Hidden among the myriad nucleotide variants that constitute each species' gene pool are a few variants that contribute to phenotypic variation. Many of these differences that make a difference are non‐coding cis‐regulatory variants, which, unlike coding variants, can only be identified through laborious experimental analysis. Recently, Cowles et al.1 described a screening method that does an end‐run around this problem by searching for genes whose cis regulation varies without having to find the polymorphic nucleotides that influence transcription. While we will (...) continue to require a diverse arsenal of experimental methods, this versatile method will speed the identification of functional genetic variation. BioEssays 25:421–424, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In a footnote of Monolingualism of the Other Derrida describes the plot of a ‘Japanese film whose name [he does] not know,’ but which presents a familial history of incest, violence and tattoos, and which relates to the dream of his style, his ‘ductus,’ what he wants to make arrive to language. By analysing this film together with other instances of tattooing in Derrida's body of work, this essay will show how, if Derrida's dreamt style is a colourful tattoo, this (...) is because his texts are an undecidable inscription, a violent penetration and loving transfusion, between images and words. (shrink)

Linguistic evaluation has become an important area of inquiry in recent years. In the traditions of, e.g., lexical semantics, phraseology, corpus linguistics, and interactional linguistics, a large inventory of linguistic means have been identified by which speakers can express evaluative meanings. However, the class of German sentential idioms, e.g., Das kannst du dir in die Haare schmieren , has not gained much attention. This paper explores how the evaluative meaning of German sentential idioms is constructed syntactically, semantically, and pragmatically. In (...) particular, it is investigated how the meaning of these idioms interacts with the context in which they are used. A context model of evaluation is developed in which the cognitive category of cause plays a central role. The model is applied to contextualized examples, the findings supporting the hypothesis that cause is one of the core categories of evaluation. (shrink)

This innovative aid to the study of Italian was published in 1867 by Maria Francesca Rossetti, the older sister of Dante Gabriel, William Michael and Christina. A scholar and teacher of Italian, she was later to publish A Shadow of Dante, a guide to the Divine Comedy, also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection. Her purpose here, as she explains in her preface, is to demonstrate idiomatic Italian usage by providing short passages translated very literally into English, so that the (...) 'unnatural' English phraseology demonstrates the correct Italian construction. The passages are to be translated back into Italian, with the help of some supplied vocabulary and an opening chapter which elucidates some of the more difficult aspects of Italian grammar, often by comparing Italian with French usage. The technique had long been used for Latin and Greek prose composition, but was innovatory for modern languages. (shrink)

Linguistic evaluation has become an important area of inquiry in recent years. In the traditions of, e.g., lexical semantics, phraseology, corpus linguistics, and interactional linguistics, a large inventory of linguistic means have been identified by which speakers can express evaluative meanings. However, the class of German sentential idioms, e.g., Das kannst du dir in die Haare schmieren, has not gained much attention. This paper explores how the evaluative meaning of German sentential idioms is constructed syntactically, semantically, and pragmatically. In particular, (...) it is investigated how the meaning of these idioms interacts with the context in which they are used. A context model of evaluation is developed in which the cognitive category of cause plays a central role. The model is applied to contextualized examples, the findings supporting the hypothesis that cause is one of the core categories of evaluation. (shrink)

This paper discusses idiomatic expressions like ‘that says it all’, ‘that says a lot’ etc. when used in presenting an argument. These expressions are instantiations of the grammatical pattern that says Q, in which Q is an indefinite quantifying expression. By making use of the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation and the linguistic theory of construction grammar it is argued that instantiations of that says Q expressing positive polarity can fulfil the role of an argumentation’s linking premise. Furthermore, an analysis of (...) these expressions as presentational devices shows that an arguer can use them for strategic reasons, i.e. to leave the exact formulation of the standpoint implicit and to present the argument as self-evident. Using these devices derails into fallaciousness when the context offers insufficient clues to reconstruct the standpoint or when the argument does not offer the kind of support that would be required by the specific instantiation of Q. The argumentative function of instantiations of that says Q expressing negative polarity is that an antagonist can use them to attack the justificatory power of the protagonist’s argument. (shrink)

