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Today, Puze will post about review article, This is my
first time to review a article, hope you enjoy …
REVIEW
ARTICLE
The History and Prehistory
of Natural Language Semantics1
Daniel Harris | Hunter College, CUNY
Identitas
I
reviews article about the history and Prehistory of natural language semantics,
post by Daniel Harris from Hunter College, CUNY. The article “The History and
Prehistory of Natural Language Semantics” edited by Sandra Lapointe and Chris Pincock
for Palgrave Macmillan in January 2015 at McMaster University. This article
have 41 pages and this review is my responsibility, Dela Puzebang, ID:
1588203003.
Abstract
This
Article was made to know the definitions of semantics according to many expert.
We also know, the debates of many expert opinion from the article it could be
wrong, because the author of this article was made a comparison for many
opinions there. Explanation by the author and example, is used as methode.
Expert opinions also are used to make the explanation of author stronger.
For the result, by the explanations, examples,
comparison with all expert’s methodologies and many expert’s opinion, the
author conclude that the role of truth-condition idealization in the early history of natural-language
semantics embodied a confusion. One that resulted from an insufficiently
critical adoption of the methodology of prehistoric figures, including Frege,
Tarski, and Carnap. What fascinates me about this confusion is that Frege,
Tarski, and Carnap themselves did not suffer from it, and this is because they
understood the nature of the truth-conditional idealization, its purposes, and
its limitations.
Introductory
The
author began about the assumption of the meaning a sentence could be modeled by
a single truth-condition, or by an entity with a truth-condition. The history
of natural language semantics comes from Donald Davidson and Richard Montague, it
began with a methodological Frege, Tarski, Carnap, and others had created to
better understand artificial languages. For them, the study of linguistic
meaning was follow the othe explanatory goals in logic, philosophy, and the
foundations of mathematics, they get idealized from all aspect of meaning by
one to one correspondence between sentences and truth-conditions. Davidson and
Montague adopted the methodological by Frege, Tarski, Carnap and others about
their idealization from truth-condition semantic phenomena. Lifting the
truth-conditional idealization has forced semanticists to the conception of
linguistic meaning that was originally by their methodology.
1.
Truth-Conditional Semantics and The Communicative Turn
The
most fundamental way of dividing up approaches to linguistic meaning is on the
basis of how they answer a question best articulated by David Lewis.
“ In
order to say what a meaning is, we may first ask what a meaning does,
and then find something that does that (1970: 193) “.
Meaning
is a theoretical posit, and so our theory of it has to be grounded in the
explanatory role. Lewis’s
question is the one raised by his methodological advice: what is the
explanatory role of linguistic meaning? If I guess, the answer is the theory of
Donald Davidson and Richard Montague. Lewis’s own answer to his question was
that the meaning of a sentence “is something that determines the conditions under
which a sentence is true or false” (1970: 193). By his answer, we know that
still have relation with methodological Frege, Tarski, Carnap and others that
is dynamic semantics-pragmatics and work on non-truth-condition-centric and
truth-condition is from linguistic meaning natural-language semantics. Versions
of this answer dominated natural-language semantics from its contemporary
beginnings in the work of Donald Davidson (1965, 1967a, 1970) and Richard
Montague (1970a,b, 1973) until now.
If
we use ‘truth-conditional semantics’ as a broad covering term for any theoretical
approach that articulates or embodies a truth-condition-centric answer to
Lewis’s question, then many debates about how to do semantics are disputes
between different species of semanticists within the truth-conditional genus.
For example: are sentences’ semantic values functions from possible worlds to
truth-va, lues (Cresswell 1973; Lewis 1970, 1975; von Fintel & Heim 2011), functions
from more elaborate indices to truth-values (e.g., Montague 1974; Brogaard
2012; Egan, Hawthorne, & Weather son 2005; Lasarsohn 2005; MacFarlane 2014;
Richard 2004), sets of centered worlds (Lewis 1979b), sets of situations
(Barwise & Perry 1983), structured complexes made up of objects and
properties (Russell 1903, 1918; Soames 1987), structured complexes made up of
abstract modes of presentation (Frege 1892a,b; Evans 1986; Zalta 1988), or
structured entities of other kinds (King 2007; Soames 2010)? These debates have
all taken place within truth-conditional semantics as author’s conceive of
it. The defenders agree of each of these view is determine that the role of
meaning’s sentences its truth-condition. But they disagree about the role of
truth-conditional meanings.
Similar
points can be made about the debates of Davidson and Lewis methodology or role. Davidson’s work represents both the beginning
of the contemporary era of natural-language semantics and the beginning of its
truth-conditional paradigm (1965, 1967a, 1970). In order to answer Lewis’s
Question, however, Davidson would have had to interpret it somewhat differently
than Lewis did, because Davidson explicitly rejected the idea that a sentence’s
meaning is an entity to which it bears a semantic relation.
Truth-conditional
semantics is an active research program, and most introductory
semantics textbooks
still embody truth-conditional assumptions. But natural-language semantics is
now experiencing a major shift away from the foundational assumption that
defines its truth-conditional strain. The best-known moniker for this shift is
‘the dynamic turn’, which picks up on the rise of dynamic semantics and the
dynamic-pragmatic environment that is increasingly presupposed by non-dynamic
approaches to semantics. in that it includes several other moves away from
truthconditional semantics and toward various versions of the idea that the
meaning of an expression is its role in communication or conversation. For this
reason, the author will call the shift is the communicative turn.
The
communicative turn, as the author understand it, heterogenous proposals have
been driven by a consistent collection of data arising from five kinds of
linguistic phenomena: non-declarative clauses, context-sensitivity, presupposition,
conventional implicature, and expressive meaning. Sentence that exhibit these
phenomena have been found to require revisionary semantic treatments either
because they cannot be understood in terms of truth-conditional meaning (but
are still meaningful), or because understanding them requires positing supplemental
dimensions of meaning beyond truth-conditional content.
A paradigmatic
example involves non-declarative clauses, including interrogatives
(e.g. (1)) and
imperatives (e.g. (2)).
(1.) Did Frege discover
any important dance steps?
(2.) Give my dog a
bath!
It
seems to be a category mistake to call sentences like these true or false, and
so to ascribe truth-conditions to them. Interrogatives are for asking questions
and imperatives are for issuing directives. This pre-theoretic idea has been
cashed out semantically by a variety of suggestions to the effect that clauses’
semantic values be identified with the types of speech acts for which they can
be directly and literally used (Searle 1969; Alston 2000; Barker 2004; Harris
2014).
By
far the most influential approaches to non-declaratives, and to
non-truthconditional aspects of meaning in general, have been built around
dynamic models of conversation of the kind first proposed by Robert Stalnaker
(1976, 2014). Taking propositions to be sets of possible
worlds, Stalnaker defines the context set of a conversation as the intersection
of the propositions in the common ground—the set of worlds compatible the
participants’ presuppositions.
A
conversation consisting solely of utterances of declarative sentences can then
be understood as a “joint inquiry” whose goal is to zero in on the way the world
actually is by adding more information to the common ground through a series of
assertions, thus shrinking the number of possibilities in the context set. These
ideas—conversational context as a body of shared representations, speech acts
as ways of updating these representations, and sentence meanings as the raw
material for these updates—have been generalized in a wide variety of ways.
David
Lewis (1976) conceives of conversational context as a scoreboard that keeps
track of various facts about what’s happening in the conversation in much the
same way that a baseball scoreboard keeps track of numerous facts about the current
state of a game. The resulting theories are classified as versions of either
dynamic semantics or dynamic pragmatics, depending on whether they posit
semantic or pragmatic mechanisms by which context is updated (K. Lewis 2011,
2014).
The
semantic value of an interrogative clause, on this view, is a function that
takes some context as an input and outputs a context that differs only in that
it contains a new question under discussion. In dynamic-pragmatic frameworks,
clauses’ semantic values do not contain instructions for updating the context,
but are instead model-theoretic objects of types that fit into different
dimensions of the context, so that it is easy to offer a pragmatic explanation
of how uttering a sentence with such a semantic value updates the context in the
appropriate way (Portner 2004).
Model
the issues that speakers want to resolve and which determine which speech acts
are relevant (Roberts 1996/2012), as well as the to-do list, which
tracks speakers’ practical commitments (Portner 2004). This is accomplished in
either of two ways: in dynamic-semantic frameworks, the semantic value of a
clause is its context-change potential—a function that maps
possible states of the context to other possible states (e.g. Ciardelli,
Groenendijk, & Roelofsen 2013; Starr ms).
The
semantic value of an interrogative clause, on this view, is a function that
takes some context as an input and outputs a context that differs only in that
it contains a new question under discussion. In dynamic-pragmatic frameworks,
clauses’ semantic values do not contain instructions for updating the context,
but are instead model theoretic objects of types that fit into different
dimensions of the context, so that it is easy to offer a pragmatic explanation
of how uttering a sentence with such a semantic value updates the context in the
appropriate way (Portner 2004).
Versions
of expressivism have been defended by philosophers for decades, but the view
has also recently made its way into mainstream semantic theory via the work of
Alan Gibbard (1990, 2003) whose account of expressive meaning is built on top
of Stalnaker’s theory of assertion. On Gibbard’s view, conversational contexts
contain a practical dimension, which he models in terms of either normative
systems (1990) or plans (2003), and the function of normative speech is to
update this practical dimension of context in the same way that descriptive speech
is used to update the context’s informational dimension.
