About this topic
Summary Two or more clauses constitute a discourse. A discourse is typically coherent: the clauses are organized in a principled way, as opposed to disconnected. Theories of discourse structure explain what such coherence consists in. There are two popular theories.  Question-based theories maintain that discourses are structured as question-answer exchanges  Relations-based theories maintain that discourses are structured by coherence relations. Relations-based theories disagree over the number of coherence relations, and what constraints there are for where a relation can attach to the preceding discourse (e.g. the right frontier constraint). Discourse coherence has been argued to play a prominent role in various disputes in semantics and pragmatics. Examples include how context-sensitivity is resolved, how pragmatic inferences are derived, and even the distinction between lying and misleading. 
Key works Early question-based theories include Van Kuppevelt 1996 and Roberts 1996, and early relations-based theories include Halliday & Hasan 1976 and Hobbs 1979. See Kehler et al 2008 for helpful discussion of the latter. More recent Influential relations-based theories include Asher et al 2003 and Kehler 2002. For applications of discourse coherence, see Stojnić et al 2017 and Stojnić 2021 on context-sensitivity, Cohen & Kehler 2021 with respect to pragmatic inference, Cumming et al 2017 for connection to viewpoint in film,  Pagin 2014 in connection to pragmatic enrichment, Sullivan et al 2019 with respect to language acquisition, Kehler 2000 and Frazier & Clifton 2006 on ellipsis resolution, and Stokke 2016 and van Elswyk 2019 on the lying/misleading distinction. 
Related

Contents
118 found
Order:
1 — 50 / 118
  1. Pictorial language and linguistics.Emar Maier - manuscript
    A language is a system of signs used for communication, and linguists are tasked with, among other things, uncovering the syntax and semantics of such systems. In this paper I explore to what extent pictures fit this characterization of a language and hence would fall within the domain of linguistics. I conclude that at the very least there are well-defined systems of depiction for which we can give a precise semantics, in a familiar possible worlds framework, although pictorial propositions are (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  2. Donkeys under Discussion.Lucas Champollion, Dylan Bumford & Robert Henderson - forthcoming - Semantics and Pragmatics.
    Donkey sentences have existential and universal readings, but they are not often perceived as ambiguous. We extend the pragmatic theory of nonmaximality in plural definites by Križ (2016) to explain how context disambiguates donkey sentences. We propose that the denotations of such sentences produce truth-value gaps — in certain scenarios the sentences are neither true nor false — and demonstrate that Križ’s pragmatic theory fills these gaps to generate the standard judgments of the literature. Building on Muskens’s (1996) Compositional Discourse (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  3. Semantics for Reasons, by Bryan Weaver and Kevin Scharp. [REVIEW]Daniel Fogal & Peter Van Elswyk - forthcoming - Ethics.
  4. Review of Context and Coherence: The Logic and Grammar of Prominence, by Una Stojnić. [REVIEW]Daniel W. Harris - forthcoming - Philosophical Review.
    I summarize several of the main claims, arguments, and innovations in Stojnić's 2021 book. I then take issue with her foundational view, on which both the context of a conversation and the contents of context-sensitive expressions are wholly fixed by the history of a conversation together with grammatical rules.
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  5. The Hindi-Urdu NA and reasonable inference.Ahmad Jabbar - forthcoming - In Proceedings of the 59th annual meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS 59).
    This paper presents a study into the Hindi-Urdu 'na' as a sentence-final particle. Although also used as a topic marker and negation, 'na' occurs sentence-finally across clause-types. In light of the data, we think the following hypothesis offers the best fit: 'na' signals the speaker’s belief that the content of na’s containing clause is a reasonable inference, given what’s common ground. Notably, in addition to other clause-types, we explore na's distribution in exclamations and exclamatives. We link our work to recent (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6. Grounding with particles.Ahmad Jabbar & Veda Kanamarlapudi - forthcoming - In Proceedings of the 27th workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (SemDial 27).
