How to Think About Meaning

Saka, Paul

doi:10.1007/1-4020-5857-8

Cited by 95 publications

(46 citation statements)

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“…Therefore, my analysis of the slur nigger avoids the problems that others inevitably face. That is, since McCready (2010), Williamson (2009), Saka (2007), Blackburn (1984, and others assume that nigger literally means the same as African American and that faggot literally means the same as homosexual, they are unable to account for cases where the slur nigger is in fact felicitously ascribed to non-African American individuals (MacDonald, 2000) and for cases where the slur faggot is in fact felicitously ascribed to non-homosexual individuals (Szekely, 2008). My account does not share this widely held assumption, for I have argued that the negative attitude typically expressed by the speaker using e.g.…”

Section: A Literal Meaning For Slursmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Intuitively, theorists that claim that slurs have literal meaning are tasked with explicating what it is. Typically, previous theorists have suggested that a slur such as kraut really means something like German and bad because of it (McCready, 2010) and that a slur such as nigger really means something like African American and despicable because of it (Saka, 2007) or African American and a fit object for derision because of it (Blackburn, 1984). As I will now point out, these suggestions are inadequate as analyses of the literal meaning of slurs.…”

Section: A Literal Meaning For Slursmentioning

confidence: 98%

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How to do things with slurs: Studies in the way of derogatory words

Croom

2013

Language & Communication

156

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Section: A Literal Meaning For Slursmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: A Literal Meaning For Slursmentioning

confidence: 98%

How to do things with slurs: Studies in the way of derogatory words

Croom

2013

Language & Communication

156

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“…Burge, 1978;Grim, 1991;Sainsbury, 1988;Saka, 2007;Sorensen, 1988). Burge, 1978;Grim, 1991;Sainsbury, 1988;Saka, 2007;Sorensen, 1988).…”

Section: Journal Of Experimental and Theoretical Artificialunclassified

Mind and paradox: paradoxes depend on minds

Saka¹

2013

Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligen

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Paradoxes are mind-dependent in a number of ways. First, by definition, paradoxes offer surprises or apparent contradictions. Since surprise and appearance rely on subjective psychological reactions, paradoxes rely on psychological events. Second, propositional versions of the liar paradox must eventually appeal to sentences if they are to achieve traction, yet sentential versions of the liar paradox rely on language and hence on mentality. Third, belief paradoxes such as B, "No one believes B", transparently hinge on the existence of mental states. (Belief paradoxes -extending work by Burge, Buridan, Grim, Sainsbury, and Sorensen -demonstrate a fundamental limitation on all cognitive systems: that none can hold all and only truths.) Finally, it is argued that belief paradoxes, like liar paradoxes, arise from the nature of semantic representation.

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“…Olga is a dancer who is beautiful. For example, Parsons (1973) develops an argument which aims to show that the existence of ambiguity in natural language provides a challenge for the hypothesis that sentence meaning involves truth conditions (see Saka 2007 for a more recent version of this argument). Siegel (1976) takes this to be a case of lexical ambiguity (in the adjective beautiful), and builds a theory of adjective meaning on top of this assumption.…”

Section: Ambiguity and Semantic Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Parsons acknowledges this in her discussion of lexical ambiguity when she says that "it may be that 'bank' (fi nancial institution) and 'bank' (wall of a river channel) can be distinguished on the basis of a good syntax'', and Saka (2007) does the same, but both are skeptical that the full range of ambiguity phenomena can be handled in this way. In order to make the skeptical case, however, one would need to address actual proposals about these relations within linguistic theory, and show that none provide a coherent basis for handling the challenge of uncertainty.…”

Section: Ambiguity and Semantic Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

23. Ambiguity and vagueness: An overview

Kennedy¹

Semantics

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Ambiguity and vagueness are two varieties of interpretive uncertainty which are often discussed together, but are distinct both in their essential features and in their signifi cance for semantic theory and the philosophy of language. Ambiguity involves uncertainty about mappings between levels of representation with different structural characteristics, while vagueness involves uncertainty about the actual meanings of particular terms. This article examines ambiguity and vagueness in turn, providing a detailed picture of their empirical characteristics and the diagnostics for identifying them, and explaining their signifi cance for theories of meaning. Although this article continues the tradition of discussing ambiguity and vagueness together, one of its goals is to emphasize the ways that these phenomena are distinct in their empirical properties, in the factors that give rise to them, and in the analytical tools that can be brought to bear on them.23. Ambiguity and vagueness: An overview 509 has an ability to make people laugh ("funny ha-ha'') or that she tends to display odd or unusual behavior ("funny strange''). Similarly, (1b) can be used to convey the information that Julian's brother has a relatively high degree of weight, or that he is somehow serious, ponderous, or full of gravitas. That these pairs of interpretations involve distinct truth conditions is shown by the fact that we can use the same term (or, more accurately, the same bits of phonology) to say something that is true and something that is false of the same state of affairs, as in (4) (Zwicky & Sadock 1975).(4) Sterling's cousin used to make people laugh with everything she did, though she was never in any way strange or unusual. She was funny without being funny. Lately, however, she has started behaving oddly, and has lost much of her sense of humor. Now she's funny but not very funny.Both examples also manifest an ambiguity in the nature of the relation that holds between the genitive-marked nominal in the possessive construction and the denotation of the whole possessive DP; cf. article 45 (Barker) Possessives and relational nouns. While the most salient relations are the familial ones expressed by the respective head nouns (cousin of and brother of ), it is possible to understand these sentences as establishing different relations. For example, if Julian is one of several tutors working with a family of underachieving brothers, we could use (1b) as a way of saying something about the brother who has been assigned to Julian, without in any way implying that Julian himself stands in the brother of relation to anyone. (He could be an only child.) Even after we settle on a particular set of conditions of application for the ambiguous terms in (1a) and (1b) (e.g. that we mean "funny ha-ha'' by funny or are using heavy to describe an object's weight), a third type of uncertainty remains about precisely what properties these terms ascribe to the objects to which they are applied, and possibly about whether these terms can even be applied in ...

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How to Think About Meaning

Cited by 95 publications

References 0 publications

How to do things with slurs: Studies in the way of derogatory words

How to do things with slurs: Studies in the way of derogatory words

Mind and paradox: paradoxes depend on minds

23. Ambiguity and vagueness: An overview

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