Conversation analysis research on naturally occurring NS-NS talk-in-interaction has revealed that participants observably orient to shared expectations of the socio-interactional role of idiomatic expressions, particularly with regard to topic termination and transition. This study has analysed NS-NNS, as well as NS-NS, spontaneous conversation in order to evaluate and uncover recurrent features associated with the use of such expressions. Two main sequential patterns have been observed: one, occurring in both NS-NS and NS-NNS talk, is connected with topic termination and transition, in (...) some cases being extended to allow for the negotiation of interactional alignment between participants; the other, a `negotiative metatalk sequence', follows idiomatic expressions at points of possible topic conclusion and deals with NS-NNS trouble spots in which conversational participants' lack of shared understanding triggers coordinated negotiatory action that clears the way for the introduction of a new topic. (shrink)

In the present period of soul-searching, many people are turning to the ancient Indian classics of spiritual development and psychology for illumination and guidance. Prominent among these is this collection which offers a systematic exposition of pr.

In this paper we argue that there is a large class of expressions, typified by ‘plastic flower’, ‘stuffed animal’ and ‘kosher bacon’, that have a unique semantics combining compositional, idiomatic and decompositional interpretation. These expressions are compositional because their constituents contribute their meanings to the meanings of the wholes; they are idiomatic because their interpretation involves assigning dictionary entries to non-terminal elements in their syntactic structure; and they are decompositional because their meanings have proper parts that are not the meanings (...) of any of their syntactic constituents. We argue that extensionalist semantics, on which the meaning of an expression is a function from domains to extensions in those domains, cannot provide an adequate account of the semantics of these expressions, and that supplementation with a theory of pragmatic interpretation does not improve the situation. We show how our account explains the intensionality and the productivity of these expressions. (shrink)

Musical idioms may appear side by side in a wide variety of historical, group-based or individual compositional styles used in the postmodern compositions. The reception interpretation of musical works is based on the idioms of musical speech as meaningful and expressive constants. Not only do the reveal the positive or negative ties of current musical language to the musical poetics from previous periods, they also update their meanings. The idiomatic musical structures naturally grow into the social system of music and (...) thus become part of the deeper levels of European compositional tradition. Musical meanings are becoming typical for the particular sectors of European musical culture, and may even become their emblem. It is even likely that the idioms cease to be seen as a complex musical structure in the process of reception and they become a plain composition material, singular units of musical language. Using the postmodern composition Apolloopera by Marek Piaček, we illustrate the in-depth reference platform of musical idioms and examine the role of idiomatic units in the structure of a postmodern piece. (shrink)

My paper examines Derrida's attempts to resist, on the one hand, what he thought of as the increasing international hegemony of American English as the technolanguage of communication, and, on the other hand, forms of linguistic nationalism, when using the resources of the French language to deploy the syntagma: démocratie à venir. It does this by investigating what happens when claims about democracy are made in such a way as to be singularly idiomatic – made from a cosmopolitan point of (...) view that takes into account, rather than vitiates à la Kant, the singular poeticity of idioms. It contrasts Derrida's analysis of the relationship between the national, democracy and idiomaticity with Tocqueville's nationalistic claims; examining, in particular, the issue of how language supposedly binds people together, the role of singularity and generality in thinking about idioms, the divide between originary and techno-scientific idioms, and Derrida's practice of writing in plus d'une langue. It also outlines how, paradoxically, it is a form of idiomaticity and not linguistic instrumentality that disrupts the logic of appropriation, the logic inscribed in the neighbouring, though different, conceptual values of idion, proprius and le propre. (shrink)

The idiomatic use of ;xs1F24λλ' xs1F24 found in classical writers is familiar in Aristotle; but there is a set of passages for which the ordinary renderings of it fail, and the difficulty is such that the text has been suspected. Bonitz, for instance, Index Aristotelicus, 33b2O, says of two of these passages, Pol. 1257b21, Metaph. 1038a 14, that xs22EFλλxs22EF is enough by itself, or even that xs22EFλλxs22EF without xs1F24 seems required , and it has been proposed in the second of (...) these places to read xs1F96 for xs1F24. It must be contended that the text is sound in all the difficult passages in question. (shrink)

The idiomatic use of ;xs1F24λλ' xs1F24 found in classical writers is familiar in Aristotle; but there is a set of passages for which the ordinary renderings of it fail, and the difficulty is such that the text has been suspected. Bonitz, for instance, Index Aristotelicus, 33b2O, says of two of these passages, Pol. 1257b21, Metaph. 1038a 14, that xs22EFλλxs22EF is enough by itself, or even that xs22EFλλxs22EF without xs1F24 seems required, and it has been proposed in the second of these (...) places to read xs1F96 for xs1F24. It must be contended that the text is sound in all the difficult passages in question. (shrink)

Speakers live language, that is, they intuit, create, acquire, perform, speak and say, interpret, use, evaluate and, even, speak of language. The real language is the language lived by speakers. On the contrary linguists, who at the same time are speakers and linguists, study language as something manifesting of front of them. In order to study language it is necessary to determine the degree of reality of the thing called language as the reality lived and used by speakers.

This book develops an “idiomatic” foundational theory of the self and its moral obligations. It then employs this theory to answer a variety of questions about legal obligation, political authority, community, and international justice. It argues that we ought to obey a particular community’s laws and government commands, so long as our government restricts itself to protecting classical liberty and individual property rights under the rule of law. It further argues that people today should ideally live in confederated, legally sovereign (...) nation-states or nation-unions. Finally, it suggests that we have greater obligations to our compatriots than we do to foreign citizens, although we will often have pressing moral reasons to obey foreign laws while abroad, grant citizenship to outsiders who wish to join us, and help relieve foreign people’s misery. (shrink)

Lexical Semantics is about the meaning of words. Although obviously a central concern of linguistics, the semantic behaviour of words has been unduly neglected in the current literature, which has tended to emphasize sentential semantics and its relation to formal systems of logic. In this textbook D. A. Cruse establishes in a principled and disciplined way the descriptive and generalizable facts about lexical relations that any formal theory of semantics will have to encompass. Among the topics covered in depth are (...) idiomaticity, lexical ambiguity, synonymy, hierarchical relations such as hyponymy and meronymy, and various types of oppositeness. Syntagmatic relations are also treated in some detail. The discussions are richly illustrated by examples drawn almost entirely from English. Although a familiarity with traditional grammar is assumed, readers with no technical linguistic background will find the exposition always accessible. All readers with an interest in semantics will find in this original text not only essential background but a stimulating new perspective on the field. (shrink)

The identity theory of mind holds that states and processes of the mind are identical to states and processes of the brain. Strictly speaking, it need not hold that the mind is identical to the brain. Idiomatically we do use ‘She has a good mind’ and ‘She has a good brain’ interchangeably but we would hardly say ‘Her mind weighs fifty ounces’. Here I take identifying mind and brain as being a matter of identifying processes and perhaps states of the (...) mind and brain. Consider an experience of pain, or of seeing something, or of having a mental image. The identity theory of mind is to the effect that these experiences just are brain processes, not merely correlated with brain processes. (shrink)

The ability to improvise represents one of the highest levels of musical achievement. An improviser must master a musical language to such a degree as to be able to spontaneously invent stylistically idiomatic compositions on the spot. This feat is one of the pinnacles of human creativity, and yet its cognitive basis is poorly understood. What musical knowledge is required for improvisation? How does a musician learn to improvise? What are the neural correlates of improvised performance? In 'The Improvising Mind' (...) these questions are explored through an interdisciplinary approach that draws on cognitive neuroscience, study of historical pedagogical treatises on improvisation, interviews with improvisers, and musical analysis of improvised performances. Findings from these treatises and interviews are discussed from the perspective of cognitive psychological theories of learning, memory, and expertise. Musical improvisation has often been compared to 'speaking a musical language.' While past research has focussed on comparisons of music and language perception, few have dealt with this comparison in the performance domain. In this book, learning to improvise is compared with language acquisition, and improvised performance is compared with spontaneous speech from both theoretical and neurobiological perspectives. (shrink)

The third and fourth books of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations deal with the nature and management of human emotion: first grief, then the emotions in general. In lively and accessible style, Cicero presents the insights of Greek philosophers on the subject, reporting the views of Epicureans and Peripatetics and giving a detailed account of the Stoic position, which he himself favors for its close reasoning and moral earnestness. Both the specialist and the general reader will be fascinated by the Stoics' analysis (...) of the causes of grief, their classification of emotions by genus and species, their lists of oddly named character flaws, and by the philosophical debate that develops over the utility of anger in politics and war. Margaret Graver's elegant and idiomatic translation makes Cicero's work accessible not just to classicists but to anyone interested in ancient philosophy and psychotherapy or in the philosophy of emotion. The accompanying commentary explains the philosophical concepts discussed in the text and supplies many helpful parallels from Greek sources. (shrink)

Native and to some extent non-native speakers have shown processing advantages for idioms compared to novel literal phrases, and there is limited evidence that this advantage also extends to memory in L1 children. This study investigated whether these advantages generalize to recognition memory in adults. It employed a learning paradigm to test whether there is a recognition memory advantage for idioms compared to literal phrases in adult L1 and L2 learners considering both form and meaning recognition. Additionally, we asked whether (...) the presence of unfamiliar vocabulary interferes with phrasal learning by looking at recall of such unfamiliar words. When encountering new idioms, L2 learners often must cope with both figurative meaning and unfamiliar vocabulary. While single word meaning need not interfere with idiomatic meaning, it is a building block for the meaning of literal phrases. In Experiment 1, L2 learners showed equal recall for the form and meaning of literal and idiomatic phrases in which either all words were highly familiar, or one word was unfamiliar. However, unfamiliar words decreased overall recognition and were also remembered significantly better in literal compared to idiomatic phrases. In Experiment 2, L1 speakers also showed no recall differences between phrase types, but they displayed a trending increase in recognition in the presence of unfamiliar words. We conclude that there is no inherent recognition memory advantage for idioms based on figurativeness alone, and word- and phrasal meaning interact differently in learner groups. (shrink)

Two positions of Bolinger, about synonymy and meaningfulness of words, point to significance of controlling the referentiality of word forms, from representing them in grammar to their projection onto surface structure, i.e. configurationality. In particular, it becomes critical to control the range of surface substitution for surface syntactic categories of words to maintain referential properties of idiosyncrasy. Categorial grammars as reference systems suggest ways to keep the two aspects in grammar. The first dividend of adopting a categorial perspective is systematically (...) distinguishing metaphorical sense extensions from idioms. The second dividend is procedural. Some tokens can be seen to be types themselves, with distinct referential import. Furthermore, some idiomatic meanings which require a unique phonological word for specific reference to events and participants can be types too. Together they can be thought of as the idiotype. The idiotype as idiosyncrasy’s foot through the door of grammar reveals controllable range of possibilities for referentiality and configurationality of idiosyncrasy. Phrasal and idiomatic meanings can then be treated compositionally, given the proposed added role of paracompositionality arising from event versus predicate distinction at the level of predicate-argument structure, in multiword expression cum idiom and phrasal verb treatment, which we show for English, Mandarin Chinese and Turkish. (shrink)

This paper explores an understudied and poorly understood phenomenon of morphological syncretism in which a morpheme otherwise used to mark the head of a possessive NP appears on words naming property concept (PC) states (states named by adjectives in languages with that lexical category; Dixon, Where have all the adjectives gone? And other essays in Semantics and Syntax, 1982) in predicative and attributive contexts. This phenomenon is found across a variety of unrelated languages. We examine its manifestation in Ulwa, an (...) endangered Misumalpan language of Nicaragua, where diachronic evidence clearly shows that a single affix is involved. We propose an explanation for the syncretism based on an explicit syntactic and semantic analysis of the relevant constructions. On the proposed explanation, the syncretism arises out of a combination of semantic and morphosyntactic facts of Ulwa grammar. Specifically, we propose that the Ulwa pattern exemplifies a possessive strategy of predication. Intuitively, this strategy is a manifestation in grammar of the idiomatic equivalence between the property of being F and the property of having F-ness. (shrink)

Translations of Karl Jaspers' work into the English language have so far not been uniform in their choice of technical terminology. This scholarly renditionof Jaspers' ´Introduction´ to his seminal work "The Great Philosophers" stays to theoriginal German text as true possible by upholding its idiomatic cultural expressions, complex sentence structure, and nuanced particularities provided that clarity of communication can be maintained. The substantive contents and the significance of this text, whose principal topic is greatness, are outlined here. Communication with the (...) great philosophers can bring insight into their thought and can enable humans to transcend toward possible authentic Existenz. (shrink)

The opposition prose/verse can only be established in the heart of literal language. The only way of producing nonliteral language is in conversation. . . . Enrique Anderson Imbert published a book in 1958 titled ¿Qué es la prosa? , in which he says: 'No, we do not speak in prose. Prose is not a projection of everyday speech, but rather artistic elaboration."1 But my adherence to his intelligent point of view is not total because he situates prose in the (...) heart of written language, and I think that it should be ascribed to literal language. For Anderson Imbert such an idiomatic modality results in an artistic elaboration; but the intention of prose can be quite different. The reader, for instance, by virtue of his reading, can transform prose into literature; and unwritten prose does exist, as has been stated. In many cases it is impossible to compose the texts in verse; structurally, then, an opposition cannot be established, just as in the case of the student who takes notes following the explanations of the professor. These texts can only be what they are: a more or less truthful transcription, a "copy" of oral language, a mere change of substance, abbreviated in order to bring it closer, as a simple memento, to the elliptical articulations of inner language. · 1. "No, no hablamos en prosa. La prosa no es proyección del habla corriente, sino elaboración artística." Enrique Anderson Imbert, ¿Que es la prosa? 4th ed. , p. 31. Fernando Lázaro Carreter is the director of the department of Spanish at the Universidad Autónoma in Madrid and a member of the Real Academia Española. The author of books on both linguistics and criticism, his published works include: Las ideas lingüísticas en España durante el siglo XVIII; Diccionario de términos filológicos; Estilo barroco y personalidad creadora; Ensayos de Poética ; and Lazarillo de Tormes en la picaresca. This article is a preliminary statement of a problem he is currently investigating: literary language understood as "literal language.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nietzsche’s Rhetoric on the Grounds of Philology and HermeneuticsAdrian Del Caro"The philosopher believes the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the structure: posterity finds it in the stone with which he built."Human, All Too Human, 1.201"All science only achieved continuity and constancy when the art of correct reading, that is philology, reached its height."Human, All Too Human, 1.270The complexity of Nietzschean rhetoric demands first a basic (...) working definition of rhetoric. In the etymological sense of Greek rhe¯torike¯, the art of oratory, and extrapolated to include the art of communicating effectively through writing, Nietzsche's rhetoric is a highly stylized, deeply self-aware manner of expression designed to convey meaning and to appeal. In the more limited sense of my essay, Nietzschean rhetoric is furthermore a discourse whose communicative and appealing aspects are aimed at the earth for the purpose of grounding human beings. By "rhetoric" I do not mean the negative connotation associated with "insincere or grandiloquent language" (Webster's), though it is certainly the case that Nietzsche's rhetoric frequently takes flight and requires grounding. It is to be expected that a classical philologist by training, and both a teacher and a writer by profession, would have a close understanding and practiced application of rhetoric; the particular challenge in explicating Nietzsche's rhetoric lies in the task to which his rhetoric is put, as well as in the zeal with which he pursued his task. I am not primarily concerned with what Nietzsche had to say about rhetoric while lecturing at the University of Basle, though I agree that Gilman, Blair, and Parent are right to emphasize the importance of rhetoric for the interpretation of Nietzsche's writings and in its own right as a competitor with philosophy (1989, xii, xvi, xx), rather, I am concerned [End Page 101] with the practice of rhetoric that distinguishes Nietzsche's writings from the early 1870s until the so-called Wahnsinnszettel (postcards and letters of madness) written in early January 1889. I also agree with Moore, who analyzes the specifically biological and medical idiom of Nietzsche and concludes "that new light can be thrown on [Nietzsche's] thought by situating it within the historical context of nineteenth-century theories of evolution and degeneration" (Moore 2002, 1-2).1In an early aphorism entitled "Origin of faith" Nietzsche concluded: "Habituation of spiritual principles [Grundsätze] without grounds [Gründe] is called faith."2 I provide the German to demonstrate that whenever possible, Nietzsche drew on the Germanic Grund in his discussions of grounding, even though he was keenly aware of Greek and Latin alternatives and could have used them. So for example Nietzsche's translator (say Holling-dale) could have chosen to use English "grounds" for German Gründe, but chose instead to use "reasons," which is also correct though not exactly in the spirit of Nietzsche's etymological nuance.3 Grundsätze, literally "grounding propositions," given idiomatically as "principles," has no comparable etymology in English. What one becomes accustomed to or adopts as a habit based on faith versus grounds, cannot by definition be grounded, whether or not it is a principle. Based on this example, living with grounds or reasons is living with foundation, with base and support. Living without grounds is simply acquiring habits, living by faith, living groundlessly. A similar usage is involved in English "grounds for dismissal," whereby "grounds" equals "reasons." Even the words founded and unfounded preserve some of the strength of "grounded" and "ungrounded" as I use them. In German "unfounded" is unbegründet or grundlos, participle and adjective respectively, and Nietzsche availed himself whenever possible of German expressions based on ground.The aphorism immediately following "Origin of faith" relies even more on Grund, and its translation into English deserves close attention. "Aus den Folgen auf Grund und Ungrund zurückgeschlossen" becomes "Reasons judged a posteriori on the basis of consequences,"4 which I would render as "grounds and ungrounds retroactively concluded from consequences." Nietzsche uses Grund twice already in the title, and in the body of this "aphorism" of thirty lines a variation of Grund occurs six more times (Gründe, Gr... (shrink)

