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Occasion-Sensitive Semantics

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Book cover Modeling and Using Context (CONTEXT 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10257))

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Abstract

In this paper we provide a formal model for occasion-sensitive semantics motivated by so called ‘Travis cases’ (Travis 1978, 2000, 2008, 2009). We suggest that understanding of an utterance of \( \varphi \) (knowing its truth conditions) can be modelled as a twofold partitioning of worlds in logical space, where the initial partition is induced by the context-invariant meaning of the sentence uttered and the latter on the basis of context-dependent goals. Our model uses only a single parameter to capture occasion-sensitivity of sentences: practical goals.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the literature these are known as Travis cases (sometimes referred to as context-shifting arguments, see Cappelen and Lepore (2008). For critical discussion see Hansen (2011), Hansen and Chemla (2013), Predelli (2005), Vicente (2012), Vicente (2015), Kennedy and McNally (2010), Rothschild and Segal (2009), MacFarlane (2009).

  2. 2.

    Travis (2008): 111.

  3. 3.

    We use the sign # to indicate that the response is in some sense inadequate or infelicitous, and that what is said is intuitively false.

  4. 4.

    Travis (2000).

  5. 5.

    Travis 2009: 119–120.

  6. 6.

    See Recanati (2004) and Travis (2006) for a defense of this thesis; see Cappelen and Lepore (2008), Borg (2004) and Fodor (2003) for criticism.

  7. 7.

    The phenomenon exhibited in Travis cases has thus far been analysed as a form of lexical ambiguity or polysemy (Fodor 2003; Vicente 2015; Carston 2010), structural ambiguity (Kennedy and McNally 2010), conversational implicature (Cappelen and Lepore 2008; Fodor 2003), circumstance of evaluation dependence (MacFarlane 2009; Predelli 2005), pragmatic modulation (Pagin 2005, Recanati 2012, Carston 2010) and (hidden) indexicality (Szabó 2001; Rothschild and Segal 2009.

  8. 8.

    See Recanati (2007).

  9. 9.

    Reference is usually made to the speaker’s intentions or the topic of conversation, without going into details of how or why these are able to determine correctness of selecting a certain function and not other. According to MacFarlane, “the counts-as parameter will be determined in complex ways by other features of the context, including the topic of conversation and the speaker’s intentions” (Macfarlane 2007: 246).

  10. 10.

    The model we are about to propose can be extended to interrogatives and imperatives, although this is beyond the scope of this paper.

  11. 11.

    In our diagram the world (01) is thus not fit for the botanist’s goal.

  12. 12.

    This idea of communication is based on Wittgenstein et al. (2009).

  13. 13.

    See Cappelen and Lepore 2008, Borg 2004, Recanati 2004, Pagin and Pelletier 2007, Travis 2006.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Tamara Dobler

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  1. Tamara Dobler
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Correspondence to Tamara Dobler .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Pierre and Marie Curie University , Paris, France

    Patrick Brézillon

  2. University of Maine , Orono, Maine, USA

    Roy Turner

  3. University of Genoa , Genoa, Italy

    Carlo Penco

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Dobler, T. (2017). Occasion-Sensitive Semantics. In: Brézillon, P., Turner, R., Penco, C. (eds) Modeling and Using Context. CONTEXT 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10257. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57837-8_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57837-8_20

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