    We focus on a sui generis grounding move in Hindi-Urdu dialogue, namely 'voh hi na'. 'Voh' is third person pronoun and can function as a propositional anaphor in dialogue. 'Hi' and 'na' are two discourse particles in Hindi-Urdu. A dataset consisting of minimal pairs of dialogues is presented to get a better sense of the move. Using dynamic models of discourse structure, we propose a semantics for 'voh hi na' in terms of its update effects.
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  7. Towards a Fregean psycholinguistics.Thorsten Sander - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.
    This paper is partly exegetical, partly systematic. I argue that Frege's account of what he called “colouring” contains some important insights on how communication is related to mental states such as mental images or emotions. I also show that the Fregean perspective is supported by current research in psycholinguistics and that a full understanding of some linguistic phenomena that scholars have accounted for in terms of either semantics or pragmatics need involve psycholinguistic elements.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  8. Clause-internal coherence as presupposition resolution.Kelsey Sasaki & Daniel Altshuler - forthcoming - Proceedings of Amsterdam Colloquium 2022.
    Hobbs (2010) introduced ‘clause-internal coherence’ (CIC) to describe inferences in, e.g., ‘A jogger was hit by a car,’ where the jogging is understood to have led to the car-hitting. Cohen & Kehler (2021) argue that well-known pragmatic tools cannot account for CIC, motivating an enrichment account familiar from discourse coherence research. An outstanding question is how to compositionally derive CIC from coherence relations. This paper takes strides in answering this question. It first provides experimental support for the existence of CIC (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9. A defense of QUD reasons contextualism.Bryan R. Weaver & Kevin Scharp - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    In this article, we defend the semantic theory, Question Under Discussion (QUD) Contextualism about Reasons that we develop in our monograph Semantics for Reasons against a series of objections that focus on whether our semantics can deliver predictions for some common examples, how we defend the semantic theory, and how we assess it compared to its competitors.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10. A Problem for Generic Generalisations in Scientific Communication.Mark Bowker - 2023 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 40 (1):123-132.
    Generic generalisations like ‘Opioids are highly addictive’ are very useful in scientific communication, but they can often be interpreted in many different ways. Although this is not a problem when all interpretations provide the same answer to the question under discussion, a problem arises when a generic generalisation is used to answer a question other than that originally intended. In such cases, some interpretations of the generalisation might answer the question in a way that the original speaker would not endorse. (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  11. Metaphor and contextual coherence: it's a match!Inés Crespo, Andreas Heise & Claudia Picazo - 2023 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy:1–35.
    Many sentences can be interpreted both as a metaphor and as a literal claim, depending on the context. The aim of this paper is to show that there are discourse-based systematic constraints on the identification of an utterance as metaphorical, literal, or both (as in the case of twice-apt metaphors), from a normative point of view. We claim that the key is contextual coherence. In order to substantiate this claim, we introduce a novel notion of context as a rich and (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12. Pointing to communicate: the discourse function and semantics of rich demonstration.Christian De Leon - 2023 - Linguistics and Philosophy 46 (4):839-870.
    Deictic (or pointing) gestures are traditionally known to have a simple function: to supply something as the referent of a demonstrative linguistic expression. I argue that deixis can have a more complex function. A deictic gesture can be used to _say something_ in conversation and can thereby become a full discourse move in its own right. To capture this phenomenon, which I call _rich demonstration_, I present an update semantics on which deictic gestures can indicate situations from a conversation’s context (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  13. The use of antithesis and other contrastive relations in argumentation.Nancy L. Green - 2023 - Argument and Computation 14 (1):1-16.
    This paper presents a study of use of the rhetorical figure of antithesis and other contrastive relations in several modern-day environmental science policy journal articles on issues of food security, climate change, and water resource management. The articles present the conflicting perspectives of environmentalists and engineers, i.e., the view that nature should be preserved and protected versus the view that it should be engineered to solve human problems. The main contribution of this paper is a taxonomy characterizing argumentative uses of (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  14. Super Pragmatics of (linguistic-)pictorial discourse.Julian J. Schlöder & Daniel Altshuler - 2023 - Linguistics and Philosophy 46 (4):693-746.
    Recent advances in the Super Linguistics of pictures have laid the Super Semantic foundation for modelling the phenomena of narrative sequencing and co-reference in pictorial and mixed linguistic-pictorial discourses. We take up the question of how one arrives at the pragmatic interpretations of such discourses. In particular, we offer an analysis of: (i) the discourse composition problem: how to represent the joint meaning of a multi-picture discourse, (ii) observed differences in narrative sequencing in prima facie equivalent linguistic vs pictorial discourses, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  15. Good guesses as accuracy-specificity tradeoffs.Mattias Skipper - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (7):2025-2050.
    Guessing is a familiar activity, one we engage in when we are uncertain of the answer to a question under discussion. It is also an activity that lends itself to normative evaluation: some guesses are better than others. The question that interests me here is what makes for a good guess. In recent work, Dorst and Mandelkern have argued that good guesses are distinguished from bad ones by how well they optimize a tradeoff between accuracy and specificity. Here I argue (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  16. Coping with imaginative resistance.Daniel Altshuler & Emar Maier - 2022 - Journal of Semantics 39 (2):523-549.
    We propose to characterize imaginative resistance as the failure or unwillingness of the reader to take a fictional description of a deviant reality at face value. The goal of the paper is to explore how readers deal with such a breakdown of the default Face Value interpretation strategy. We posit two distinct interpretative ‘coping’ strategies which help the reader engage with the resistance-inducing fiction by attributing the offending content to one of the fictional characters. We present novel empirical evidence that (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  17. Coordination and the Syntax – Discourse Interface.Daniel Altshuler & Robert Truswell - 2022 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
    This survey explores interactions between syntax and discourse, through a case study of patterns of extraction from coordinate structures. The theoretical breadth of the volume makes it the most complete account of extraction from coordinate structures to date: at first glance, it appears to be a syntactic matter, but the survey raises theoretical and empirical questions not just for syntax, but also across semantics, pragmatics, and discourse structure. Rather than promoting a single analysis, Daniel Altshuler and Robert Truswell outline reasonable (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  18. Bias in semantic and discourse interpretation.Nicholas Asher, Julie Hunter & Soumya Paul - 2022 - Linguistics and Philosophy 45 (3):393-429.
    In this paper, we show how game theoretic work on conversation combined with a theory of discourse structure provides a framework for studying interpretive bias and how bias affects the production and interpretation of linguistic content. We model the influence of author bias on the discourse content and structure of the author’s linguistic production and interpreter bias on the interpretation of ambiguous or underspecified elements of that content and structure. Interpretive bias is an essential feature of learning and understanding but (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  19. Metaphor Identification beyond Discourse Coherence.Inés Crespo, Andreas Heise & Claudia Picazo - 2022 - Argumenta 1 (15):109-124.
    In this paper, we propose an account of metaphor identification on the basis of contextual coherence. In doing so, we build on previous work by Nicholas Asher and Alex Lascarides that appeals to rhetorical relations in order to explain discourse structure and the constraints on the interpretation of metaphor that follow from it. Applying this general idea to our problem, we will show that rhetorical relations are sometimes insufficient and sometimes inadequate for deciding whether a given utterance is a case (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20. Perspective de la grammaire générative sur l’anaphore.Philip Miller - 2022 - Corela. Cognition, Représentation, Langage.
