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26Metaphor processing: Referring and predicatingCognition 238 (C): 105534. 2023.The general consensus emerging from decades of empirical investigation of metaphor processing is that, when appropriately contextualised, metaphorically used language is no more demanding of processing effort than literally used language. However, there is a small number of studies which contradict this position, notably Noveck, Bianco, and Castry (2001): they maintain that relevance-based pragmatic theory predicts increased cognitive costs incurred in deriving the extra effects that metaphors t…Read more
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20Introduction to the Special Issue ‘Word Meaning – What it is and What it is not’Dialectica 71 (3): 335-336. 2017.
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28Editorial: ‘Key Topics in Philosophy of Language and Mind’Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (4): 717-720. 2017.
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59Introduction to the 2nd Synthese Special Issue: trends in philosophy of language and mindSynthese 195 (8). 2018.
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Linguistic meaning, communicated meaning and cognitive pragmaticsIn Darragh Byrne & Max Kölbel (eds.), Arguing about language, Routledge. 2010.
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16No unleashed expression without languageBehavioral and Brain Sciences 46. 2023.While the metarepresentational structure of ostensive communication may explain the unleashing of human expression, it neither explains the open-endedness of the thoughts expressed/communicated, nor how the multiply embedded nature of the metarepresentational structure invoked arose. These both require the recursivity of human language, a capacity which must be distinguished from external (public) languages and their use in communication.
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1Relevance theory and the philosophy of languageIn Piotr Stalmaszczyk (ed.), Cambridge Handbook of the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge University Press. 2021.
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74Polysemy: Pragmatics and sense conventionsMind and Language 36 (1): 108-133. 2021.Polysemy, understood as instances of a single linguistic expression having multiple related senses, is not a homogenous phenomenon. There are regular (apparently, rule‐based) cases and irregular (resemblance‐based) cases, which have different processing profiles. Although a primary source of polysemy is pragmatic inference, at least some cases become conventionalised and linguistically encoded. Three main issues are discussed: (a) the key differences between regular and irregular cases and the r…Read more
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Relevance TheoryIn Gillian Russell & Delia Graff Fara (eds.), Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language, Routledge. pp. 163-176. 2012.
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10Relevance, Pragmatics and Interpretation (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2017.Bringing together work by leading scholars in relevance theory, this volume showcases cutting-edge research within the theory, and demonstrates its influence across a range of fields including linguistics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, literary studies, developmental psychology and cognitive science. Organised into broad thematic strands that represent the latest research and debates, the volume shows the depth of analysis now possible after nearly forty years of intensive work in developi…Read more
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Word Meaning, What is Said, and ExplicatureIn C. Penco & F. Domaneschi (eds.), What is Said and What is Not, Stanford: Csli Publications. 2013.
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272XIII-Metaphor: Ad Hoc Concepts, Literal Meaning and Mental ImagesProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110 (3_pt_3): 295-321. 2010.I propose that an account of metaphor understanding which covers the full range of cases has to allow for two routes or modes of processing. One is a process of rapid, local, on-line concept construction that applies quite generally to the recovery of word meaning in utterance comprehension. The other requires a greater focus on the literal meaning of sentences or texts, which is metarepresented as a whole and subjected to more global, reflective pragmatic inference. The questions whether metaph…Read more
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76What I hope to achieve in this paper is some rather deeper understanding of the semantic and pragmatic properties of utterances which are said to involve the phenomenon of metalinguistic negation[FN1]. According to Laurence Horn, who has been primarily responsible for drawing our attention to it, this is a special non-truthfunctional use of the negation operator, which can be glossed as 'I object to U' where U is a linguistic utterance. This is to be distinguished from descriptive truthfunctiona…Read more
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42Introduction: Special issue on pragmatics and cognitive scienceMind and Language 17 (1-2). 2002.
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5How many pragmatic systems are there?In María José Frápolli (ed.), Saying, Meaning and Referring: Essays on François Recanati's Philosophy of Language, Palgrave-macmillan. 2007.
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88A unitary approach to lexical pragmatics: relevance, inference and ad hoc conceptsIn Noel Burton-Roberts (ed.), Pragmatics, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 3. 2007.
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H7, l40, l45In Jaroslav Peregrin (ed.), Meaning: The Dynamic Turn, Elsevier Science. pp. 271. 2003.
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154Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication (edited book)Blackwell. 2002-01-01._Thoughts and Utterances_ is the first sustained investigation of two distinctions which are fundamental to all theories of utterance understanding: the semantics/pragmatics distinction and the distinction between what is explicitly communicated and what is implicitly communicated.
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Postscript (1995) to "Implicature, explicature, and truth-theoretic semantics"In Asa Kasher (ed.), Pragmatics: Critical Concepts: Volume IV: Presupposition, Implicature and Indirect Speech Acts, Routledge. pp. 464-479. 1998.
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95Recent work in relevance-theoretic pragmatics develops the idea that understanding verbal utterances involves processes of ad hoc concept construction. The resulting concepts may be narrower or looser than the lexical concepts which provide the input to the process. Two of the many issues that arise are considered in this paper: (a) the applicability of the idea to the understanding of metaphor, and (b) the extent to which lexical forms are appropriately thought of as encoding concepts.
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18Neil Smith has worked across the full range of the discipline of linguistics and explored its interfaces with other disciplines. In all this work he has maintained a commitment to a mentalist approach to the study of language and communication. The aim of this Special Issue is to honour his work and commitment with a collection of papers which brings together work by phonologists, syntacticians, psycholinguists, and pragmatists who share this interest in language as a central component of the hu…Read more
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35Multiple ReviewMind and Language 2 (4): 333-349. 1987.Gavagai! or the Future History of the Animal Language Controversy. By DAVID PREMACK.
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197Most people working on linguistic meaning or communication assume that semantics and pragmatics are distinct domains, yet there is still little consensus on how the distinction is to be drawn. The position defended in this paper is that the semantics/pragmatics distinction holds between (context-invariant) encoded linguistic meaning and speaker meaning. Two other ‘minimalist’ positions on semantics are explored and found wanting: Kent Bach’s view that there is a narrow semantic notion of context…Read more
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430Linguistic communication and the semantics/pragmatics distinctionSynthese 165 (3): 321-345. 2008.Most people working on linguistic meaning or communication assume that semantics and pragmatics are distinct domains, yet there is still little consensus on how the distinction is to be drawn. The position defended in this paper is that the semantics/pragmatics distinction holds between encoded linguistic meaning and speaker meaning. Two other ‘minimalist’ positions on semantics are explored and found wanting: Kent Bach’s view that there is a narrow semantic notion of context which is responsibl…Read more
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1Implicature and ExplicatureIn Hans-Jörg Schmid (ed.), Cognitive Pragmatics, Mouton De Gruyter. pp. 47-84. 2012.
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122Metaphor and the 'Emergent Property' Problem: A Relevance-Theoretic ApproachThe Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 3. 2007.The interpretation of metaphorical utterances often results in the attribution of emergent properties; these are properties which are neither standardly associated with the individual constituents of the utterance in isolation nor derivable by standard rules of semantic composition. For example, an utterance of ‘Robert is a bulldozer’ may be understood as attributing to Robert such properties as single-mindedness, insistence on having things done in his way, and insensitivity to the opinions/fee…Read more
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University College LondonRegular Faculty
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |