Arnold Zwicky @ Language Log says: (1) When all parts of a subject joined by or or nor are singular, the verb is singular; when all parts… Read more “Agreement with disjunctive subjects”
Category: Language
Spandrels of Truth
Spandrels of Truth strikes me as one truly awesome title, and I wish I had thought of it. Thinking of the contents of the book would have… Read more “Spandrels of Truth”
Grice on philosophical self-interpretation
At the end of his article “Meaning” Grice says roughly that interpreting a difficult text–say a philosophical one–written by oneself can be as much an act of… Read more “Grice on philosophical self-interpretation”
Grice @ dinosaur comics
“This is called the cooperative principle and philosopher Paul Grice proposed it! He’s dead now.”
LMAO
July 28th and 29th’s comics are very nice summary of the essence of Grice. The 28th’s is below the fold.
It turns me on that I turn you on, philosophy style.
This puts Romeo in a position to notice, and be aroused by, her arousal at being sensed by him.
2007 Pragmatics of empty names Dialogue
Fred Adams and collaborators advocate a view on which empty-name sentences semantically encode incomplete propositions, but which can be used to conversationally implicate descriptive propositions. This account has come under criticism recently from Marga Reimer and Anthony Everett. Reimer correctly observes that their account does not pass a natural test for conversational implicatures, namely, that an explanation of our intuitions in terms of implicature should be such that we upon hearing it recognize it to be roughly correct. Everett argues that the implicature view provides an explanation of only some of our intuitions, and is in fact incompatible with others, especially those concerning the modal profile of sentences containing empty names. I offer a pragmatist treatment of empty names based upon the recognition that the Gricean distinction between what is said and what is implicated is not exhaustive, and argue that such a solution avoids both Everett’s and Reimer’s criticisms.
Cancellable implicatures
Back in February Matt Weiner wrote a nice little paper with three examples designed to show that not all implicatures are cancellable. Unfortunately I didn’t know it… Read more “Cancellable implicatures”
Google Wildcard searches
Early this month Language Log bemoaned the new weird behaviour of the google wildcard. Now a possible explanation presents itself via the google blog — apparently the… Read more “Google Wildcard searches”
They are a prophet
Most people who pass by here probably read language log, but for those who I know don’t, Geoff Pullum has a wonderful little snippit on singular they.
Slayers, journalists, fiction and contextualism
Peter Ludlow recently posted From Sherlock and Buffy to Klingon and Norrathian Platinum Pieces: Pretense, Contextalism, and the Myth of Fiction, a paper that manages to marry… Read more “Slayers, journalists, fiction and contextualism”