Tacit and accessible understanding of language

Synthese 156 (2):253 - 279 (2007)
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Abstract

The empirical nature of our understanding of language is explored. I first show that there are several important and different distinctions between tacit and accessible awareness. I then present empirical evidence concerning our understanding of language. The data suggests that our awareness of sentence-meanings is sometimes merely tacit according to one of these distinctions, but is accessible according to another. I present and defend an interpretation of this mixed view. The present project is shown to impact on several diverse areas, including inferential role semantics and holism, the nature of learning, and the role of linguistics in the law.

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Citations of this work

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Knowledge of Meaning, Conscious and Unconscious.Steven Gross - 2010 - The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication.
The disunity of truth.Josh Dever - 2009 - In Robert Stainton & Christopher Viger (eds.), Compositionality, Context and Semantic Values: Essays in Honour of Ernie Lepore. pp. 174-191.

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On a confusion about a function of consciousness.Ned Block - 1995 - Brain and Behavioral Sciences 18 (2):227-–247.

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