Truth condition

Abstract: This book offers a highly original, integrated treatment of issues that play a central role in linguistic semantics, philosophy of language, and cognitive approaches to meaning.It is based on the idea that expressions of language are not interpreted directly via truth conditions; rather, at a certain cognitive level they help to build up mental spaces, internally structured and linked to one another. Because the construction of spaces is typically underdetermined by the expressions, simple principles yield multiple possibilities and apparently complex ambiguities.Focusing on the mental constructions that can be associated with expressions rather than merely on the expressions themselves, Fauconnier reveals a general, uniform, and elegant organization that is responsible for superficially diverse and complex phenomena. A finding that challenges several traditional and widespread views on meaning and natural language, with far-reaching implications: adequate theories of truth and reference cannot bypass the cognitive space-construction process, and standard linguistic arguments for hidden structural levels are invalidated.Gilles Fauconnier is director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Paris VIII.A Bradford Book.

Abstract: This paper investigates the way that linguistic expressions influence vagueness, focusing on the interpretation of the positive (unmarked) form of gradable adjectives. I begin by developing a semantic analysis of the positive form of ‘relative’ gradable adjectives, expanding on previous proposals by further motivating a semantic basis for vagueness and by precisely identifying and characterizing the division of labor between the compositional and contextual aspects of its interpretation. I then introduce a challenge to the analysis from the class of ‘absolute’ gradable adjectives: adjectives that are demonstrably gradable, but which have positive forms that relate objects to maximal or minimal degrees, and do not give rise to vagueness. I argue that the truth conditional difference between relative and absolute adjectives in the positive form stems from the interaction of lexical semantic properties of gradable adjectives—the structure of the scales they use—and a general constraint on interpretive economy that requires truth conditions to be computed on the basis of conventional meaning to the extent possible, allowing for context dependent truth conditions only as a last resort.

Abstract: This self-contained introduction to natural language semantics addresses the major theoretical questions in the field. The authors introduce the systematic study of linguistic meaning through a sequence of formal tools and their linguistic applications. Starting with propositional connectives and truth conditions, the book moves to quantification and binding, intensionality and tense, and so on. To set their approach in a broader perspective, the authors also explore the interaction of meaning with context and use (the semantics-pragmatics interface) and address some of the foundational questions, especially in connection with cognition in general. They also introduce a few of the most accessible and interesting ideas from recent research to give the reader a bit of the flavor of current work in semantics. The organization of this new edition is modular; after the introductory chapters, the remaining material can be covered in flexible order. The book presupposes no background in formal logic (an appendix introduces the basic notions of set theory) and only a minimal acquaintance with linguistics. This edition includes a substantial amount of completely new material and has been not only updated but redesigned throughout to enhance its user-friendliness.