(2)Russell. (1) The professor was drunk.

Transcription

1 Russell (1) The professor was drunk. (2)Russell "On denoting", Mind 14,1905 x (professor (x) y (professor (y) x y) drunk(x) ) "There is an x who is a professor, and there is no y such that y is a professor and non-identical to x, and x is drunk." ) existential quantifier (and) (negation) (3) a. x (professor (x)) existence : there is a professor b. y (professor (y) x y) uniqueness : there is only one professor c. drunk(x) predication : this individual is drunk. (4) a. John and Bill are sleeping. b. Mary and Kim are working. sleep Bill John Mary Kim work (5) sleep (a) (6) interpretation function I (a) = John (7) I (sleep) = {John, Bill} I (work) = {Mary, Kim} (8) sleep (a) truth condition I(a) I(sleep) (9) truth condition "John is sleeping. " is true iff John is a member of the set of those who are sleeping. (10) a. Mary and Bill are sleeping. b. John and Kim are working. sleep Bill Mary John Kim work 1

2 (11) (The truth value of a proposition is relative to the universe of discourse.) (12) A party was held yesterday at King's college. There was a professor of mathematics and twelve students. The professor was drunk and five students were drunks too. (13) (14) A : Have you seen Bill lately? B : Yes, I've seen him at the opera house last week. (15) The president had talks on Middle-East with the prime minister of Japan. (16) a man and a woman sitting in the living room.. the man's bored goes to the window looks out the window... and goes out.. goes to his goes to a club.. has a drink talks to the barman (Brown, G. & Yule, G. Discourse Analysis, Cambridge UP, 1983) (17)"One principle which we can identify we shall call the principle of local interpretation. This principle instructs the hearer not to construct a context any larger than he needs to arrive at an interpretation. Thus if he hears someone say 'Shut the door' he will look towards the nearest door available for being shut." (Ibid.) (18) shared universe of discourse Have you seen Bill lately? (19) "For any account of natural language, however, Russell's theory of definite description raises the question : what does it mean for an entity to be unique? There are many professors in the universe, the speaker may on any given occasion know several, may know that his hearer knows several, may know that his hearer knows that he, the speaker, knows several, etc., yet the definite description in (I) can still be used successfully under these circumstances." 2

3 (Hawkins, J.A. "On (in)definite articles: implicatures and (un)grammaticality prediction", Journal of Semantics 27, 1991)... (I) (=The professor is drunk.) referring expressions (20) Russell a. b. c. (21)"Take as an instance 'the father of Charles II was executed'. (...) Thus when we say 'x was the father of Charles II' we not only assert that x had a certain relation to Charles II, but also that nothing else had this relation. The relation in question, without the assumption of uniqueness, and without any denoting phrases, is expressed by 'x begat Charles II'. To get an equivalent of 'x was the father of Charles II', we must add, 'If y is other than x, y did not beget Charles II', or, what is equivalent, 'If y begat Charles II, y is identical with x'. Hence, 'x is the father of Charles II' becomes 'x begat Charles II ; and 'if y bagat Charles II, y is identical with x' is always true of y'.thus 'the father of Charles II was executed' becomes 'It is not always false of x that x begat Charles II and that x was executed and that "if y begat Charles II, y is identical with x" is always true of y" (B. Russell "On denoting", Mind 14, 1905) (...) x x x x y x y y y x x y y x y x x y y x (22)This theory regards any grammatically correct denoting phrase as standing for an object. Thus "the present King of France", "the round square", etc. are supposed to be genuine objects. It is admitted that such objects do not subsist, but nevertheless they are supposed to be objects. This is in itself a difficult view ; but the chief objection is that such objects, admittedly, are apt to infringe the law of contradiction. It is contended, for example, that the 3

4 existent present King of France exists, and also does not exist ; that the round square is round, and also not round ; etc. But this is intolerable; and if any theory can be found to avoid this result, it is surely to be preferred. (Russell, op.cit. ) (=Meinong ) (23) a. [ ] The talk of the president was boring, wasn't it? b. Do you know the phone number of the professor? c. Sarah's husband had an accident last week. Do you know that? (24) It is not always false of x that x presides the university and that the talk of x was boring and "if y presides the university, y is identical with x" is always true of y. (25) x (president (x) y (president (y) x y) the talk of x was boring) (26)acquaintance a. the centre of mass of the Solar System (Russell) b. c. the president of Croatia (27) referring expression Russell (28)Suppose now we wish to interpret the proposition, "I met a man". If this is true, I met some definite man ; but that is not what I affirm. What I affirm is, according to the theory I advocate : " 'I met x, and x is human' is not always false" Generally, defining the class of men as the class of objects having the predicate human, we say that : "C(a man)" means " 'C(x) and x is a human' is not always false." This leaves "a man", by itself, wholly destitute of meaning, but gives a meaning to every proposition in whose verbal expression "a man" occurs. (Russell, op.cit.) "I met a man" "I met x, and x is human." C (a man) "C(x) x " "a man" "a man" (29)Russell A dog came in. It lay down under the table. x (dog (x) come-in (x) ) It lay down... 4

5 (30)Geach (Reference and Generality, Cornell UP, 1962) x [dog (x) came-in(x) lay-down-under-the-table(x) ] (31) A : A man fell over the edge. B : He didn't fall ; he jumped. (32) x [man (x) fell-over-the-edge (x) fell-over-the-edge(x) jumped (x) ] (33) The truth value of a proposition is relative to the belief word of a speaker. (34) semantic reference / speaker's reference Let us now speak of speaker's reference and semantic reference : (...) If a speaker has a designator in his dialect, certain conventions of his idiolect determine the referent in the idiolect : that I call the semantic referent of the designator. (...) Speaker's reference is a more difficult notion. Consider, for example, the following case, (...). Two people see Smith in the distance and mistake him for Jones. They have a brief colloquy : "What is doing Jones?" "Raking the leave." "Jones", in the common language of both, is a name of Jones ; it never names Smith. Yet, in some sense, on this occasion, clearly both participants in the dialogue have referred to Smith, and the second participant has said something true about the man he referred to if and only if Smith was raking the leaves (whether or not Jones was). (...) So, we may tentatively define the speaker's referent of a designator to be that object which the speaker wishes to talk about, on a given occasion, and believes fulfills the conditions for being the semantic referent of the designator. (...) This example leads to an extension of the notion of speaker's reference. When a speaker asserts an existential quantification,, ( x) ( x x), it may be clear which thing he has in mind as satisfying " x", and he may wish to convey to his hearers that that thing satisfies " x". In this case, the thing in question is called the "speaker's referent" when he makes the existential assertion." (S.Kripke "Speaker's reference and semantic reference",kripke, S. "Speaker's reference and semantic reference", P.French et al.(es) Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy of Language, University of Minnesota Press , 1977) (...) ( ) (...) (...) ( x) ( x x) " x" 5

6 " x" [1] 4 [2] 7 [3] Ostertag, G. (ed) Definite Description. A Reader, MIT Press. [4] I [5] I 6