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1711The semantics of contextual shifting and sensitivityDissertation, The Australian National University. 2012.This thesis argues for two main points concerning the philosophy of natural language semantics. Firstly, that the objects of assertion are distinct from the entities appealed to in the compositional rules of natural language semantics. Secondly, natural languages contain context-shifting operators known as "monsters". In fact, it will be shown that these theses are simply two sides of the same coin.
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986Does Semantic Relationism Solve Frege's Puzzle?Journal of Philosophical Logic 46 (1): 97-118. 2017.In a series of recent works, Kit Fine, 605–631, 2003, 2007) has sketched a novel solution to Frege’s puzzle. Radically departing from previous solutions, Fine argues that Frege’s puzzle forces us to reject compositionality. In this paper we first provide an explicit formalization of the relational semantics for first-order logic suggested, but only briefly sketched, by Fine. We then show why the relational semantics alone is technically inadequate, forcing Fine to enrich the syntax with a coordi…Read more
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1760Descriptions which have grown capital lettersMind and Language 30 (3): 292-319. 2015.Almost entirely ignored in the linguistic theorising on names and descriptions is a hybrid form of expression which, like definite descriptions, begin with 'the' but which, like proper names, are capitalised and seem to lack descriptive content. These are expressions such as the following, 'the Holy Roman Empire', 'the Mississippi River', or 'the Space Needle'. Such capitalised descriptions are ubiquitous in natural language, but to which linguistic categories do they belong? Are they simply pro…Read more
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604The history of the use of ⟦.⟧-notation in natural language semanticsSemantics and Pragmatics 9 (12). 2016.In contemporary natural languages semantics one will often see the use of special brackets to enclose a linguistic expression, e.g. ⟦carrot⟧. These brackets---so-called denotation brackets or semantic evaluation brackets---stand for a function that maps a linguistic expression to its "denotation" or semantic value (perhaps relative to a model or other parameters). Even though this notation has been used in one form or another since the early development of natural language semantics in the 1960s…Read more
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680Two-dimensional semantics and the nesting problemAnalysis 74 (2): 210-224. 2014.Graeme Forbes (2011) raises some problems for two-dimensional semantic theories. The problems concern nested environments: linguistic environments where sentences are nested under both modal and epistemic operators. Closely related problems involving nested environments have been raised by Scott Soames (2005) and Josh Dever (2007). Soames goes so far as to say that nested environments pose the “chief technical problem” for strong two-dimensionalism. We call the problem of handling nested environ…Read more
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1482The Antinomy of the Variable: A Tarskian ResolutionJournal of Philosophy 113 (3): 137-170. 2016.Kit Fine has reawakened a puzzle about variables with a long history in analytic philosophy, labeling it “the antinomy of the variable”. Fine suggests that the antinomy demands a reconceptualization of the role of variables in mathematics, natural language semantics, and first-order logic. The difficulty arises because: (i) the variables ‘x’ and ‘y’ cannot be synonymous, since they make different contributions when they jointly occur within a sentence, but (ii) there is a strong temptation to s…Read more
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472Propositions and Multiple IndexingThought: A Journal of Philosophy 1 (2): 116-124. 2012.It is argued that propositions cannot be the compositional semantic values of sentences (in context) simply due to issues stemming from the compositional semantics of modal operators (or modal quantifiers). In particular, the fact that the arguments for double indexing generalize to multiple indexing exposes a fundamental tension in the default philosophical conception of semantic theory. This provides further motivation for making a distinction between two sentential semantic contents—what (Dum…Read more
Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
PhilPapers Editorships
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