Are idioms stored in memory in ways that preserve their surface form or language or are they represented amodally? We examined this question using an inci- dental cued recall paradigm in which two word idiomatic expressions were presented to adult bilinguals proficient in Russian and English. Stimuli included phrases with idiomat- ic equivalents in both languages (e.g. “empty words/пycтыe cлoвa”) or in one language only (English—e.g. “empty suit/пycтoй кocтюм” or Russian—e.g. “empty sound/пycтoй звyк”), or in neither language (e.g. “empty rain/пycтoй (...) дoждь”). If idioms are stored in a language-specific format, then phrases with idiomatic equivalents in both languages would have dual representation, and should therefore be more easily recalled than phrases with idiomatic meaning in only one language. This result was obtained. As such, the findings support the dual-coding theory of memory and are also compatible with models of the bilingual lexicon that include language tags or nodes. (shrink)

Any philosophical method that treats the analysis of the meaning of a sentence or expression in terms of a decomposition into a set of conceptually basic constituent parts must do some theoretical work to explain the puzzles of intensionality. This is because intensional phenomena appear to violate the principle of compositionality, and the assumption of compositionality is the principal justification for thinking that an analysis will reveal the real semantical import of a sentence or expression through a method of decomposition. (...) Accordingly, a natural strategy for dealing with intensionality is to argue that it is really just an isolable, aberrant class of linguistic phenomena that poses no general threat to the thesis that meaning is basically compositional. On the other hand, the later Mohists give us good reason to reject this view. What we learn from them is that there may be basic limitations in any analytical technique that presupposes that meaning is perspicuously represented only when it has been fully decomposed into its constituent parts. The purpose of this paper is to (a) explain why the Mohists found the issue of intensionality to be so important in their investigations of language, and (b) defend the view that Mohist insights reveal basic limitations in any technique of analysis that is uncritically applied with a decompositional approach in mind, as are those that are often pursued in the West in the context of more general epistemological and metaphysical programs. (shrink)

The initial obstacle to the development of a hermeneutics of the natural sciences has been the inadequate translation, and thus misunderstanding, of the basic terms of Heidegger's ontological analysis ofthe protopractical human situation and its progressive technicization. Pragmatism's parallel analyses of the problem situation of scientists has promoted a more idiomatically English vocabulary. But 1) Gadamer's exclusion of domains and disciplines working with technical methods from his universal hermeneutics continues to be influential, this in spite of the genesis of his (...) project in Helmholtz's insights into the process of scientific discovery. 2) Markus thus depicts a distinctly different style of production, transmission, and reception of the technological texts of natural science. 3) Rouse's 1987 extension of pragmatic hermeneutics into the incipient politics of knowledge/power relations in laboratory science presents the usual frightening prospects connected with laboratory experimentation impacting on disciplinary social institutions. 4) Rouse's 1996 analysis of scientific practices in local narrative situations eschews the banner of hermeneutics and instead proposes to examine scientific-technological work by way of interdisciplinary ’ cultural studies, once the traditional loci of hermeneutic methodology. 5) A hermeneutic phenomenology of the natural sciences thus finds itself fundamentally challenged with respect to its rightful topics and roles in the analysis of increasingly technicized disciplines and domains. (shrink)

Philosophers have often sought criteria for a general distinction between appearance and reality. In chapter VII of Sense and Sensibilia, J. L. Austin claims to show that this enterprise is radically misconceived; and, characteristically, he bases his argument on the niceties of the use of ‘real’ in English. I shall try to show (1) that Austin’s account of how ‘real’ is used is muddled and inaccurate; and (2) that the uses of ‘real’ which Austin explores are irrelevant to the traditional (...) enquiry into the distinction between appearance and reality. Of these, (2) matters more, but most of my paper will treat of (1). The uses of ‘real’ which interested Austin may have some philosophical importance, so we might as well get them right. Also, although there are general grounds for denying that those uses are relevant to traditional epistemology, a tighter and more Austinian argument for the same conclusion can be based upon a correct account of the uses of ‘real’ in question. I should concede that I may have stated my thesis a little too strongly: for all I know, some philosophers may have pursued the traditional enquiry in such a miserably inadequate way that Austin’s points about the use of ‘real’ are, when suitably emended, effective against them. The fact that Austin did not publish Sense and Sensibilia suggests that he was not satisfied with its contents. Nevertheless, his views about the use of ‘real’ have been published and may be believed: personal considerations cannot be allowed to disarm criticism. I shall describe four ways of using ‘real’ in expressions of the form ‘a real F’ where ‘F’ stands for a general noun. Note the indefinite article: Austin writes as though nothing turns on the choice between ‘a real . . .’ and ‘the real . . .’, but this is not so. I shall argue that these four ways of using ‘real’ are distinct, though a single use of ‘real’ may partake of more than one of them. I believe but cannot prove that my four headings cover practically all idiomatic uses of the form ‘a real F’ other than the metaphorical, slipshod or pretentious.. (shrink)

The problems of access—retrieving linguistic structure from some mental grammar —and disambiguation—choosing among these structures to correctly parse ambiguous linguistic input—are fundamental to language understanding. The literature abounds with psychological results on lexical access, the access of idioms, syntactic rule access, parsing preferences, syntactic disambiguation, and the processing of garden‐path sentences. Unfortunately, it has been difficult to combine models which account for these results to build a general, uniform model of access and disambiguation at the lexical, idiomatic, and syntactic levels. (...) For example, psycholinguistic theories of lexical access and idiom access and parsing theories of syntactic rule access have almost no commonality in methodology or coverage of psycholinguistic data. This article presents a single probabilistic algorithm which models both the access and disambiguation of linguistic knowledge. The algorithm is based on a parallel parser which ranks constructions for access, and interpretations for disambiguation, by their conditional probability. Low‐ranked constructions and interpretations are pruned through beam‐search; this pruning accounts, among other things, for the garden‐path effect. I show that this motivated probabilistic treatment accounts for a wide variety of psycholinguistic results, arguing for a more uniform representation of linguistic knowledge and for the use of probabilistically‐enriched grammars and interpreters as models of human knowledge of and processing of language. (shrink)

M. J. Levett's elegant translation of Plato's _Theaetetus_, first published in 1928, is here revised by Myles Burnyeat to reflect contemporary standards of accuracy while retaining the style, imagery, and idiomatic speech for which the Levett translation is unparalleled. Bernard William’s concise introduction, aimed at undergraduate students, illuminates the powerful argument of this complex dialogue, and illustrates its connections to contemporary metaphysical and epistemological concerns.

