Wittgenstein as a Gricean Intentionalist

According to the dominant view, the later Wittgenstein identified the meaning of an expression with its use in the language and vehemently rejected any kind of mentalism or intentionalism about linguistic meaning. I argue that the dominant view is wrong. The textual evidence, which has either been misunderstood or overlooked, indicates that at least since the Blue Book Wittgenstein thought speaker's intentions determine the contents of linguistic utterances. His remarks on use are only intended to emphasize the heterogeneity of natural language. Taking into account remarks written after he finished the Investigations, I show how Wittgenstein anticipated the basic tenets of Gricean intention-based semantics. These are, in particular, the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘non-natural’ meaning and the distinction between what a speaker means by an utterance and what the expression uttered means in the speaker's natural language. Importantly, Wittgenstein also believed that only the meaning of the speaker determined the content of ambiguous expressions, such as ‘bank’, on a particular occasion of utterance     

HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT ‘HOW DO YOU KNOW?’ CHALLENGES A SPEAKER'S KNOWLEDGE?

It is often argued that the general propriety of challenging an assertion with ‘How do you know?’ counts as evidence for the Knowledge Norm of Assertion (KNA). Part of the argument is that this challenge seems to directly challenge whether a speaker knows what she asserts. In this article I argue for a re‐interpretation of the data, the upshot of which is that we need not interpret ‘How do you know?’ as directly challenging a speaker's knowledge; instead, it's better understood as challenging a speaker's reasons. Consequently, I argue that reasons‐based norms can equally well explain this data.     

Four‐year‐olds incorporate speaker knowledge into pragmatic inferences

Human communication relies on the ability to take into account the speaker's mental state to infer the intended meaning of an utterance in context. For example, a sentence such as ‘Some of the animals are safe to pet’ can be interpreted as giving rise to the inference ‘Some and not all animals are safe to pet’ when uttered by an expert. The same inference, known as a scalar implicature, does not arise when the sentence is spoken by someone with partial knowledge. Adults have been shown to derive scalar implicatures in accordance with the speaker's knowledge state, but in young children this ability is debated. Here, we revisit this question using a simple visual world paradigm. We find that both 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds successfully incorporate speaker knowledge into the derivation of scalar inferences. However, this ability does not generalize immediately to non‐linguistic communicative contexts. These findings have important implications for the development of pragmatic abilities.     

Ambassadors of gender equality? How use of pair forms versus masculines as generics impacts perception of the speaker

Although the use of gender fair language is strongly promoted in German‐speaking countries, the impact of its use on the way speakers are perceived by others is still unknown. Results of two experimental studies showed that irrespective of their sex, speakers using pair forms rather than generic masculines were perceived more competent by both men and women. Also, they were seen as less sexist by male and female listeners with positive attitudes towards linguistic equality. Findings with respect to the attribution of warmth were more complex: they were not only impacted by language use, but also dependent on speaker's sex and listener's attitude towards linguistic equality. Results are discussed in the context of language and stereotypes. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effect of Language-Specific Characteristics on English and Japanese Speakers' Ability to Recall Number Information

The current paper presents two experiments investigating the effect of presence versus absence of compulsory number marking in a native language on a speaker's ability to recall number information from photos. In Experiment 1, monolingual English and Japanese adults were shown a sequence of 110 photos after which they were asked questions about the photos. We found that the English participants showed a significantly higher accuracy rate for questions testing recall for number information when the correct answer was “2” (instead of “1”) than Japanese participants. In Experiment 2, English and Japanese adults engaged in the same task as in Experiment 1 with an addition that explored reasons for the results found in Experiment 1. The results of Experiment 2 were in line with the results of Experiment 1, but also suggested that the results could not be attributed to differences in guessing patterns between the two groups or the type of linguistic constructions used in the test situations. The current study suggests that native language affects speakers' ability to recall number information from scenes and thus provides evidence for the Whorfian hypothesis.     

Language Reflects “Core” Cognition: A New Theory About the Origin of Cross‐Linguistic Regularities

The underlying structures that are common to the world's languages bear an intriguing connection with early emerging forms of “core knowledge” (Spelke & Kinzler, 2007), which are frequently studied by infant researchers. In particular, grammatical systems often incorporate distinctions (e.g., the mass/count distinction) that reflect those made in core knowledge (e.g., the non‐verbal distinction between an object and a substance). Here, I argue that this connection occurs because non‐verbal core knowledge systematically biases processes of language evolution. This account potentially explains a wide range of cross‐linguistic grammatical phenomena that currently lack an adequate explanation. Second, I suggest that developmental researchers and cognitive scientists interested in (non‐verbal) knowledge representation can exploit this connection to language by using observations about cross‐linguistic grammatical tendencies to inspire hypotheses about core knowledge.     