    This paper presents the treatment of anaphora in generative grammar. After a broad review of of the different theories covered under the term, it provides an overview of the history of the treatment of anaphora in generative grammar. It then discusses Ariel’s theory of accessibility and shows how it can account for the choice of some of the anaphoric expressions provided in the text. In a final section, the paper presents the author’s recent work on the choice between verbal anaphors. (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  21. Quantifier spreading and the question under discussion.Dimitrios Skordos, Allyson Myers & David Barner - 2022 - Cognition 226 (C):105059.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  22. Discourse Coherence—From Psychology to Linguistics and Back Again.Maxime Amblard, Michel Musiol & Manuel Rebuschi - 2021 - In Maxime Amblard, Michel Musiol & Manuel Rebuschi (eds.), Coherence of Discourse: Formal and Conceptual Issues of Language. Springer Verlag. pp. 1-17.
    The present volume explores recent advances in modeling discourse processes, particularly new approaches aimed at understanding pathological language behavior specific to schizophrenia.
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  23. Negative existentials as corrections: a partial solution to the problem of negative existentials in segmented discourse representation theory.Lenny Clapp - 2021 - Linguistics and Philosophy 44 (6):1281-1315.
    Paradigmatic uses of negative existentials such as ‘Vulcan does not exist’ are problematic because they present the interpreter with a pragmatic paradox: a speaker who uses such a sentence seems to be asserting something that is incompatible with what she presupposes. An adequate solution must therefore explain why we interpret paradigmatic uses of negative existentials as saying something true, even though such uses present us with a pragmatic paradox. I provide such an explanation by analyzing paradigmatic uses of negative existentials (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  24. Conversational Eliciture.Jonathan Cohen & Andrew Kehler - 2021 - Philosophers' Imprint 21 (12).
    The sentence "The boss fired the employee who is always late" invites the defeasible inference that the speaker is attempting to convey that the lateness caused the firing. We argue that such inferences cannot be understood in terms of familiar approaches to extrasemantic enrichment such as implicature, impliciture, explicature, or species of local enrichment already in the literature. Rather, we propose that they arise from more basic cognitive strategies, grounded in processes of coherence establishment, that thinkers use to make sense (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  25. Endorsement and assertion.Will Fleisher - 2021 - Noûs 55 (2):363-384.
    Scientists, philosophers, and other researchers commonly assert their theories. This is surprising, as there are good reasons for skepticism about theories in cutting-edge research. I propose a new account of assertion in research contexts that vindicates these assertions. This account appeals to a distinct propositional attitude called endorsement, which is the rational attitude of committed advocacy researchers have to their theories. The account also appeals to a theory of conversational pragmatics known as the Question Under Discussion model, or QUD. Hence, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  26. Counterfactuals and modality.Gabriel Greenberg - 2021 - Linguistics and Philosophy 44 (6):1255-1280.
    This essay calls attention to a set of linguistic interactions between counterfactual conditionals, on one hand, and possibility modals like could have and might have, on the other. These data present a challenge to the popular variably strict semantics for counterfactual conditionals. Instead, they support a version of the strict conditional semantics in which counterfactuals and possibility modals share a unified quantificational domain. I’ll argue that pragmatic explanations of this evidence are not available to the variable analysis. And putative counterexamples (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  27. Expectations from relative clauses: Real-time coherence updates in discourse processing.Jet Hoek, Hannah Rohde, Jacqueline Evers-Vermeul & Ted J. M. Sanders - 2021 - Cognition 210 (C):104581.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  28. Standard and Non-standard Suppositions and Presuppositions.Maja Kasjanowicz - 2021 - Axiomathes 32 (3):477-501.
    In this paper, I argue that the distinction between standard and non-standard pragmatic implications, originally used to differentiate among types of conversational implicatures, applies to the family of contents—traditionally referred to as ‘presuppositions’—that exhibit projective behaviour. Following the scholars working within the Question Under Discussion model of communication, I distinguish between two types of projective implications: suppositions and presuppositions narrowly construed. Next, I identify two rules of appropriateness that govern the use of, respectively, supposition-triggering and presupposition-triggering expressions. Finally, I argue (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  29. The “All Lives Matter” response: QUD-shifting as epistemic injustice.Jessica Keiser - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):8465-8483.
