SemPrag2 - Sentence Meaning, Quantification, Utterance Meaning & Speaker Intentions

Question 1

If sentence meanings are truth conditions (but we are probably actually talking about propositions - what is said!), what do we need to remember when defining those truth conditions?

Answer 1

Yes ‘camels have humps’ is true iff camels have humps. However for any time, t, and individual, i, an utterance by i at t of ‘I’m thirsty’ is true iff i is thirsty at t.
Can also consider location etc…

This basic conception of truth-conditional meaning was proposed by Alfred Tarski, but there must be a set of rules which pairs each sentence with a set of conditions.

Question 2

Object Language vs Metalanguage

Answer 2

Object language is the language being described, whereas metalanguage is the language used to describe the object language (define truth conditional meaning in these cases). (Examples are propositional logic, set theory, predicate logic).

Question 3

Propositional logic:

Answer 3

enables us to systematically determine the content of a compound, complex sentence if we know the simplest sentence from which it is formed. (Connective rules)

Question 4

Set theory

Answer 4

Subject is an item, predicate is a set, item is true if subject belongs to that set (at relevant time whatever).

Question 5

Predications

Answer 5

‘John is strange’: the property of being strange is predicated of John.
Could say any utterance of an English sentence S of the form NP VP describes a situation in which the referent determined by NP has the property expressed by VP.

You can make these rules for names, one place and two place predicates and syntactic rules.

Question 6

If we have these rules of predications (Napoleon’s list on lecture 4 notes) why do we need propositional logic?

Answer 6

Propositional logic deals with truth conditional meaning based on sentential connectives.

Question 7

What are the logical connectives?

Answer 7

Not (very wrong horizontal L) 
And (upside down v) 
Inclusive Or (v) (where both is also an option) 
Exclusive Or (v with a subscript e) 
if - then (arrow) 
iff (double headed arrow)

Question 8

Is sentence meaning the only truth-conditional meaning?

Different viewpoints.

Answer 8

NO. Just because we define sentence meaning (and what is said) using truth conditions is not to say that implicatures could not be defined using truth-conditions.

The minimalist approach applies truth conditions to the ‘what is said level’, which can only apply to declaratives.

The contextualist approach also applies truth conditions to intended and communicated meanings (implicatures and presuppositions - if they are in context) so can also apply to interrogatives and imperatives.

Question 9

What is implicature?

Answer 9

Speaker meaning. Not implication which could be entailment.

Grice 1975: Conversational implicatures are inferences which arise out of the Gricean maxims of conversation.

Question 10

How to identify presuppositions?

Answer 10

The Projection test: If the sentence is negated the presupposition will still hold, while an entailment or implicature will be negated.

Presupposition is removed if sentence put after ‘if’.

Another test is Shannon 1976 ‘Hey wait a minute’ test. If your ‘hey wait a minute’ just repeats the content of the statement so feels redundant it was an entailment, whereas if the hey wait a minute feels valid it’s a presupposition.
‘I managed to do it.’
‘Hey i didn’t know you managed to do it’. POINTLESS
‘Hey I didn’t know you were trying to do it’ VALID.

Question 11

If representing the presupposition from ‘John stopped smoking’ in a truth table, what is the truth value of the sentence if the presupposition is false.

Answer 11

Some would use zero as it could neither be true nor false if he hadn’t smoked in the first place.

Question 12

Difference between logical ‘and’ and natural language ‘and’.

Answer 12

As a sentential connective, natural language ‘and’ can also indicate causation and/or temporality.

Grice 1975: thinks these additional meanings are implicatures.

Recanati 1989 thinks they are at the What is Said level.

Who’s right?

Question 13

How to show that logical disjunction is inclusive (which is why if we want to show exclusive we have to add the e).

Answer 13

You can cancel exclusivity?
‘Do you want chicken or pasta? Both.’
You cannot cancel inclusivity.
You can cancel implicatures, so exclusive or is an implicature.

Question 14

Interesting point about the truth tables of implication (if it rains it’s wet)

Answer 14

even if the ‘if’ statement is false, if the then statement is true, the whole statement is true.

Question 15

Interesting point about the truth tables of equivalence (i’ll help you if you ask me)

Answer 15

If one of the statements is false, the whole statement is false. But if they are both false or indeed both true, the statement is true.

Question 16

What can you cancel/negate without creating contradiction.

Answer 16

Implicatures (some cats are not crazy, all of them are), presuppositions (he didn’t manage to do it, it was easy for him), pronunciation/register.

Question 17

Discuss the different evaluations of the sentence ‘The king of France isn’t bald’.
Russell 1905 vs Strawson 1950
vs Kempson 1975

Answer 17

According to Russell, this sentence is ambiguous. It has two logical forms along the lines of:
1) there is a king of France who is not bald.
2) it is not the case that there is a king of France who is bald.
(1 is narrow scope negation focusing on the property of baldness, 2 is widescope focusing on the whole proposition).

Russell believed that 1 is false but 2 is true. Strawson posits instead a truth value gap. (but surely this assumes the form of statement 1, because 2 is true, there is NO king of France who is bald.)

Kempson disputes that the statement is ambiguous, claiming instead that statement 2 entails statement 1 and thus 2 is the logical form of the statement, and it is true.

Question 18

What is the difference between true sentences which are true simply because of how the sentence is constructed, and true sentences which are true because they correspond to the state of the real world?
(Jaszczolt)

Answer 18

A priori (necessary truth (not contingent upon the state of the world) )
A posteriori (Empirical truth (contingent on world)

Sentences whose truth or falsehood follows from the structure of the sentence rather than from the relation with the world are called analytic. This means they are always true.
As opposed to synthetic.

