Showing papers on "Truth condition published in 2019"
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TL;DR: Light is shed on the role of distributional semantics in a broader theory of language and cognition, its relationship to formal semantics, and its place in computational models.
Abstract: Distributional semantics has had enormous empirical success in Computational Linguistics and Cognitive Science in modeling various semantic phenomena, such as semantic similarity, and distributional models are widely used in state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing systems. However, the theoretical status of distributional semantics within a broader theory of language and cognition is still unclear: What does distributional semantics model? Can it be, on its own, a fully adequate model of the meanings of linguistic expressions? The standard answer is that distributional semantics is not fully adequate in this regard, because it falls short on some of the central aspects of formal semantic approaches: truth conditions, entailment, reference, and certain aspects of compositionality. We argue that this standard answer rests on a misconception: These aspects do not belong in a theory of expression meaning, they are instead aspects of speaker meaning, i.e., communicative intentions in a particular context. In a slogan: words do not refer, speakers do. Clearing this up enables us to argue that distributional semantics on its own is an adequate model of expression meaning. Our proposal sheds light on the role of distributional semantics in a broader theory of language and cognition, its relationship to formal semantics, and its place in computational models.
12 citations
01 May 2019
TL;DR: This paper argued that truth conditions, entailment, reference, and compositionality do not belong in a theory of expression meaning, they are instead aspects of speaker meaning, i.e., communicative intentions in a particular context.
Abstract: Distributional semantics has had enormous empirical success in Computational Linguistics and Cognitive Science in modeling various semantic phenomena, such as semantic similarity, and distributional models are widely used in state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing systems. However, the theoretical status of distributional semantics within a broader theory of language and cognition is still unclear: What does distributional semantics model? Can it be, on its own, a fully adequate model of the meanings of linguistic expressions? The standard answer is that distributional semantics is not fully adequate in this regard, because it falls short on some of the central aspects of formal semantic approaches: truth conditions, entailment, reference, and certain aspects of compositionality. We argue that this standard answer rests on a misconception: These aspects do not belong in a theory of expression meaning, they are instead aspects of speaker meaning, i.e., communicative intentions in a particular context. In a slogan: words do not refer, speakers do. Clearing this up enables us to argue that distributional semantics on its own is an adequate model of expression meaning. Our proposal sheds light on the role of distributional semantics in a broader theory of language and cognition, its relationship to formal semantics, and its place in computational models.
11 citations
08 Mar 2019
TL;DR: This article developed a vector semantics for language based on the simply typed lambda calculus models of natural language, which can be applied to entailment between a corpus and a sentence and provide examples.
Abstract: Vector models of language are based on the contextual aspects of language, the distributions of words and how they co-occur in text. Truth conditional models focus on the logical aspects of language, compositional properties of words and how they compose to form sentences. In the truth conditional approach, the denotation of a sentence determines its truth conditions, which can be taken to be a truth value, a set of possible worlds, a context change potential, or similar. In the vector models, the degree of co-occurrence of words in context determines how similar the meanings of words are. In this paper, we put these two models together and develop a vector semantics for language based on the simply typed lambda calculus models of natural language. We provide two types of vector semantics: a static one that uses techniques familiar from the truth conditional tradition and a dynamic one based on a form of dynamic interpretation inspired by Heim’s context change potentials. We show how the dynamic model can be applied to entailment between a corpus and a sentence and provide examples.
9 citations
TL;DR: A theory of metaphysical explanation which offers truth conditions for claims about what metaphysically explains what that are not couched in terms of grounding relations, but are instead couchedIn terms of, inter alia, psychological facts.
Abstract: Many think that sentences about what metaphysically explains what are true iff there exist grounding relations. This suggests that sceptics about grounding should be error theorists about metaphysical explanation. We think there is a better option: a theory of metaphysical explanation which offers truth conditions for claims about what metaphysically explains what that are not couched in terms of grounding relations, but are instead couched in terms of, inter alia, psychological facts. We do not argue that our account is superior to grounding-based accounts. Rather, we offer it to those already ill-disposed towards grounding.
9 citations
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TL;DR: This work proposes a version of the redundancy theory according to which ‘it is true that Desdemona loves Cassio’ expresses the same proposition as ‘Desdemona love CassIO’, thereby defusing many standard criticisms of the redundancies theory.
Abstract: Renewed worries about the unity of the proposition have been taken as a crucial stumbling block for any traditional conception of propositions. These worries are often framed in terms of how entities independent of mind and language can have truth conditions: why is the proposition that Desdemona loves Cassio true if and only if she loves him? I argue that the best understanding of these worries shows that they should be solved by our theory of truth and not our theory of content. Specifically, I propose a version of the redundancy theory according to which ‘it is true that Desdemona loves Cassio’ expresses the same proposition as ‘Desdemona loves Cassio’. Surprisingly, this variant of the redundancy theory treats ‘is true’ as an ordinary predicate of the language, thereby defusing many standard criticisms of the redundancy theory.
9 citations
TL;DR: Neither 24- nor 36-month-olds could successfully recruit known adjectival semantics in an online task to home in on an animate nominal referent, raising fundamental questions about the infant's developing lexicon and the linguistic and conceptual mechanisms at play in the process of word learning.
6 citations
TL;DR: This paper proposed a semantic representation of metalinguistic "if-you-like" conditional clauses, which takes on board a characterization of conditionality that departs from lexico-grammatical conventions, such that conditionals of the form 'if p, q' no longer bear a one-to-one correspondence with 'conditional' truth conditions.
Abstract: This paper aims to bridge the relationship between metalinguistic 'if you like' as a non-propositional discourse marker and its conditional counterparts. This paper claims that metalinguistic 'if you like' is polysemous between a hedge that denotes the speaker's reduced commitment to some aspect of the main clause, and an optional yet potential conditional reading that interlocutors can legitimately draw on in interaction which is brought about due to the 'if p, q' sentence form. That is, although the metalinguistic reading is most likely obtained automatically by default, it also carries an available conditional reading that is akin to other metalinguistic conditional clauses such as 'if you see what I mean'. Next, a semantic representation of metalinguistic 'if you like' is developed that takes on board a characterization of conditionality that departs from lexico-grammatical conventions, such that conditionals of the form 'if p, q' no longer bear a one-to-one correspondence with 'conditional' truth conditions. Employing a radical contextualist semantic framework in which the unit of truth-conditional analysis is not constrained to the sentence from, utterances employing metalinguistic 'if you like' are given a semantic representation such that the if-clause does not contribute propositional content, yet they also maintain their status as conditionals as the sentence form gives rise to a potential conditional secondary meaning.
4 citations
TL;DR: An overview of so‐called homogeneity effects is presented, arguably a pervasive feature of natural language, which has reflexes in various domains and opens up a prospect for a unified analysis of phenomena that were hitherto viewed in quite different terms.
Abstract: Natural language sentences in which a property is ascribed to a plurality of objects have truth conditions that are not complementary with the truth conditions of the negations of such sentences. Starting from this observation, this paper presents an overview of so-called homogeneity effects. Arguably a pervasive feature of natural language, homogeneity has reflexes in various domains and opens up a prospect for a unified analysis of phenomena that were hitherto viewed in quite different terms.
3 citations
TL;DR: This paper shall present a problem for Ludlow’s position and show how resolving this problem leads to an alternative picture of how the meaning of a sentence may be truth-conditionally specified with all relevant dynamic features of the lexicon retained.
Abstract: A fundamental principle of all truth-conditional approaches to semantics is that the meanings of sentences of natural language can be compositionally specified in terms of truth conditions, where t...
3 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the meaning of a sentence is not identified with its truth conditions, but with its (potential) impact on people's intentional states, and an analysis of the semantics of these adjectives in the framework of update semantics is presented.
Abstract: Our main concern in this paper is the semantics of predicates of personal taste. However, in order to see these predicates in the right perspective, we had to broaden the scope to the wider class of relative gradable adjectives. We present an analysis of the meaning of these adjectives in the framework of update semantics. In this framework the meaning of a sentence is not identified with its truth conditions, but with its (potential) impact on people’s intentional states. In this respect, an important characteristic of relative gradable adjectives is the interplay between their evaluative features and people’s expectations. The dynamic set-up also makes it possible (a) to model the interpretation of a relative gradable adjective without supposing that the context always supplies a ‘cut-off’ point determining its application, and (b) to deal in a pragmatic way with situations in which the Sorites paradox arises.
2 citations
01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: This paper revisited familiar arguments against the material conditional as a psychologically plausible basis for the semantics of conditionals and defended the assumption that conditionals lend themselves to a truth-conditional treatment.
Abstract: Two key questions that have plagued philosophical and linguistic debates on the meanings of conditionals are: (i) do conditionals have truth conditions? And if so, (ii) what are these truth conditions? This chapter begins by revisiting familiar arguments against the material conditional as a psychologically plausible basis for the semantics of conditionals. It also defends the assumption that conditionals lend themselves to a truth-conditional treatment, thus rejecting the no-truth value account of conditionals, arguing against those views that combat the psychological plausibility of applying truth conditions to counterfactual conditionals. It then moves to current mainstream views on the semantics of conditionals, including the more philosophically-oriented Lewis-Stalnaker truth conditions using possible-worlds semantics, and the view most dominantly followed in linguistics, the ‘restrictor view’ from Kratzer. It settles on adopting Stalnakerian truth conditions for their flexibility in operating at different levels of representation, before finishing by reflecting on the scope of analysis of each of the main contenders.
01 Jan 2019
Abstract: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS --------------------------------------------------------------------------------iii I. A SEMANTICS OF SLURS FOR ADDRESSING MORAL OBJECTIONABLENESS -----1 II. JESHON’S THREE-COMPONENT EXPRESSIVISM ------------------------------------------13 II.1 SLUR CREATION AND BIGOTRY FORMATION -------------------------------------------20 III. SUBSTITUTIVITY PROBLEMS FOR GROUP-DESIGNATION ---------------------------21 IV. HOM AND MAY’S FICTIONALISM ------------------------------------------------------------24 V. POSSIBLE OBJECTIONS TO HOM AND MAY’S FICTIONALISM ------------------------27 VI. HOM AND MAY’S FICTIONALISM AS A SUPPLEMENT FOR JESHION’S EXPRESSIVIST GROUP-DESIGNATION LEVEL -------------------------------------------------29 VII. CONCLUDING REMARKS ------------------------------------------------------------------------31 LIST OF REFERENCES ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------33 VITA --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------35
TL;DR: This paper showed that participants are highly sensitive to task features when they compute the truth value of sentences with appositives and also, crucially, with conjunctions, even when the appositive or one conjunct is patently false.
Abstract: The semantic and pragmatic contribution of appositives to their containing sentence is a subject of continuing debate. While unidimensional semantic accounts propose that appositives contribute their truth conditions to their containing sentence, multidimensional accounts predict that they do not. In three experiments, we directly compared judgments of the truth of sentences containing appositives and sentences containing conjunctions. Our findings contribute both a methodological and a theoretical point. First, we show that no conclusions about the truth-conditional contributions of appositives can be drawn from experimental work without further investigation of how participants provide truth value judgments for complex sentences. Second, we show that while appositives appear to contribute truth values to their containing sentences, participants are highly sensitive to task features when they compute the truth value of sentences with appositives and also, crucially, with conjunctions. Specifically, we show that both sentences containing appositives and those containing conjunctions can be judged true even when the appositive or one conjunct is patently false. We conclude that it is unlikely that these results reflect semantic judgments, and suggest that they reflect truth only at the speech-act level.
TL;DR: It is argued that while truth-Conditional semantics in generative linguistics provides lots of good semantic explanations, truth-conditions do not play an important role in these explanations, and the best explanations of semantic anomaly and entailment for these expressions are non-truth-conditional.
Abstract: In this paper, I argue that while truth-conditional semantics in generative linguistics provides lots of good semantic explanations, truth-conditions do not play an important role in these explanations. That is, the fact that expressions have the particular truthconditional contents (extensions or intensions) they have does not even partly explain facts about semantic phenomena. Rather, explanations of semantic phenomena appeal to extra-truth-conditional properties attributed to expressions via their lexical entries. Focusing on recent truth-conditional work on gradable adjectives and degree modifiers by Kennedy and McNally (Language 81:345–381, 2005), I show that the best explanations of semantic anomaly and entailment for these expressions are non-truth-conditional—they do not depend on the fact that these expressions have the truth-conditional contents they have. I then provide reasons for thinking that the point generalizes beyond gradable adjectives and degree modifiers to other expressions, and beyond anomaly and entailment to other semantic phenomena. Truth-conditional content, generally, is extrasemantic.