Table Of ContentOUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/29/2018, SPi
Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/29/2018, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/29/2018, SPi
Beyond Semantics
and Pragmatics
edited by
Gerhard Preyer
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/29/2018, SPi
3
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/29/2018, SPi
Contents
List of Contributors vii
Introduction: Linguistic Structure and Meaning 1
Gerhard Preyer
Part I. Explaining Pragmatic Phenomena
1. Two Questions about Interpretive Effects 9
Robert J. Stainton and Christopher Viger
2. Exaggeration and Invention 32
Kent Bach
3. Calculability, Convention, and Conversational Implicature 49
Wayne A. Davis
4. Presupposition Triggering and Disambiguation 78
Adam Sennet
5. Discourse, Context, and Coherence: The Grammar of Prominence 97
Una Stojnić
6. Socializing Pragmatics 125
William B. Starr
Part II. Intentions and the Limits of Meaning
7. Varieties of Intentionalism 147
Jessica Keiser
8. Showing, Expressing, and Figuratively Meaning 157
Mitchell Green
9. Taking Perspective 174
Madeleine Arseneault
10. Perspectives and Slurs 187
Claudia Bianchi
Part III. Cognitive Science Connections
11. Composing Meaning and Thinking 201
Roberto G. de Almeida
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/29/2018, SPi
vi Contents
12. About Convention and Grammar 230
Michael Glanzberg
13. On Convention and Coherence 261
Andrew Kehler and Jonathan Cohen
14. Convention, Intention, and the Conversational Record 284
Mandy Simons
Part IV. New Frontiers in Semantics
15. Issues for Meaning: Conventions, Intentions, and Coherence 305
Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone
Index 319
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/29/2018, SPi
List of Contributors
Madeleine Arseneault, Philosophy, Suny—The State University of New York at
New Paltz, New York
Kent Bach, Philosophy, San Francisco State University
Claudia Bianchi, Philosophy, Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milano
Jonathan Cohen, Philosophy, University of California San Diego
Wayne A. Davis, Philosophy, Georgetown University
Roberto G. de Almeida, Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal
Michael Glanzberg, Philosophy, Northwestern University, Illinois
Mitchell Green, Philosophy, University of Connecticut
Andrew Kehler, Linguistics, University of California, San Diego
Jessica Keiser, Philosophy, Yale University
Ernie Lepore, Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Rutgers University, New Jersey
Gerhard Preyer, Sociology, Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main
Adam Sennet, Philosophy, University of California, Davis
Mandy Simons, Linguistics and Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University
Robert J. Stainton, Philosophy, Western University, Ontario
William B. Starr, Philosophy, Cornell Philosophy, New York
Una Stojnić, Philosophy, Columbia University, New York
Matthew Stone, Computer Science, Rutgers University, New Jersey
Christopher Viger, Philosophy, Western University, Ontario
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/29/2018, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/29/2018, SPi
Introduction
Linguistic Structure and Meaning
Gerhard Preyer
The study of meaning in language embraces a diverse range of problems and methods.
Philosophers think through the relationship between language and the world; linguists
document speakers’ knowledge of meaning; psychologists investigate the mechanisms
of understanding and production. Up through the early 2000s, these investigations
were generally compartmentalized: indeed, researchers often regarded both the sub-
ject matter and the methods of other disciplines with skepticism. Since then, however,
there has been a sea change in the field, enabling researchers increasingly to synthesize
the perspectives of philosophy, linguistics, and psychology and to energize all the fields
with rich new intellectual perspectives that facilitate meaningful interchange. One
illustration of the trend is the publication of Lepore and Stone’s Imagination and
Convention, an integrative interdisciplinary survey—though perhaps an opinionated
and idiosyncratic one—of research on meaning, inference, and communication. The
time is right for a broader exploration and reflection on the status and problems of
semantics as an interdisciplinary enterprise, in light of a decade of challenging and
successful research in this area. This book aims to reconcile different methodological
perspectives while refocusing semanticists on the new problems where integrative
work will find the broadest and most receptive audience.
The following themes figure prominently in the volume:
• Making sense of the fundamental concepts of meaning. We have in mind such
notions as grammar, context, reference and speech acts, which require the precision
of philosophical analysis but must accommodate linguistic data and comport
with psychological models of language acquisition and processing.
• Delimiting the scope of semantics. New philosophical arguments, emerging
cross-linguistic fieldwork, and new probabilistic models of language processing
challenge researchers to rethink how much of the interpretation of language is
due to linguistic knowledge and how much is due to indirection, strategizing,
and mind reading.