    Drawing on recent work in formal pragmatic theory, this paper shows that the manipulation of discourse structure—in particular, by way of shifting the Question Under Discussion mid-discourse—can constitute an act of epistemic injustice. I argue that the “All Lives Matter” response to the “Black Lives Matter” slogan is one such case; this response shifts the Question Under Discussion governing the overarching discourse from Do Black lives matter? to Which lives matter? This manipulation of the discourse structure systematically obscures the intended (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  30. The Language of Fiction.Emar Maier & Andreas Stokke (eds.) - 2021 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    This volume brings together new research on fiction from the fields of philosophy and linguistics. Fiction has long been a topic of interest in philosophy, but recent years have also seen a surge in work on fictional discourse at the intersection between linguistics and philosophy of language. In particular, there has been a growing interest in examining long-standing issues concerning fiction from a perspective that is informed both by philosophy and linguistic theory. -/- Following a detailed introduction by the editors, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  31. Formal properties of "now" revisited.Una Stojnic & Daniel Altshuler - 2021 - Semantics and Pragmatics 14.
    The traditional view is that 'now’ is a pure indexical, denoting the utterance time. Yet, despite its initial appeal, the view has faced criticism. A range of data reveal 'now’ allows for discourse-bound (i.e., anaphoric) uses, and can occur felicitously with the past tense. The reaction to this has typically been to treat ‘now’ as akin to a true demonstrative, selecting the prominent time supplied by the non-linguistic context or prior discourse. We argue this is doubly mistaken. The first mistake (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  32. The role of non-connective discourse cues and their interaction with connectives.Ludivine Crible & Vera Demberg - 2020 - Pragmatics Cognition 27 (2):313-338.
    The disambiguation and processing of coherence relations is often investigated with a focus on explicit connectives, such as but or so. Other, non-connective cues from the context also facilitate discourse inferences, although their precise disambiguating role and interaction with connectives have been largely overlooked in the psycholinguistic literature so far. This study reports on two crowdsourcing experiments that test the role of contextual cues in the disambiguation of contrast and consequence relations. We compare the effect of contextual cues in conceptually (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  33. The Speaker Authority Problem for Context-Sensitivity.Karen S. Lewis - 2020 - Erkenntnis 85 (6):1527-1555.
    Context-sensitivity raises a metasemantic question: what determines the value of a context-sensitive expression in context? Taking gradable adjectives as a case study, this paper argues against various forms of intentionalist metasemantics, i.e. that speaker intentions determine values for context-sensitive expressions in context, including the coordination account recently defended by King :219–237, 2014a; in: Burgess, Sherman Metasemantics: New essays on the foundations of meaning, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 97–118, 2014b). The paper argues that all intentionalist accounts face the speaker authority (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  34. Discourse and method.Ethan Nowak & Eliot Michaelson - 2020 - Linguistics and Philosophy 43 (2):119-138.
    Stojnić et al. (2013, 2017) argue that the reference of demonstratives is fixed without any contribution from the extra-linguistic context. On their `prominence/coherence' theory, the reference of a demonstrative expression depends only on its context-independent linguistic meaning. Here, we argue that Stojnić et al.’s striking claims can be maintained in only the thinnest technical sense. Instead of eliminating appeals to the extra-linguistic context, we show how the prominence/coherence theory merely suppresses them. Then we ask why one might be tempted to (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  35. Tipper is ready but he is not strong enough: minimal proposition, question under discussion, and what is said.Charlie Siu - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (9):2577-2584.
    A standard objection to Cappelen and Lepore’s Semantic Minimalism is that minimal propositions are explanatorily idle. But Schoubye and Stokke recently proposed that minimal proposition and the question under discussion of a conversation jointly determine what is said in a systematic and explanatory way. This note argues that their account both overgenerates and undergenerates.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  36. Pointing things out: in defense of attention and coherence.Una Stojnić, Matthew Stone & Ernie Lepore - 2020 - Linguistics and Philosophy 43 (2):139-148.
    Nowak and Michaelson have done us the service of presenting direct and clear worries about our account of demonstratives. In response, we use the opportunity to engage briefly with their remarks as a useful way to clarify our view.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  37. What the metasemantics of "know" is not.Peter van Elswyk - 2020 - Linguistics and Philosophy 43 (1):69-82.
    Epistemic contextualism in the style of Lewis (1996) maintains that ascriptions of knowledge to a subject vary in truth with the alternatives that can be eliminated by the subject’s evidence in a context. Schaffer (2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2015), Schaffer and Knobe (2012), and Schaffer and Szabo ́ (2014) hold that the question under discussion or QUD always determines these alternatives in a context. This paper shows that the QUD does not perform such a role for "know" and uses this (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  38. Questions under discussion and the semantics/pragmatics divide.Jumbly Grindrod & Emma Borg - 2019 - Philosophical Quarterly 69 (275):418-426.
    The ‘question under discussion’ (or ‘QUD’) framework is a pragmatic framework that draws on work in the semantics of questions to provide an appealing account of a range of pragmatic phenomena, including the use of prosodic focus in English and restrictions on acceptable discourse moves (Roberts 1996). More recently, however, a number of proposals have attempted to use the framework to help to settle issues at the semantics/pragmatics boundary, fixing the truth-conditions of what is said by a speaker (which many (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  39. Loose Talk, Scale Presuppositions and QUD.Daniel Hoek - 2019 - In Julian J. Schlöder, Dean McHugh & Floris Roelofsen (eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd Amsterdam Colloquium. pp. 171-180.
    I present a new pragmatic theory of loose talk, focussing on the loose use of numbers and measurement expressions. The account explains loose readings as arising from a pragmatic mechanism aimed at restoring relevance to the question under discussion (QUD), appealing to Krifka's notion of a measurement scale. The core motivating observation is that the loose reading of a claim need not be weaker than its literal content, as almost all pragmatic treatments of loose talk have assumed (e.g. Lasersohn). The (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  40. Discourse Coherence as a Cue to Reference in Word Learning: Evidence for Discourse Bootstrapping.Jessica Sullivan, Juliana Boucher, Reina J. Kiefer, Katherine Williams & David Barner - 2019 - Cognitive Science 43 (1):e12702.
    Word learning depends critically on the use of linguistic context to constrain the likely meanings of words. However, the mechanisms by which children infer word meaning from linguistic context are still poorly understood. In this study, we asked whether adults (n = 58) and 2‐ to 6‐year‐old children (n = 180) use discourse coherence relations (i.e., the meaningful relationships between elements within a discourse) to constrain their interpretation of novel words. Specifically, we showed participants videos of novel animals exchanging objects. (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  41. Deceiving without answering.Peter van Elswyk - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 177 (5):1157-1173.
    Lying is standardly distinguished from misleading according to how a disbelieved proposition is conveyed. To lie, a speaker uses a sentence to say a proposition she does not believe. A speaker merely misleads by using a sentence to somehow convey but not say a disbelieved proposition. Front-and-center to the lying/misleading distinction is a conception of what-is-said by a sentence in a context. Stokke (2016, 2018) has recently argued that the standard account of lying/misleading is explanatorily inadequate unless paired with a (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  42. Semantics for Reasons.Bryan R. Weaver & Kevin Scharp - 2019 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. Edited by Kevin Scharp.
    Semantics for Reasons is a book about what we mean when we talk about reasons. It not only brings together the theory of reasons and natural language semantics in original ways but also sketches out a litany of implications for metaethics and the philosophy of normativity. In their account of how the language of reasons works, Bryan R. Weaver and Kevin Scharp propose and defend a view called Question Under Discussion Reasons Contextualism. They use this view to argue for a (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  43. Might do Better: Flexible Relativism and the QUD.Bob Beddor & Andy Egan - 2018 - Semantics and Pragmatics 11.
