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4Words and Roots – Polysemy and Allosemy – Communication and LanguageReview of Philosophy and Psychology 1-33. forthcoming.Most substantive (content-bearing) words are polysemous, but polysemy is cross-categorial; for instance, the lexical forms ‘stone’ and ‘front’ are associated with families of interrelated senses and these senses are spread across their manifestations as three words, noun, verb and adjective. So, the ultimate unit underpinning polysemy is not a word but the categoryless root of the related words, which must, in some sense, track the interrelated families of senses. The main topic of this paper is…Read more
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34Metaphor 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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22Introduction to the Special Issue ‘Word Meaning – What it is and What it is not’Dialectica 71 (3): 335-336. 2017.
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29Editorial: ‘Key Topics in Philosophy of Language and Mind’Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (4): 717-720. 2017.
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63Introduction 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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18No 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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77Polysemy: 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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12Relevance, 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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279XIII-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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442Linguistic 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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128Metaphor 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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200Truth-conditional content and conversational implicatureIn Claudia Bianchi (ed.), The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction, Csli Publications. pp. 65--100. 2004.
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223Relevance Theory - New Directions and DevelopmentsIn Ernest Lepore & Barry Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to the Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. pp. 341--360. 2006.As a post-Gricean pragmatic theory, Relevance Theory (RT) takes as its starting point the question of how hearers bridge the gap between sentence meaning and speaker meaning. That there is such a gap has been a given of linguistic philosophy since Grice’s (1967) Logic and Conversation. But the account that relevance theory offers of how this gap is bridged, although originating as a development of Grice’s co-operative principle and conversational maxims, differs from other broadly Gricean accoun…Read more
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103Metaphor and the literal–nonliteral distinctionIn Keith Allan & Kasia Jaszczolt (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 469--492. 2012.
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88“Utterances and thoughts have content: They represent (actual or imaginary) states of affairs.” This is the opening statement of François Recanati’s most sustained work on kinds of representation, Oratio Obliqua, Oratio Recta (2000) and it presents the core phenomenon which it is the task of the philosophy of language to explain. A primary function of language and thought, though not their only function, is to represent how things are or might be. As well as descriptively representing entities, …Read more
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60Within relevance theory the two local pragmatic processes of enrichment and loosening of linguistically encoded conceptual material have been given quite distinct treatments. Enrichments of various sorts, including those which involve a logical strengthening of a lexical concept, contribute to the proposition expressed by the utterance, hence to its truth-conditions. Loosenings, including metaphorical uses, do not enter into the proposition expressed by the utterance or affect its truth-conditio…Read more
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47Metaphor and Hyperbole: Testing the Continuity HypothesisMetaphor and Symbol 30 (1): 24-40. 2015.In standard Relevance Theory, hyperbole and metaphor are categorized together as loose uses of language, on a continuum with approximations, category extensions and other cases of loosening/broadening of meaning. Specifically, it is claimed that there are no interesting differences between hyperbolic and metaphorical uses. In recent work, we have set out to provide a more fine-grained articulation of the similarities and differences between hyperbolic and metaphorical uses and their relation to …Read more
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48The basic thesis of this book is that there is a level of utterance-type meaning, which is distinct from, and intermediate between, sentence-type meaning and utterance-token meaning. That is, it is more than encoded linguistic meaning but generally less than the full interpretation of an utterance. Here are some examples, where (a) is a sentence and (b) is its utterance-type meaning in each case.
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95Negation, `presupposition' and the semantics/ pragmatics distinctionJournal of Linguistics 34 309-350. 1998.A cognitive pragmatic approach is taken to some long-standing problem cases of negation, the so-called presupposition denial cases. It is argued that a full account of the processes and levels of representation involved in their interpretation typically requires the sequential pragmatic derivation of two different propositions expressed. The first is one in which the presupposition is preserved and, following the rejection of this, the second involves the echoic (metalinguistic) use of material …Read more
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161Implicature, explicature, and truth-theoretic semanticsIn Maite Ezcurdia & Robert J. Stainton (eds.), The Semantics–Pragmatics Boundary in Philosophy, Broadview Press. pp. 261. 2013.
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592Metaphor, relevance and the 'emergent property' issueMind and Language 21 (3). 2006.The interpretation of metaphorical utterances often results in the attribution of emergent properties, which are neither standardly associated with the individual constituents in isolation nor derivable by standard rules of semantic composition. An adequate pragmatic account of metaphor interpretation must explain how these properties are derived. Using the framework of relevance theory, we propose a wholly inferential account, and argue that the derivation of emergent properties involves no spe…Read more
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University College LondonRegular Faculty
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |