Reference without referents
There is a single category of referring expressions, all of which deserve essentially the same kind of semantic treatment. Included in this category are both singular and plural referring expressions ("Aristotle", "The Pleiades"), complex and non-complex referring expressions (&q...
Đã lưu trong:
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| Ngôn ngữ: | Undetermined English |
| Được phát hành: |
Oxford,New York
Clarendon Press,Oxford University Press
2005
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| Những chủ đề: | |
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| Thư viện lưu trữ: | Trung tâm Học liệu Trường Đại học Trà Vinh |
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| Tóm tắt: | There is a single category of referring expressions, all of which deserve essentially the same kind of semantic treatment. Included in this category are both singular and plural referring expressions ("Aristotle", "The Pleiades"), complex and non-complex referring expressions ("The President of the USA in 1970", "Nixon"), and empty and non-empty referring expressions ("Vulcan", "Neptune"). Referring expressions are to be described semantically by a reference condition, rather than by being associated with a referent. In arguing for these theses, Sainsbury's book promises to end the fruitless oscillation between Millian and descriptivist views. Millian views insist that every name has a referent, and find it hard to give a good account of names which appear not to have referents, or at least are not known to do so, like ones introduced through error ("Vulcan"), ones where it is disputed whether they have a bearer ("Patanjali") and ones used in fiction. Descriptivist theories require that each name be associated with some body of information. These theories fly in the face of the fact names are useful precisely because there is often no overlap of information among speakers and hearers. The alternative position for which the book argues is firmly non-descriptivist, though it also does not require a referent. A much broader view can be taken of which expressions are referring expressions: not just names and pronouns used demonstratively, but also some complex expressions and some anaphoric uses of pronouns |
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| Mô tả vật lý: | xv, 263 p. 24 cm |
| số ISBN: | 9780199230402 |