Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 3, March 2022.

This paper presents a novel semantic analysis of unit names (like pound and meter) and gradable adjectives (like tall, short and happy), inspired by measurement theory (Krantz et al. In Foundations of measurement: Additive and Polynomial Representations, 1971). Based on measurement theory’s four-way typology of measures, I claim that different adjectives are associated with different types of measures whose special characteristics, together with features of the relations denoted by unit names, explain the puzzling limited distribution of measure phrases, as well (...) as unit-based comparisons between predicates (as in the table is longer than it is wide). All considered, my analyses support the view that the grammar of natural languages is sensitive to features of measurement theory. (shrink)

The word ‘true’ shows some evidence of gradability. For instance, there are cases where truth-bearers are described as ‘slightly true’, ‘completely true’ or ‘very true’. Expressions that accept these types of modifiers are analysed in terms of properties that can be possessed to a greater or lesser degree. If ‘true’ is genuinely gradable, then it would follow that there are degrees of truth. It might also follow that ‘true’ is context-sensitive, like other gradable expressions. Such conclusions are difficult to reconcile (...) with most existing theories: deflationists and inflationists alike tend to reject the thesis that one true truth-bearer can have more or less truth than another. Based on work in natural language, I argue that ‘true’ is not a genuinely gradable expression. I also provide an explanation of the apparent evidence for gradability. Hence there is no reason to think that there is a truth property that comes in degrees. (shrink)

Intertheoretic relations are an important topic in the philosophy of science. However, since their classical discussion by Ernest Nagel, such relations have mostly been restricted to relations between pairs of theories in the natural sciences. This paper presents a case study of a new type of intertheoretic relation that is inspired by Montague’s analysis of the linguistic syntax-semantics relation. The paper develops a simple model of this relation. To motivate the adoption of our new model, we show that this model (...) extends the scope of application of the Nagelian models and that it shares the epistemological advantages of the Nagelian model. The latter is achieved in a Bayesian framework. (shrink)

This paper uses the distribution and interpretation of antonymous adjectives in comparative constructions as an empirical basis to argue that abstract representations of measurement, or ‘degrees’, must be modeled as intervals on a scale, rather than as points, as commonly assumed. I begin by demonstrating that the facts in this domain must be accounted for in terms of the interaction of the semantics of adjectival polarity and the semantics of the comparative, rather than principles governing the (overt) expression of particular (...) types of adjectives in comparatives. I then show that a principled account of the full range of data under consideration can be constructed within a model in which degrees are formalized as intervals on a scale and adjectival polarity is characterized in terms of two structurally distinct and complementary sorts of `positive' and `negative' degrees. (shrink)

I show that words with indefinite implicit complements occasion a dilemma for their model theory. There has been only two previous attempts to address this problem, one by Fodor and Fodor (1980) and one by Dowty (1981). Each requires that any word tolerating an implicit complement be treated as ambiguous between two different lexical entries and that a meaning postulate or lexical rule be given to constrain suitably the meanings of the various entries for the word. I show that the (...) positing of such an ambiguity runs counter to the facts and propose an alternative solution which does not appeal to ambiguity, meaning postulates or lexical rules. Indeed, I show that the dilemma posed by indefinite implicit complements is posed by all implicit complements and that a general solution to the problem of implicit complements follows from an independently motivated, single treatment of five other problems, that of subcategorization, that of phrasal projections of words, that of defining a model theoretic structure for phrase structure grammars, that of complement polyvalence and that of complement polyadicity. (shrink)

Tun und Können erläutert und diskutiert den Gründungstext der Modalontologie: das neunte Buch der Metaphysik des Aristoteles. Aristoteles' Thesen und Argumente werden zum ersten Mal in Gänze mit formalen analytischen Mitteln rekonstruiert und auf ihre Kohärenz und Gültigkeit geprüft. Erstmals verwendet der Autor dazu eine adverbiale Analyse von Ausdrücken des Könnens und des Vermögens als Prädikatmodifikatoren. Das Buch zeigt, dass Aristoteles' Theorie der Vermögen nicht nur eine konsistente, sondern auch eine leistungsfähige Analyse von Dispositionen und Dispositionsprädikaten bietet. -/- Die Neuausgabe (...) wurde vollständig durchgesehen und um weiterführende Anhänge ergänzt. -/- Der Inhalt: Können, Tun und Möglichkeit. Eine Einführung • Die kausale Dimension von Vermögen • Die ontologische Dimension von Vermögen• Eine notwendige Bedingung für Vermögen • Hindernisse und Verwirklichung • Prioritätsfragen • Aristotle’s Theory of Dispositions • Das Problem des Neuen • Planners, Deciders, Performers. (shrink)

The presentation of the “dual picture of vagueness” in my earlier work is supplemented here with a number of additional considerations. I emphasize how the picture lends itself naturally to treatments of the contribution of a typical degree adjective to propositional content and to truth conditions. A number of reasonable refinements of the picture are presented, especially concerning occasions of use of a degree adjective in which a class containing a sorites series is somehow involved in content fixing, but in (...) such a way that an extension ultimately gets fixed for the predicate. I also develop the observation that standard theories of the logical and semantic paradoxes rely on the idea that the content-fixing mechanisms for the paradoxical expressions work well in general but fail in some localized cases, and that while standard theories of the sorites paradox are clearly not based on this idea at all, the dual theory is fully based on the idea. Next, I offer a few remarks on some recent theories of vagueness and the sorites that are broadly in the spirit of the dual picture, emphasizing the aspects where the latter compares favorably against those recent theories. Finally, the question whether the dual theory is statable with truth according to the theory itself is considered in more detail than in my earlier presentation. (shrink)

The first aim of the paper is to show that under certain conditions generative syntax can be made suitable for Montague semantics, based on his type logic. One of the conditions is to make branching in the so-called X-bar syntax strictly binary, This makes it possible to provide an adequate semantics for Noun Phrases by taking them as referring to sets of collections of sets of entities ( type <ett,t>) rather than to sets of sets of entities (ett).

Among semanticists and philosophers of language, there has been a recent outburst of interest in predicates such as delicious, called predicates of personal taste (PPTs, e.g. Lasersohn 2005). Somewhat surprisingly, the question of whether or how we can distinguish aesthetic predicates from PPTs has hardly been addressed at all in this recent work. It is precisely this question that we address. We investigate linguistic criteria that we argue can be used to delineate the class of specifically aesthetic adjectives. We show (...) that there are, in fact, good motivations for keeping PPTs and aesthetic predicates apart: the semantic structure of the former, but not the latter, entails an experiencer. There are many adjectives whose semantic structure arguably also entails an experiencer, yet which are readily used in expressing aesthetic judgments. Adjectives such as provocative or moving are a case in point, since as adjectives they arguably maintain the experiencer argument from the verb they are derived from. Nevertheless, when we describe, say, a sculpture as provocative, or a theater performance as moving, we clearly make aesthetic judgments. The difficult question, then, is to articulate the relationship between an aesthetic predicate (of which beautiful and ugly are paradigms) and other predicates that just happen to be used in making an aesthetic judgment. Tightly related to this point is the more general question of the relationship between an evaluative predicate and a predicate that occurs in an evaluative judgment. One of our aims is to make some progress in addressing these questions. (shrink)