The Backbone of Closing Speeches: The Impact of Prosecution Versus Defense Language on Judicial Attributions1

Subtle attribution cues embedded in language were investigated in a simulated courtroom setting. Lawyers in training as well as lay attorneys gave closing speeches for the defense and for the prosecution. In a first study, distinct linguistic strategies were identified. Prosecutors attributed internal causality to defendants, whereas defense attorneys supported negative intentional attributions to the victim. In a second study, lay persons judged the closing speeches and decided on verdict and punishment. Severity of punishment depended on speaker's role (defense or prosecution), severity of crime, and 2 linguistic strategies, indicating intentionality of negative behavior and dispositionality of negative behavior. It is concluded that subtle language strategies do have a noticeable effect on the attribution of blame and guilt in a legal setting.     

Coordinating perspectives: De se and taste attitudes in communication

The received picture of linguistic communication understands communication as the transmission of information from speaker's head to hearer's head. This picture is in conflict with the attractive Lewisian view of belief as self-location, which is motivated by de se attitudes – first-personal attitudes about oneself – as well as attitudes about subjective matters such as personal taste. In this paper, I provide a solution to the conflict that reconciles these views. I argue for an account of mental attitudes and communication on which mental content and speech act content is understood as sets of multicentered worlds – roughly, possible worlds ‘centered’ on a sequence of individuals at a time. I develop a Stalnakerian model of communication based on multicentered worlds content, and I provide a suitable semantics for personal pronouns and predicates of personal taste. The resulting picture is one on which the point of conversation is the coordination of individual perspectives.     

The language of pain

The expression ‘pain’ refers to a phenomenon intrinsic to individuals. The object of the language of pain is restricted to an individual experience which excludes any form of direct access by others. Speaking about pain is thus one of the most difficult forms of linguistic activities, as has been repeatedly pointed out by Wittgenstein. The difficulties involved in this type of communication are not only dependent upon individual linguistic ability but are also clearly reflected in the state and structure of the linguistic means which are at the disposal of the speakers of a language. Linguistic means vary in status and complexity with respect to the ends which they can be used for. In this paper, I discuss two aspects of communicating pain: types of expression which are involved in speaking about pain, and linguistic activities which are carried out when speaking about pain. The two aspects are interrelated. My analysis makes use of categories belonging to the theory of linguistic activity and to the extended field theory of language (an expansion of Bühler's concept of symbolic and deictic field analysis of language).     

Saying and Doing: Speech Actions,Speech Acts and Related Events

The question which this paper examines is that of the correct scope of the claim that extra‐linguistic factors (such as gender and social status) can block the proper workings of natural language. The claim that this is possible has been put forward under the apt label of silencing in the context of Austinian speech act theory. The ‘silencing’ label is apt insofar as when one's ability to exploit the inherent dynamic of language is ‘blocked’ by one's gender or social status then one might justly be said to be silenced. The notion that factors independent of any person's linguistic competence might block her ability to exploit the inherent dynamic of language is of considerable social as well as theoretical significance. I shall defend the claim that factors independent of a person's linguistic competence can indeed block her ability to do things with words but I will show that the cases that have been previously considered to be cases of illocutionary failure are instances of rhetic or locutionary act failure instead. I shall refine the silencing claim as previously advanced in the debate in at least one fundamental respect. I also show that considering the metaphysics of speech acts clarifies many of the issues previously appearing as thorny bones of contention between those who hold that the only notion of silencing that is coherent is that of physically preventing someone from speaking or writing and those who hold the opposite sort of claim sketched above.     

Practical Knowledge of Language

One of the main challenges in the philosophy of language is determining the form of knowledge of the rules of language. Michael Dummett has put forth the view that knowledge of the rules of language is a kind of implicit knowledge; some philosophers have mistakenly conceived of this type of knowledge as a kind of knowledge-that. In a recent paper in this journal, Patricia Hanna argues against Dummett’s knowledge-that view and proposes instead a knowledge-how view in which knowledge of the rules of language is a kind of practical knowledge, like an agent’s non-propositional knowledge of counting. In this paper I argue, first, that Hanna misunderstands Dummett’s conception of knowledge of linguistic rules, and, second, that Dummett’s considerations of practical knowledge of language pose a problem for Hanna’s knowledge-how view. At the end of the paper, I briefly sketch an account of practical knowledge of language that meets the requirements set by Dummett.     

A Probabilistic Model of Lexical and Syntactic Access and Disambiguation

The problems of access—retrieving linguistic structure from some mental grammar —and disambiguation—choosing among these structures to correctly parse ambiguous linguistic input—are fundamental to language understanding. The literature abounds with psychological results on lexical access, the access of idioms, syntactic rule access, parsing preferences, syntactic disambiguation, and the processing of garden-path sentences. Unfortunately, it has been difficult to combine models which account for these results to build a general, uniform model of access and disambiguation at the lexical, idiomatic, and syntactic levels. For example, psycholinguistic theories of lexical access and idiom access and parsing theories of syntactic rule access have almost no commonality in methodology or coverage of psycholinguistic data. This article presents a single probabilistic algorithm which models both the access and disambiguation of linguistic knowledge. The algorithm is based on a parallel parser which ranks constructions for access, and interpretations for disambiguation, by their conditional probability. Low-ranked constructions and interpretations are pruned through beam-search; this pruning accounts, among other things, for the garden-path effect. I show that this motivated probabilistic treatment accounts for a wide variety of psycholinguistic results, arguing for a more uniform representation of linguistic knowledge and for the use of probabilistically-enriched grammars and interpreters as models of human knowledge of and processing of language.     

藏-汉-英三语者语言联系模式探讨

采用跨语言长时重复启动的研究范式,考察了藏-汉-英三语者三种语言的联系模式。结果表明：（1）藏-汉-英三语者不同语言之间的联系模式不同。藏语和汉语之间为概念中介联系模式,汉语和英语之间为词汇联系模式,藏语和英语之间没有直接联系。（2）语言熟练程度、语言相似性和学习的媒介语影响藏-汉-英三语者的语言联系模式。整个研究表明,藏-汉-英三语者的语言联系模式与双语者的语言联系模式既有相似之处,也有明显不同。研究结果对于少数民族的外语教学有重要的参考价值     

A Deranged Argument Against Public Languages

Are there really such things as public languages? Are things like English and Urdu mere myths? I urge that, despite an intriguing line of thought which may be extracted from Davidson’s ‘A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs’, philosophers are right to countenance such things in their final ontology. The argument rebutted, which I concede may not have been one which Davidson himself ultimately embraced, is that knowledge of a public language is neither necessary nor sufficient for successful conversational interaction, so that such shared languages are explanatorily otiose. In particular, the ability of interlocutors to communicate in the face of linguistic novelty and error seems to support this conclusion. I respond with two main points. First, initial impressions aside, knowledge of things like English and Urdu is explanatorily necessary. Second, even if successful conversation could be explained without positing such knowledge, we have other reasons to take public languages ontologically seriously. The ultimate result is that what I label a ‘deranged argument against public languages’ is unsound.     

On the Epistemology of Language

Epistemology of language, a branch of both epistemology and the philosophy of language, asks what knowledge of language consists in. In this paper, I argue that such an inquiry is a pointless enterprise due to its being based upon the incorrect assumption that linguistic competence requires knowledge of language. However, I do not think the phenomenon of knowledge of language is trivial. I propose a virtue‐theoretic account of linguistic competence, and then explain the phenomenon from a virtue‐semantic point of view.     

EPISTEMIC VALUE AND ACHIEVEMENT

Knowledge seems to be a good thing, or at least better than epistemic states that fall short of it, such as true belief. Understanding too seems to be a good thing, perhaps better even than knowledge. In a number of recent publications, Duncan Pritchard tries to account for the value of understanding by claiming that understanding is a cognitive achievement and that achievements in general are valuable. In this paper, I argue that coming to understand something need not be an achievement, and so Pritchard's explanation of understanding's value fails. Next, I point out that Pritchard's is just one of many attempts to account for the value of an epistemic state – whether it be understanding, knowledge, or whatever – by appeal to the notion of achievement or, more generally, the notion of success because of ability. Tentatively, I offer reasons to be sceptical about the prospects of any such account.     

Cohérence et vérité. Le rôle des modalisateurs épistémiques dans l'établissement de la vérité propositionnelle

We proposed that the condition truth be understood as the result of a decision about the values taken on by the conditions for fulfilment of the act of referencing in a mental model. Our cognitive model of propositional truth attribution (Baudet, Jhean-Larose, & Legros, 1994) is built on the assumption that the truth value of a proposition is determined by the ability of that proposition to fit into the theory of the field to which it refers. The experimental results proved to be compatible with the proposed model. They validate the first phase of our model: the selection of incoherent subset of truth candidates. This selection is operated thanks to the attribution of plausibility value. This value is determined by explicit index of the pledging of the sender as for the truth of proposals contained in the text sentences. According to these results, the epistemic modalisers of the type “I know” and the type “I believe”, commit the transmitter in different ways as to the truth of propositions. They determine degrees of plausibility and relative coherence between assertions and the mental model in operation. The main function of the enunciation operators such as “I know” in a text, is:

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