Sentences can be analytic but still a posteriori, if their structure specifies that they are always true but knowledge of this truth requires knowledge of the real world.

Question 19

In addition to propositional logic, logical forms need?

Answer 19

predicate logic. unless you’re going to represent whole predicates as variables.

Question 20

Upside down A reads as

e.g Ax - but the A is upside down

Answer 20

for all xs…

Question 21

Lots of stuff we see in logic takes the form.

All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Socrates is mortal.

What is the name for this rule of logical inference and how does jaszczolt write it?

Answer 21

modus ponendo ponens

((p->q)&p)->q

Saeed chap 4 gives 3 more types e.g missing out middle step (if I’m at school i must be learning, if im learning i must be happy, if im at school i must be happy)

Question 22

Can the same proposition be represented by multiple different sentences.

Answer 22

Yep, passive form for example.

Question 23

Jaszczolt’s problems with truth conditional sentence meaning.

Answer 23

Propositional attitude reports.

Ralph believes that the morning star is venus.
Ralph believes that the evening star is venus.
Both logically true, but if ralph’s sense of the evening star is distinct from the morning star and he has only claimed that the morning star is venus, then number 2 is false.

Question 24

Jazszcolt Possible Worlds: What is a proposition?

Answer 24

A function from possible world truth values.

the man is cold
proposition is the aspects of meaning which map all worlds where the man is cold to the value ‘true’.

Question 25

Jaszczolt what is intension (after carnap 1947)

Answer 25

a function from possible worlds (possible states of affairs) to the extension of the expression (real world referents)

Question 26

Jaszczolt: two additional aspects of the word ‘and’ you hadn’t explicitly touched on:

Answer 26

tom and peter own a car: the word and is introducing an ambiguity between the collective and distributive meanings.

implication: touch me and i will hit you

Question 27

Jaszczolt : an implication expresses a causal connection between

Answer 27

an antecedent and a consequent.

Question 28

Jaszczolt: do we use ‘implication’

Answer 28

no, when we say ‘if’ we tend to actually be expressing equivalence (iff).
Take: if you mow the lawn i will give you £10.
According to implication, even if you don’t mow the lawn, I will give you £10
where in fact i will give you £10 if and only if you mow the lawn.

Question 29

Jaszczolt: what is neg-raising

Answer 29

the tendency to assign a lower clause meaning to a higher clause negation: e.g i don’t think that she will win

Question 30

Saeed: presuppositional failure as a failure of the truth conditional perspective

Answer 30

the approach we have looked at is truth conditional where a presupposition holds whether the statement is true or false (as opposed to an interactional approach where the presupposition is simply another proposition in the statement)

presuppositional failure is when the presupposition cannot be true

king of france is bald presupposes that there is a king of france

(interactional approach would be fine because we would signal communication failure.)
truth value approach struggles because if we posit a truth gap then like what is truth lol

Question 31

Saeed: presupposition triggers

Answer 31

name / definite description 
cleft: it was X which disgusted me 
subordinate clauses: X happened before Y
A is more gullible than B 
lexical triggers X regrets/realises Y (factive verbs)

Question 32

Saeed: defeasability as a failure of the truth conditional perspective

Answer 32

1) she cried before she finished her thesis
2) she died before she finished her thesis

n 2) the presup that she finished her thesis is cancelled by real world knowledge, so can’t be purely truth based

Question 33

Saeed: different clefts as a failure of the truth conditional perspective (Strawson, 1950)

Answer 33

a) it was harry who alice loved (alice loved someone)
b) it was alice who loved harry (someone loved harry)

but a) & b) have same truth conditional meaning

Question 34

Saeed: pragmatic theories of presupposition

Answer 34

leech 1981: semantic presup (truth conditions), pragmatic presup (interactional approach where truth conditions fail

Stalnaker (1974) interlocuters share common ground, and if someone says something which presupposes something, they are merely making reference to some shared common ground. If they say something which actively contradicts the common ground (king of france) it is a presuppositional failure. If they say something which isn’t in the common ground but could be (e.g Tom’s brother) it is added to the common ground. (tht last bit called accommodation - Lewis, 1979).

Question 35

How does quantification change our previous idea of predication?

Answer 35

From previous lecture: [SNP VP] describes referent NP as having property VP.
This doesn’t hold for quantified noun phrases:
No politicians can be trusted, Most students sleep late, Only humans have language, More sheep than people live in australia.

Question 36

What do quantified statements express?

Answer 36

relations between sets

Question 37

quick how do representing predicates work

Answer 37

L < love
j < john m < mary 
L(j,m) John loves mary
S < sleeps 
S(m) < Mary sleeps

Question 38

logical form (written in words lol) of some boys are sleeping

on lecture 5 notes

Answer 38

(there exists an x such that x is a boy and x is sleeping) AND (there exists a y where y is a boy and sleeping) AND (x is not y)

Question 39

logical form in words of every boy is sleeping

Answer 39

for all x if c is a boy then he is sleeping AND there exists an x who is a boy

Question 40

logical form of no boy is sleeping

Answer 40

it is not the case that there exists a boy x and x is sleeping

Question 41

What are scope ambiguities

Answer 41

every boy loves a girl

for all boys x there exists a girl y such that x loves y

there exists a girl who is loved by all boys

They are neither syntactic (2 underlying syntactic structures) nor lexical (one word with 2 meanings), a scope ambiguity concerns the LOGICAL FORM