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Subjectivity and Perspective in Truth-Theoretic Semantics Peter Lasersohn (Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Subjectivity and Perspective in Truth-Theoretic Semantics By Peter Lasersohn (Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Summary

This book explores linguistic and philosophical issues presented by sentences expressing personal taste, such as Roller coasters are fun, and examines how truth-theoretic semantics can account for expressions of this type. It provides a detailed and explicit formal grammar paired with semantic analysis and pragmatic theory.

Subjectivity and Perspective in Truth-Theoretic Semantics Summary

Subjectivity and Perspective in Truth-Theoretic Semantics by Peter Lasersohn (Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

This book explores linguistic and philosophical issues presented by sentences expressing personal taste, such as Roller coasters are fun, or Licorice is tasty. Standard semantic theories explain the meanings of sentences by specifying the conditions under which they are true; here, Peter Lasersohn asks how we can account for sentences that are concerned with matters of opinion rather than matters of fact. He argues that a truth-theoretic semantic theory is appropriate even for sentences like these, but that for such sentences, truth and falsity must be assigned relative to perspectives, rather than absolutely. The book provides a detailed and explicit formal grammar, working out the implications of this conception of truth both for simple sentences and for reports of mental attitude. The semantic analysis is paired with a pragmatic theory explaining what it means to assert a sentence which is true or false only relativistically, and with a speculative account of the functional motivation for a relativized notion of truth.

Subjectivity and Perspective in Truth-Theoretic Semantics Reviews

this monograph represents a welcome contribution to the study of sentences concerning matters of opinion within the framework of logical semantics. As a result, it will be particularly appealing to specialists in formal linguistics and, more generally, scholars who are interested in the study of linguistic expressions of subjectivity. * Enrico Torre, Linguist List *

About Peter Lasersohn (Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Peter Lasersohn is Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He completed his Ph.D. in Linguistics at Ohio State University in 1988, and taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and the University of Rochester before his appointment at Illinois in 1996. He is the author of two previous books, A Semantics for Groups and Events (Garland, 1990), and Plurality, Conjunction and Events (Kluwer, 1995); and of shorter articles in journals including Language, Linguistics and Philosophy, Linguistic Inquiry, Journal of Semantics, Natural Language Semantics, Synthese, and Inquiry.

Table of Contents

Preface List of abbreviations 1: Subjectivity, disagreement, and content 2: Dismissing the easy alternatives 3: Setting the syntactic and semantic stage 4: Notes on the grammar of time and space 5: Basic relativist semantics 6: Hidden and disguised elements 7: Pragmatics of truth assessment 8: Attitude predicates in relativist semantics 9: Assertion and other speech acts 10: Between fact and opinion 11: Reliability, imagination, and the functional motivation for relativism References Index

Additional information

NLS9780199573684
9780199573684
0199573689
Subjectivity and Perspective in Truth-Theoretic Semantics by Peter Lasersohn (Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
New
Paperback
Oxford University Press
2016-12-08
304
N/A
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