    The past decade has seen a protracted debate over the semantics of epistemic modals. According to contextualists, epistemic modals quantify over the possibilities compatible with some contextually determined group’s information. Relativists often object that contextualism fails to do justice to the way we assess utterances containing epistemic modals for truth or falsity. However, recent empirical work seems to cast doubt on the relativist’s claim, suggesting that ordinary speakers’ judgments about epistemic modals are more closely in line with contextualism than relativism (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  44. Conversational Exculpature.Daniel Hoek - 2018 - Philosophical Review 127 (2):151-196.
    Conversational exculpature is a pragmatic process whereby information is subtracted from, rather than added to, what the speaker literally says. This pragmatic content subtraction explains why we can say “Rob is six feet tall” without implying that Rob is between 5'0.99" and 6'0.01" tall, and why we can say “Ellen has a hat like the one Sherlock Holmes always wears” without implying Holmes exists or has a hat. This article presents a simple formalism for understanding this pragmatic mechanism, specifying how, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  45. The linguistic marking of coherence relations.Jet Hoek, Sandrine Zufferey, Jacqueline Evers-Vermeul & Ted J. M. Sanders - 2018 - Pragmatics and Cognition 25 (2):276-309.
    Connectives and cue phrases are the most prototypical linguistic elements that signal coherence relations, but by limiting our attention to connectives, we are likely missing out on important other cues readers and listeners use when establishing coherence relations. However, defining the role of other types of linguistic elements in the signaling of coherence relations is not straightforward, and it is also not obvious why and how non-connective elements function as signals for coherence relations. In this paper, we aim to develop (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  46. The linguistic marking of coherence relations : Interactions between connectives and segment-internal elements.Jet Hoek, Sandrine Zufferey, Jacqueline Evers-Vermeul & Ted J. M. Sanders - 2018 - Pragmatics Cognition 25 (2):276-309.
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  47. Logical Pluralism from a Pragmatic Perspective.Teresa Kouri Kissel - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (3):578-591.
    This paper presents a new view of logical pluralism. This pluralism takes into account how the logical connectives shift, depending on the context in which they occur. Using the Question-Under-Discussion Framework as formulated by Craige Roberts, I identify the contextual factor that is responsible for this shift. I then provide an account of the meanings of the logical connectives which can accommodate this factor. Finally, I suggest that this new pluralism has a certain Carnapian flavour. Questions about the meanings of (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  48. Lying and Insincerity.Andreas Stokke - 2018 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
    Andreas Stokke presents a comprehensive study of lying and insincere language use. He investigates how lying relates to other forms of insincerity and explores the kinds of attitudes that go with insincere uses of language. -/- Part I develops an account of insincerity as a linguistic phenomenon. Stokke provides a detailed theory of the distinction between lying and speaking insincerely, and accounts for the relationship between lying and deceiving. A novel framework of assertion underpins the analysis of various kinds of (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  49. Conventions of Viewpoint Coherence in Film.Samuel Cumming, Gabriel Greenberg & Rory Kelly - 2017 - Philosophers' Imprint 17.
    This paper examines the interplay of semantics and pragmatics within the domain of film. Films are made up of individual shots strung together in sequences over time. Though each shot is disconnected from the next, combinations of shots still convey coherent stories that take place in continuous space and time. How is this possible? The semantic view of film holds that film coherence is achieved in part through a kind of film language, a set of conventions which govern the relationships (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  50. Bullshitting, Lying, and Indifference toward Truth.Don Fallis & Andreas Stokke - 2017 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 4:277-309.
    This paper is about some of the ways in which people sometimes speak while be- ing indifferent toward what they say. We argue that what Harry Frankfurt called ‘bullshitting’ is a mode of speech marked by indifference toward inquiry, the coop- erative project of reaching truth in discourse. On this view bullshitting is character- ized by indifference toward the project of advancing inquiry by making progress on specific subinquiries, represented by so-called questions under discussion. This ac- count preserves the central (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
1 — 50 / 118