2. The Truth-Conditional Idealization
If
you ask a present-day semanticist Lewis’s question—what does meaning do? The
answer will increasingly be that it does many things, and that what unites all
of the things meaning does is that they must be spelled out as part of a
broader theory of conversation. If we accept, with growing ranks of
semanticists, that the communicative turn in at least some of its manifestations
constitutes progress.
Then
rises the question phenomenon, why weren’t these phenomena attended to during the
heyday of truth-conditional semantics? To answer these questions, we should
look to the early-20th-Century work on logic, mathematics, and philosophy in
the context of which the methodological toolkit of truth-conditional semantics
took shape. If the contemporary history of semantics begins with a focus
on natural language initiated by Davidson and Montague, its prehistory played
out in the work of logicians, mathematicians, and philosophers who focused on
formal languages and heavily idealized fragments of natural language. The author
will focus on the three figures from the prehistory of contemporary semantics
who have had the greatest influence on it: Frege, Tarski, and Carnap. To be sure,
many other early-20th-Century philosophers and mathematicians laid important
components of the foundation of truth-conditional semantics. But no early-20th-Century
figure matches the influence , of the three he will discuss.
These are the same
features of language and linguistic meaning that are currently driving the
communicative turn: non-declarative clauses, expressive meaning,
presupposition, conventional implicature, and context-sensitivity. Frege,
Tarski,mand Carnap idealized away from these phenomena by limiting their
attention to formalized languages made up of declarative, context insensitive
sentences that possess a single, truth-conditional dimension of significance.
3. The Pivot
The
event that demarcates the history of contemporary semantics from its prehistory
was a pivot from one diverse collection explanatory goals to a very different one.
What went under the name ‘semantics’ prior to this pivot was a set of tools used
to pursue logical, mathematical, and philosophical projects. The contemporary history
of semantics began with a shift to the goal of empirically investigating natural
language by showing how the semantic properties of sentences systematically
depend on their structures and the semantic properties of their component expressions.
Among
the central aims of Davidson’s influential early papers on semantics
were (a) to overcome
Tarski’s skepticism about the possibility of applying his tools to the study of
natural language, and (b) to argue that such an application of Tarski's tools
could “do duty” as a theory of meaning for natural language (1967a,1970, 1973).
Davidson recognized that his proposals
differed from Tarski’s in several key ways; since his goal was not to define truth
in a formal language, but rather to use a primitive notion of truth to construct
an axiomatic theory that could stand in as a theory of meaning, Davidson
couldn’t take semantic notions such as the synonymy of object-language and
metalanguage expressions for granted, as Tarski had. He marked this distinction
subtly, by describing his project as 18 A brief history of this research
program is told by Partee (2004: ch.1), who played a central role in
establishing it, particularly among linguists.
In
Weisberg’s helpful terminology, Frege, Tarski, and Carnap can best be construed
as aiming at minimalist idealizations of the semantic properties they
studied. Minimalist idealization is the
practice of constructing and studying theoretical models that include only the
core causal factors which give rise to a phenomenon. Such a representation is often
called a minimal model of the phenomenon. Put more explicitly, a minimalist
model contains only those factors that make a difference to the occurrence and essential
character of the phenomenon in question. (2007: 642)
We
might even hypothesize that since Lewis’s immediate goal in linking sentence
meanings with truth conditions was to debunk the structuralist approach to
semantics, which had been proposed by Katz & Postal (1964) and initially
endorsed by Chomsky (1965), we should take Lewis’s broader point to have been
that semantics involves the kind of word–world connections that are still
embodied in its post-communicative-turn forms. Given these continuities, we might
wonder, wherein lies the revolution?
Problems
2. The Truth-Conditional Idealization
The
author trying to finish the problem of semantic with explanation based expert,
The basic
misunderstanding is the identification of Frege's notion of Sinn (sense)
with the notion of linguistic meaning. The misunderstanding is an easy one to
fall into for two reasons. For one, the term “meaning” has always been vague,
multi-purposed, and to some extent adaptive to the viewpoint of different
theories. Pressing the term into service to characterize Frege's notion has
seemed harmless enough, as long as it is made clear that the notion is
restricted to an aspect of meaning relevant to fixing the truth value of sentences.
