination can be epistemically useful. Epistemic Uses of Imagination will be of interest to scholars and advanced students who are working on imagination, as well as those working more broadly in epistemology, aesthetics, and philosophy of mind.

Download or read book Logic The judgement concept and inference written by Christoph Sigwart and published by . This book was released on 1895 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Ontology written by Dale Jacquette and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosophical study of what exists and what it means for something to exist is one of the core concerns of metaphysics. This introduction to ontology provides readers with a comprehensive account of the central ideas of the subject of being. This book is divided into two parts. The first part explores questions of pure philosophical ontology: what is meant by the concept of being, why there exists something rather than nothing, and why there is only one logically contingent actual world. Dale Jacquette shows how logic provides the only possible answers to these fundamental problems. The second part of the book examines issues of applied scientific ontology. Jacquette offers a critical survey of some of the most influential traditional ontologies, such as the distinction between appearance and reality, and the categories of substance and transcendence. The ontology of physical entities - space, time, matter and causation - is examined as well as the ontology of abstract entities such as sets, numbers, properties, relations and propositions. The special problems posed by the subjectivity of mind and of postulating a god are also explored in detail. The final chapter examines the ontology of culture, language and art.

Download or read book The Diversity of Irony written by Angeliki Athanasiadou and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-02-24 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the figure of irony has enjoyed extensive attention through important contributions to the diverse literatures addressing figurative thought and language, it still remains relatively in the background compared to other figures such as metaphor and metonymy. The present volume, together with a 2017 collection by Angeliki Athanasiadou and Herbert L. Colston, aims to the further exploration of verbal and situational irony, its gestural accompaniments, its comprehension and interpretation, its constructional diversity and its cooperation with other figures such as metaphor and hyperbole. The present volume is a highly interesting collection of chapters dealing with both theoretical investigations and descriptive applications of a central figure pervading human thought and language. Its aim is to draw more attention to irony’s diversity and its concomitant connections to other aspects of figurativeness.

Download or read book Essays in Logic and Ontology written by Jacek Malinowski and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2006 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of this book is to present essays centered upon the subjects of Formal Ontology and Logical Philosophy. The idea of investigating philosophical problems by means of logical methods was intensively promoted in Torun by the Department of Logic of Nicolaus Copernicus University during last decade. Another aim of this book is to present to the philosophical and logical audience the activities of the Torunian Department of Logic during this decade. The papers in this volume contain the results concerning Logic and Logical Philosophy, obtained within the confines of the projects initiated by the Department of Logic and other research projects in which the Torunian Department of Logic took part.

Download or read book Evolutionary Social Theory and Political Economy written by Clifford S. Poirot Jr. and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-02-27 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolutionary Social Theory and Political Economy traces the origins, extension, marginalization and revival of evolutionary approaches to social theory from the Enlightenment through the beginning of the 21st century. It demonstrates how changes in understandings of social evolution corresponded to changes in definitions of Political Economy and how both reflected changes in the Philosophy of Science. This book is written for students and researchers alike in all the social sciences. Economists will benefit from understanding how ideas about evolution in Economics corresponded to ideas about evolution in other social sciences, and Social Scientists outside of Economics will benefit from understanding how Economics has related to their discipline.

Download or read book Handbook of Pragmatics written by Jan-Ola Östman and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2020-01-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This encyclopaedia of one of the major fields of language studies is a continuously updated source of state-of-the-art information for anyone interested in language use. The IPrA Handbook of Pragmatics provides easy access – for scholars with widely divergent backgrounds but with convergent interests in the use and functioning of language – to the different topics, traditions and methods which together make up the field of pragmatics, broadly conceived as the cognitive, social and cultural study of language and communication, i.e. the science of language use. The Handbook of Pragmatics is a unique reference work for researchers, which has been expanded and updated continuously with annual installments since 1995. Also available as Online Resource: benjamins.com/online/hop/

Download or read book Essays on Truth and Reality written by F. H. Bradley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-12-22 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays, first published in 1914, by influential British Idealist philosopher F. H. Bradley (1846-1924).

Download or read book Essays on Truth and Reality written by F ..... -H ..... Bradley and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Truth and Reality written by F. H. Bradley and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Inference to the Best Explanation written by Peter Lipton and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2004 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inference to the Best Explanation is an unrivalled exposition of a theory of particular interest to students both of epistemology and the philosophy of science.

Download or read book Political Communication Culture and Society written by Patricia Moy and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-29 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As an installment of Routledge’s Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Electronic Media Research Series, Political Communication, Culture, and Society focuses on the expansive concept of political communication and illuminates the processes, contents, and effects related to myriad forms and vehicles of political communication. Whether involving traditional print or broadcast media, social media platforms, or face-to-face discussions, political communication today has shaped how we perceive others and understand the world around us, including our place in it, and ultimately, how we engage with others as social, cultural, and political beings. Hailing from multiple locations and drawing on a multitude of theories as well as quantitative and qualitative methodologies, the volume’s contributors examine how communication intersects with politics in a broad swath of contexts, ranging from climate change to migration to the notion of political correctness. Collectively they ask and answer questions about how today’s richly textured media ecology shapes our political world and how political messages can fuel – and ameliorate – the issues that deeply cleave societies around the globe. Relevant to scholars and students of journalism, media studies, and communication sciences, this volume will help interested readers better understand today’s increasingly complex sociocultural world through the lens of political communication.

Download or read book The Psychological Foundations of Evidence Law written by Michael J Saks and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-01-22 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identifies and evaluates the psychological choices implicit in the rules of evidence Evidence law is meant to facilitate trials that are fair, accurate, and efficient, and that encourage and protect important societal values and relationships. In pursuit of these often-conflicting goals, common law judges and modern drafting committees have had to perform as amateur applied psychologists. Their task has required them to employ what they think they know about the ability and motivations of witnesses to perceive, store, and retrieve information; about the effects of the litigation process on testimony and other evidence; and about our capacity to comprehend and evaluate evidence. These are the same phenomena that cognitive and social psychologists systematically study. The rules of evidence have evolved to restrain lawyers from using the most robust weapons of influence, and to direct judges to exclude certain categories of information, limit it, or instruct juries on how to think about it. Evidence law regulates the form of questions lawyers may ask, filters expert testimony, requires witnesses to take oaths, and aims to give lawyers and factfinders the tools they need to assess witnesses’ reliability. But without a thorough grounding in psychology, is the “common sense” of the rulemakers as they create these rules always, or even usually, correct? And when it is not, how can the rules be fixed? Addressed to those in both law and psychology, The Psychological Foundations of Evidence Law draws on the best current psychological research-based knowledge to identify and evaluate the choices implicit in the rules of evidence, and to suggest alternatives that psychology reveals as better for accomplishing the law’s goals.