Equality and identity. Bulletin of Symbolic Logic. 19 (2013) 255-6. (Coauthor: Anthony Ramnauth) Also see https://www.academia.edu/s/a6bf02aaab This article uses ‘equals’ [‘is equal to’] and ‘is’ [‘is identical to’, ‘is one and the same as’] as they are used in ordinary exact English. In a logically perfect language the oxymoron ‘the numbers 3 and 2+1 are the same number’ could not be said. Likewise, ‘the number 3 and the number 2+1 are one number’ is just as bad from a logical point (...) of view. In normal English these two sentences are idiomatically taken to express the true proposition that ‘the number 3 is the number 2+1’. Another idiomatic convention that interferes with clarity about equality and identity occurs in discussion of numbers: it is usual to write ‘3 equals 2+1’ when “3 is 2+1” is meant. When ‘3 equals 2+1’ is written there is a suggestion that 3 is not exactly the same number as 2+1 but that they merely have the same value. This becomes clear when we say that two of the sides of a triangle are equal if the two angles they subtend are equal or have the same measure. -/- Acknowledgements: Robert Barnes, Mark Brown, Jack Foran, Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Forest Hansen, David Hitchcock, Spaulding Hoffman, Calvin Jongsma, Justin Legault, Joaquin Miller, Tania Miller, and Wyman Park. -/- ► JOHN CORCORAN AND ANTHONY RAMNAUTH, Equality and identity. Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-4150, USA E-mail: [email protected] The two halves of one line are equal but not identical [one and the same]. Otherwise the line would have only one half! Every line equals infinitely many other lines, but no line is [identical to] any other line—taking ‘identical’ strictly here and below. Knowing that two lines equaling a third are equal is useful; the condition “two lines equaling a third” often holds. In fact any two sides of an equilateral triangle is equal to the remaining side! But could knowing that two lines being [identical to] a third are identical be useful? The antecedent condition “two things identical to a third” never holds, nor does the consequent condition “two things being identical”. If two things were identical to a third, they would be the third and thus not be two things but only one. The plural predicate ‘are equal’ as in ‘All diameters of a given circle are equal’ is useful and natural. ‘Are identical’ as in ‘All centers of a given circle are identical’ is awkward or worse; it suggests that a circle has multiple centers. Substituting equals for equals [replacing one of two equals by the other] makes sense. Substituting identicals for identicals is empty—a thing is identical only to itself; substituting one thing for itself leaves that thing alone, does nothing. There are as many types of equality as magnitudes: angles, lines, planes, solids, times, etc. Each admits unit magnitudes. And each such equality analyzes as identity of magnitude: two lines are equal [in length] if the one’s length is identical to the other’s. Tarski [1] hardly mentioned equality-identity distinctions (pp. 54-63). His discussion begins: -/- Among the logical concepts […], the concept of IDENTITY or EQUALITY […] has the greatest importance. -/- Not until page 62 is there an equality-identity distinction. His only “notion of equality”, if such it is, is geometrical congruence—having the same size and shape—an equivalence relation not admitting any unit. Does anyone but Tarski ever say ‘this triangle is equal to that’ to mean that the first is congruent to that? What would motivate him to say such a thing? This lecture treats the history and philosophy of equality-identity distinctions. [1] ALFRED TARSKI, Introduction to Logic, Dover, New York, 1995. [This is expanded from the printed abstract.] . (shrink)

The author integrates, expands, and deepens his previous publications about irregular (or "metalinguistic") negations. A total of ten distinct negatives-several previously unclassified-are analyzed. The logically irregular negations deny different implicatures of their root. All are partially non-compositional but completely conventional. The author argues that two of the irregular negative meanings are implicatures. The others are semantically rather than pragmatically ambiguous. Since their ambiguity is neither lexical nor structural, direct irregular negatives satisfy the standard definition of idioms as syntactically complex expressions (...) whose meaning is non-compositional. Unlike stereotypical idioms, idiomatic negatives lack fixed syntactic forms and are highly compositional. The final chapter analyzes other "free form" idioms, including irregular interrogatives and comparatives, self-restricted verb phrases, numerical verb phrases, and transparent propositional attitude and speech act reports. (shrink)

Over the past thirty years, academic debate over pornography in the discourses of feminism and cultural studies has foundered on questions of the performative and of the word's definition. In the polylogue of Droit de regards, pornography is defined as la mise en vente that is taking place in the act of exegesis in progress. (Wills's idiomatic English translation includes an ‘it’ that is absent in the French original). The definition in Droit de regards alludes to the word's etymology (writing (...) by or about prostitutes) but leaves the referent of the ‘sale’ suspended. Pornography as la mise en vente boldly restates the necessary iterability of the sign and anticipates two of Derrida's late arguments: that there is no ‘the’ body and that performatives may be powerless. Deriving a definition of pornography from a truncated etymology exemplifies the prosthesis of origin and challenges other critical discourses to explain how pornography can be understood as anything more than ‘putting (it) up for sale’. (shrink)