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1992Barack Obama’s South Carolina SpeechJournal of Pragmatics 42. 2010.Analysis of Barack Obama's rhetorical strategies
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1118On the social practice of indirect reports.Journal of Pragmatics 42. 2010.I propose some rules that regiment substitutions of NPs.
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929Knowing how and pragmatic intrusionIntercultural Pragmatics 8 (4): 543-570. 2011.knowing how and pragmatic intrusion
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924On the tension between semantics and pragmaticsRASK: International Journal of Language and Communication 37 5-38. 2013.Loci of pragmatic intrusion signal the tension between semantics and pragmatics.
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921Belief reports and pragmatic intrusion: the case of null appositives.Journal of Pragmatics 40 2019-2040. 2008.In this paper, I explore Bach’s idea (Bach, 2000) that null appositives, intended as expanded qua-clauses, can resolve the puzzles of belief reports. These puzzles are crucial in understanding the semantics and pragmatics of belief reports and are presented in a section. I propose that Bach’s strategy is not only a way of dealing with puzzles, but also an ideal way of dealing with belief reports. I argue that even simple unproblematic cases of belief reports are cases of pragmatic intrusion, inv…Read more
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914Default semantics and the architecture of the mindJournal of Pragmatics 43. 2011.Relationship between default semantics and modularity of mind (in particular mind reading through the principle of Relevance).
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837The Problem of De Se Attitudes: An Introduction to the Issues and the EssaysIn Neil Feit & Alessandro Capone (eds.), Attitudes De Se: Linguistics, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Csli Publications. pp. 1-25. 2013.
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815The pragmatics of indirect reports and slurring.In Perspectives on Linguistic Pragmatics, Springer. pp. 153-184. 2013.
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790The pragmatics of pronominal clitics and propositional attitudesIntercultural Pragmatics 10 (3): 459-485. 2013.pronominal clitics, pragmatics and propositional attitudes.
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744A pragmatic view of the poetic function of languageSemiotica 2023 (250): 1-25. 2023.In this paper, I try to expatiate on the poetic function of language on the basis of considerations by Jakobson and Waugh. I try to bring in the consideration that pragmatics plays an important role in elucidating the poetic function of language. Contextualism allows us to interpret a poem: referents must be fixed or need not be fixed due to the requirements of the discourse; citations are brought in through pragmatic ways; polyphony is achieved by taking into account the context of previous ana…Read more
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735Review of Higginbotham ed. Speaking of events (review)Linguistics 39 (6). 2001.review of Higginbotham et al. A Davidsonian approach.
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707The attributive/referential distinction, pragmatics, modularity of mind and modularization.Australian Journal of Linguistics 31 (2). 2011.attributive/referential. Pragmatic intrusion.
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656Consequences of the pragmatics of 'de se'In Alessandro Capone & Neil Feit (eds.), Attitudes 'de se': linguistics, epistemology and metaphysics, . 2013.IEM, 'de se', pragmatic intrusion
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474Presuppositions as conversational phenomenaIntercultural Pragmatics 198 (198): 22-37. 2017.In this paper, I distinguish between linguistic and non-linguistic presuppositions. I also propose that we should be interested in conversational presuppositions, which could also be called speaker-meant presuppositions or speaker's presuppositions. I also distinguish between potential and actual presuppositions. I propose that, in some cases, presuppositions can be conversationally implicated and cancellation is possible. I specify what the hard cases are and I try to explain them through ontol…Read more
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382Interpretative Disputes, Explicatures, and Argumentative ReasoningArgumentation 30 (4): 399-422. 2016.The problem of establishing the best interpretation of a speech act is of fundamental importance in argumentation and communication in general. A party in a dialogue can interpret another’s or his own speech acts in the most convenient ways to achieve his dialogical goals. In defamation law this phenomenon becomes particularly important, as the dialogical effects of a communicative move may result in legal consequences. The purpose of this paper is to combine the instruments provided by argument…Read more
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260Perspectives on the semantics/pragmatics debate: insights from aphasia researchFrontiers in Psychology 2023 (14): 1-20. 2023.n the philosophy of language, there are many ongoing controversies that stem from relying too heavily on an utterance-based framework. The traditional approach of rigidly partitioning the utterance’s meaning into what is grammatically determined from what is not may not fully capture the complexity of human language in real-world communicative contexts. To address this issue, we suggest shifting focus toward a broader analysis level encompassing conversations and discourses. From this broader pe…Read more
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244Presupoositions as pragmames: the case of exemplification actsIntercultural Pragmatics (17-1): 53-75. 2020.This paper is an example of how contextual information interacts with the interpretation of noun phrases (NPs) in discourse. When we encounter an NP escorted by the definite article or a proper name, the expectation is triggered that the speaker is referring to some referent x that the hearer can normally identify. Strawson and Russell have agreed that a referent must be associated with a definite description so that the assertion containing it can be said to be true. In the case where a descrip…Read more
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220Pragmemes revisited. A theoretical framework.Frontiers in Psychology 31 (15): 1-28. 2024.In this paper, we take up an old issue that of pragmemes, broached by Mey and further explored by Capone. It is not easy to define pragmemes and distinguish them sufficiently from speech acts (units of language use broached by Austin and Searle) or from Wittgensteinian language games or from macro speech acts (see van Dijk on macrostructures) or from Goffman’s scripts. The best idea we could develop about pragmemes is that they instantiate the triple articulation of language, proposed by Jock Wo…Read more
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220Inquiries in philosophical pragmatics. Theoretical developments (edited book)Springer. 2021.Together with the volume “Inquiries in philosophical pragmatics: Linguistic and theoretical issues,” this book collects selected contributions to the conference Pragmasophia II held in Lisbon in 2018. This first volume intends to contribute to the dialogue between philosophers and linguists, trying to broaden the boundaries of this discipline defined by the crucial notions of context and verbal action. To this purpose, the contributions are collected in an order that reflects the core and the fr…Read more
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204Uncommon groundIntercultural Pragmatics 2 (13). 2016.The purpose of this paper is to show how micro-argumentation mechanisms of presumptive reasoning and reasoning from best explanation can be used for explaining some cases of presupposition cancellation. It will be shown how the relationship between presupposition triggers and pragmatic presuppositions can be analyzed in terms of presumptive and non-presumptive polyphonic articulation of an utterance, resulting in different types of commitments for the interlocutors. This approach is grounded on…Read more
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162Inquiries in Philosophical Pragmatics: Issues in Linguistics (edited book)Springer. 2021.Together with the first volume “Inquiries in philosophical pragmatics: Theoretical developments,” this book collects contributions that represent the state of the art on the interconnection between pragmatics and philosophy. While the first volume presents the philosophical dimension of pragmatics, showing the path from theoretical advances to practical uses and approaches, this second volume offers a specular view on this discipline. Instead of adopting the top-down view of the first volume, th…Read more
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134Indirect reports as language gamesPragmatics and Cognition 20 (3): 593-613. 2012.In this chapter I deal with indirect reports in terms of language games. I try to make connections between the theory of language games and the theory of indirect reports, in the light of the issue of clues and cues. Indirect reports are based on an interplay of voices. The voice of the reporter must allow hearers to ‘reconstruct’ the voice of the reported speaker. Ideally, it must be possible to separate the reporter’s voice from that of the reported speaker. When we analyze the language game o…Read more
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102Attitudes De Se: Linguistics, Epistemology, Metaphysics (edited book)CSLI Publications. 2013.In English, we use the word "I" to express thoughts that we have about ourselves, and we use the reflexive pronouns "himself" and "herself" to attribute such thoughts to others. Philosophers and linguists call such thoughts, and the statements we use to express them, de se. De se thoughts and statements, although they appear often in our day-to-day lives, pose a series of challenging problems for both linguists and philosophers. This interdisciplinary volume examines the structure of de se tho…Read more
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73The pragmatics of quotation, explicatures and modularity of mindPragmatics and Society 4 (3): 259-284. 2013.This paper presents a purely pragmatic account of quotation which, it is argued, will be able to accommodate all relevant linguistic phenomena. Given that it is more parsimonious to explain the data by reference to pragmatic principles only than to explain them by reference to both pragmatic and semantic principles, as is common in the literature, I conclude that the account of quotation I present is to be preferred to the more standard accounts (including the alternative theories of quotation, …Read more
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69On quasi-namesCa' Foscari Submission. forthcoming.Abstract In this paper, I shall deal with quasi-(proper) names, that is expressions like ‘Mum’, ‘Dad’, ‘Grandpa’, ‘Grandma’ in English or ‘Papà’, ‘Mamma’, ‘Nonna’, ‘Nonno’ in Italian. I shall use examples both from English and Italian. Quasi-names are directly referential like proper names, even if they apparently exhibit some conceptual materials, which, however, are not active and are inert. They can be used as vocatives or as arguments of verbs. I called terms like ‘Mum’, ‘Dad’ ‘quasi-names’ …Read more
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69Review of Jaszczolt (1999): Discourse, Beliefs and Intentions: Semantic Defaults and Propositional Attitude Ascription (review)Pragmatics and Cognition 9 (2): 365-372. 2001.
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48Indirect Reports and Pragmatics in the World Languages (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2018.This volume addresses the intriguing issue of indirect reports from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributors include philosophers, theoretical linguists, socio-pragmaticians, and cognitive scientists. The book is divided into four sections following the provenance of the authors. Combining the voices from leading and emerging authors in the field, it offers a detailed picture of indirect reports in the world’s languages and their significance for theoretical linguistics. Building on th…Read more
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45Explicatures are NOT CancellableIn Alessandro Capone, Franco Lo Piparo & Marco Carapezza (eds.), Perspectives on linguistic pragmatics, Springer. pp. 131-151. 2013.Explicatures are not cancellable. Theoretical considerations.
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42Review of Higginbotham, J., Pianesi, F. Varzi, A, a cura di ‘Speaking of Events’ (review)Linguistics 39 (6): 1179-1192. 2001.review of Higginbotham et al. Speaking of events
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |