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Levels of communication and lexical semantics

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Abstract

The meanings of words are not permanent but change over time. Some changes of meaning are quick, such as when a pronoun changes its reference; some are slower, as when two speakers find out that they are using the same word in different senses; and some are very slow, such as when the meaning of a word changes over historical time. A theory of semantics should account for these different time scales. In order to describe these different types of meaning changes, I present an analysis of three levels of communication: instruction, coordination of common ground and coordination of meaning. My first aim is to show that these levels must be considered when discussing lexical semantics. A second aim is to use the levels to identify the communicative roles of some of the main word classes, in particular nouns, adjectives, verbs, indexicals and quantifiers. I argue that the existence of word classes can, to a large extent, be explained by the communicative needs that arise on the different levels.

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Notes

  1. For a presentation of the arguments and counterarguments, see (Gärdenfors (2000), Sect. 5.7).

  2. Their use of fixpoints resembles the attempt made by game theorists to define equilibrium as a state of mutual compatibility among individual strategies. Of course, in any communicative context there may exist a multitude of possible equilibria in the game theoretical sense. However pragmatic and social constraints reduce their number. See Warglien and Gärdenfors (2013) for a discussion of how the fixpoints are achieved.

  3. Cf. the alignment process studied by Pickering and Garrod (2004).

  4. See also Stalnaker (2002) for a different account.

  5. The phonology of the word may have changed drastically, though.

  6. This form corresponds to the language games introduced by Wittgenstein (1953).

  7. Cf. Bara’s (2010, pp. 195–196) three types of failures.

  8. Cf. (Krifka (2013), p. 375).

  9. Cf. the roles of proportional and representative quantifiers in Sect. 7.5 below.

  10. “Learning to speak is learning to translate” (my translation).

  11. This process can be modeled using Voronoi tessellations, but I will not spell out the details here (see (Gärdenfors (2000), chs. 3 and 4), Gärdenfors (2014)).

  12. One difference, though, is that contracts depend on a legal system that penalizes a partner who does not fulfill the contract. In communication the penalty is that less cooperation can be achieved.

  13. (Langacker (2008), Ch. 4) pursues a similar program.

  14. In Gärdenfors (2014), Sect. 3.4, I also argue that from the point of view of the evolution of language this is also the most central communicative situation.

  15. See Paradis (2005) and Ravid (2006) for finer classifications of nouns.

  16. Of course, there are situations where the action to be performed is implicit in the context. In Wittgensteinian examples such as “Three slabs there!” it is presupposed that the slave moves the slabs to the indicated position. Or, when sitting at a dinner table “Salt!” may function as request, albeit not a polite one, that somebody reach you the salt.

  17. It cannot be the only function, however, because some verbs do not admit imperatives (Culicover and Jackendoff 2005, Sect. 12.3).

  18. There exist events without agents such as falling, dying, growing.

  19. The force may be ”mental” or ”social”. See Warglien et al. (2012).

  20. Languages also have other means of describing results of actions, for example by some generic verb such as “go” or “become” together with an adjective or a prepositional phrase.

  21. There has been discussion as to whether there are languages without adjectives.. For example it has been claimed that in Mandarin all adjectives are verbs. Dixon (2004) reviews the evidence and he concludes that something that has the role of modifiers can be found in all languages. He writes: “In some languages, adjectives have similar grammatical properties to nouns, in some to verbs, in some to both nouns and verbs, and in some to neither. I suggest that there are always some grammatical criteria—sometimes rather subtle—for distinguishing the adjective class from other classes” (Dixon 2004, p. 1).

  22. Note that, in contrast to element identification, an indefinite determiner is used for kind identification.

  23. Cf. Haspelmath’s (2003) semantic map for some/any.

  24. Van Benthem’s (1986, ch. 8) analysis of how semantic automata can be used to interpret quantifiers comes closer to Langacker’s analysis than other logic-based semantic theories. The sequential processing of the automata reminds of Langacker’s sequential scanning procedure. However, van Benthem does not draw any distinction between proportional and representative instance quantifiers.

  25. Langacker (2003) writes “random selection,” but that implies some kind of probabilistic mechanism that I do not think is necessary here.

  26. This is reminiscent of Montague’s (1974) and Lewis’s (1970) type-theoretic construction of quantifiers.

  27. Cf. contraction and revisions in the theory of belief change (Gärdenfors 1988). In contrast, a normal addition to the common ground in a dialogue can be seen as an expansion.

  28. A game that is appreciated by many children is to tell them “Don’t think of an elephant!”

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Acknowledgments

I want to thank the Swedish Research Council for support to the Linnaeus environment Thinking in Time: Cognition, Communication and Learning. Parts of this article were written while I was a Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS), which provided a generous environment for research. I am grateful to STIAS and to the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation for their support during this stay.

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Gärdenfors, P. Levels of communication and lexical semantics. Synthese 195, 549–569 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0493-3

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