A second reason for the misunderstanding has been that Frege did not lavish any
considerable attention on the area in which the differences between sense and
the ordinary notion of meaning are clearest—context dependent reference. Although
the differences between meaning and sense are easiest to notice with indexicals
(including proper names), the distinction issues from the fundamental cast of
Frege’s work, a cast discernible throughout his career independently of issues
about indexicals. Baldly put, Frege was primarily interested in the eternal
structure of thought, of cognitive contents, not in conventional linguistic
meaning. He pursued this interest by investigating the structure of language, and
much of his work may be seen as directly relevant to theories of linguistic
meaning. But the epistemic orientation of his theorizing leads to a notion of
sense with a different theoretical function from modern notions of meaning (Burge
1979: 213).
3.The
Pivot
We
might even hypothesize that since Lewis’s immediate goal in linking sentence
meanings with truth conditions was to debunk the structuralist approach to
semantics, which had been proposed by Katz & Postal (1964) and initially
endorsed by Chomsky (1965), we should take Lewis’s broader point to have been
that semantics involves the kind of word–world connections that are still
embodied in its post-communicative-turn forms. Given these continuities, we might
wonder, wherein lies the revolution?
Methode
The author used to
methodology of Davidson’s and Lewis’s work to finishing the problem.
Hasil
2. The Truth-Conditional Idealization
To
answer that questions, we should look to the early-20th-Century work on logic,
mathematics, and philosophy in the context of which the methodological toolkit
of truth-conditional semantics took shape. If the contemporary history of
semantics begins with a focus on natural language initiated by Davidson and
Montague, its prehistory played out in the work of logicians,
mathematicians, and philosophers who focused on formal languages and heavily
idealized fragments of natural language. The author will focus on the three
figures from the prehistory of contemporary semantics who have had the greatest
influence on it: Frege, Tarski, and Carnap. To be sure, many other early-20th-Century
philosophers and mathematicians laid important components of the foundation of
truth-conditional semantics. But no early-20th-Century figure matches the
influence , of the three he will discuss.
These
are the same features of language and linguistic meaning that are currently driving
the communicative turn: non-declarative clauses, expressive meaning,
presupposition, conventional implicature, and context-sensitivity. Frege,
Tarski,mand Carnap idealized away from these phenomena by limiting their
attention to formalized languages made up of declarative, context insensitive
sentences that possess a single, truth-conditional dimension of significance.
3.The Pivot
The
answer, Author’s think, is that although the recent history of semantics may
look from within like a series of gradual adjustments to a single, continuous
modeltheoretic framework driven by an expanding collection of data, the framework
that has resulted from these adjustments embodies a very different answer to
one of the central foundational questions that semantics was originally
designed to answer. What is linguistic meaning? The semantics of the 1979’s embodied and espoused a truth-condition-centric answer to this question;
today’s semantics has turned to a communication-centric answer.
Moreover:
the earlier answer to this question shaped semantic practice in ways that led
to delayed progress and wrong turns on the ground, and so the issue is not of
merely philosophical interest. I am therefore led to believe that the role of
the truth-conditional idealization in the early history of natural-language
semantics embodied a confusion—one that resulted from an insufficiently
critical adoption of the methodology of prehistoric figures, including Frege,
Tarski, and Carnap. What fascinates me about this confusion is that Frege,
Tarski, and Carnap themselves did not suffer from it, and this is because they
understood the nature of the truth-conditional idealization, its purposes, and
its limitations.
By
the article we know that frege’s theory or methodology is confusing. So, the
author using other theory like Burge’s theory. Because, Frege’s theory interested
in the eternal structure of thought, of cognitive contents, not in conventional
linguistic meaning.
Conclusion
The author is finding
the Frege’s theory can not use in semantic, because it is not in conventional
linguistic meaning. Like Frege, Tarksi’s aim was not primarily to understand
linguistic meaning and particularly not in natural language. He constructed and
studied artificial languages and developed semantic tools to better understand
those languages, but these pursuits were in the service of broader mathematical
goals, including accounts of truth, definition, and logical consequence that
were rigorous enough for mathematical use. As John Burgess puts it, “it was not
linguistic understanding but mathematical fruitfulness that Tarski sought with
his definition [of truth], and in this he was very successful” (2008: 154–5).
Analized
According the author
on this article, some much question comes by the frege’s theory. Frege’s theory
can not in semantic.
The Weakness
1.
The
author did not give more example of the statement
2.
The
author still using Frege’s theory eventhough it is wrong theory
The strength
1.
Perfect
article, with all comparison in several statement,
2.
The
authors know to makes a similarly in statement one expert to others.
Bibliography
-
Almog, Joseph, John Perry, and Howard
Wettstein (). Themes from Kaplan
(Oxford
University Press).
-
Alston, William P. (). Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning. Cornell University
Press.
-
Asher, Nicholas, and Alex Lascarides.
. Indirect Speech Acts. Synthese, (–
):
–.
———. (): Logics of Conversation.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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somuch readers for coming in Puze’s blogger, …
See you guys J
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