Abstract
In the vast majority of cases linguistic comprehension does not care much about what there is in the world and what state the world is in. Comprehension is often satisfied with satisfaction: you have understood somebody's statement once you have set up a model that satisfies the statement.
But occasionally reality matters. When Albert confesses to Bob: “I'm having an affair with your wife”, and Bob's comprehension goes no further than constructing a model that satisfies Albert's statement, i.e. a model in which a speaker is having an affair with his listener's wife, then there is nothing that could make Albert nervous or that could make Bob jalous. Merely constructing a model does not link the statement to the world.
But how do we model this step from a model to real life, from “I” or “you” to a real person ? A proposal sketched near the end of this paper is that — despite first appearance — we don't and we needn't.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua (1954): “Indexical Expressions”. Mind 63:359–379
Bosch, Peter (1982): “The Role of Propositions in Natural Language Semantics”. In: W. Leinfellner e.a. (eds.): Language and Ontology. Proceedings of the 6th Wittgenstein Symposium. Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky. Vienna.
Bosch, Peter (1983): Agreement and Anaphora. Academic Press. London.
Bosch, Peter (1985a): “Lexical Meaning Contextualized”. In: G. Hoppenbrouwers/ P. Seuren / T. Weijters (eds.): Meaning and the Lexicon. Foris. Dordrecht.
Bosch, Peter (1985b): “Propositionen”. In: Thomas Ballmer / Roland Posner (eds.): Nach-Chomskysche Linguistik. De Gruyter. Berlin.
Bühler, Karl (1978): Sprachtheorie (first edn. 1934). Ullstein. Berlin.
Clark, Eve V. / Herbert H. Clark (1979): “When Nouns Surface as Verbs”. Language 55:767–811
Cresswell, M.J. (1973): Logics and Languages. Methuen. London.
Davidson, Donald / Gilbert Harman (eds.) (1972): Semantics Of Natural Language. Reidel. Dordrecht.
Goodman, Nelson (1969): Languages of Art. Oxford University Press. London.
Kanger, Stig / Sven Öhman (eds.) (1980): Philosophy and Grammar. Reidel. Dordrecht.
Kaplan, David (1978): “On the Logic of Demonstratives”. Journal of Philosophical Logic 8:81–98.
Lewis, David (1981): “Index, Context, and Content”. In: Kanger / Öhmann (eds.)
Partee, Barbara Hall (1980): “Montague Grammar, Mental Representations, and Reality”. In: Kanger / Öhmann (eds.)
Quine, W.V. (1960): Word and Object. MIT Press. Cambridge, Mass.
Stalnaker, Robert (1972): “Pragmatics”. In: Davidson / Harman (eds.)
Travis, Charles (1977): “What Semantics Is Not”. In: P.A.M. Seuren (ed.): Symposium on Semantic Theory. Dept. of Philosophy. University of Nijmegen.
Ziff, Paul (1972): “What Is Said”. In: Davidson / Harman (eds.)
Ziff, Paul (1973): “Something About Conceptual Schemes”. In: Glenn Pearce / Patrick Maynard (eds.): Conceptual Change. Reidel. Dordrecht.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1990 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Bosch, P. (1990). Indexicality and representation. In: Studer, R. (eds) Natural Language and Logic. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 459. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-53082-7_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-53082-7_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-53082-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46653-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive