Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Philosophy of Language

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Philosophy of Language

Table of Contents

1

Adverbs

6

2

Ambiguity

11

3

Analyticity

15

4

Anaphora

20

5

Animal language and thought

26

6

Communication and intention

31

7

Communicative rationality

35

8

Compositionality

39

9

Counterfactual conditionals

41

10 Criteria

46

11 Deconstruction

50

12 Demonstratives and indexicals

55

13 Descriptions

60

14 Discourse semantics

66

15 Emotive meaning

76

16 Fiction, semantics of

78

17 Holism: mental and semantic

83

18 Implicature

89

19 Indicative conditionals

94

20 Indirect discourse

97

21 Intensionality

100

22 Interpretation, Indian theories of

102

23 Language and gender

107

24 Language of Thought

114

25 Language, ancient philosophy of

118

26 Language, conventionality of

124

27 Language, early modern philosophy of

128

28 Language, Indian theories of

137

29 Language, innateness of

143

30 Language, medieval theories of

148

31 Language, philosophy of

165

32 Language, Renaissance philosophy of

169

33 Language, social nature of

174

34 Linguistic discrimination

179

35 Logical atomism

184

36 Mass terms

188

37 Meaning and communication

191

38 Meaning and rule-following

193

39 Meaning and truth

199

40 Meaning and understanding

206

41 Meaning and verification

211

42 Meaning in Islamic philosophy

218

43 Meaning, Indian theories of

221

44 Metaphor

226

45 Moscow-Tartu School

229

46 Performatives

235

47 Post-structuralism

237

48 Pragmatics

242

49 Predication

257

50 Presupposition

259

51 Private language argument

263

52 Private states and language

269

53 Proper names

273

54 Propositional attitude statements

279

55 Propositional attitudes

289

56 Propositions, sentences and statements

298

57 Questions

300

58 Radical translation and radical interpretation

303

59 Reference

315

60 Religious language

328

61 Rhetoric

333

62 Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

338

63 Scope

341

64 Semantics

343

65 Semantics, conceptual role

347

66 Semantics, game-theoretic

352

67 Semantics, informational

354

68 Semantics, possible worlds

358

69 Semantics, situation

367

70 Semantics, teleological

372

71 Semiotics

375

72 Sense and reference

380

73 Speech acts

385

74 Structuralism in linguistics

391

75 Syntax

395

76 Type/token distinction

406

77 Universal language

408

78 Use/mention distinction and quotation

411

Adverbs

Adverbs

Adverbs are so named from their role in modifying verbs and other non-nominal expressions. For example, in `John ran slowly', the adverb `slowly' modifies `ran' by characterizing the manner of John's running. The debate on the semantic contribution of adverbs centres on two approaches. On the first approach, adverbs are understood as predicate operators: for example, in `John ran slowly', `ran' would be taken to be a predicate and `slowly' an operator affecting its meaning. Working this out in detail requires the resources of higher-order logic. On the second approach, adverbs are understood as predicates of `objects' such as events and states, reference to which is revealed in logical form. For example, `John ran slowly' would be construed along the lines of `there was a running by John and it was slow', in which the adverb `slowly' has become a predicate `slow' applied to the event that was John's running.

Since adverbs are exclusively modifiers, they are classed among the syncategorematic words of terminist logic, the investigation of which carried the subject forward from Aristotle in the thirteenth century. (The contrasting `categoremata' - grammatical subjects and predicates - are those words which have meaning independently.) They are of contemporary interest for philosophical logic and semantic theory, because particular accounts of them carry implications for the nature of combinatorial semantics and language understanding, and for ontology.

1 Syntactic types and semantic combination

There are several types of adverbial constructions, of which we distinguish the following classes: (a) `manner' adverbs, which intuitively function as simple modifiers of verbs; (b) `thematic' adverbs, of which some and possibly all function as (at least) two-place predicates in their own right; (c) adverbs of quantification, which express generality applying to whole sentences; and (d) discourse particles, whose meaning evidently derives from their role in linking clauses or independent sentences. (These categories are not exhaustive.) `Adverbs', especially manner `adverbs', are not in fact confined to single words. The general category is therefore not that of adverbs, but of adverbial phrases or adverbials (for example, `more quickly than Mary', `very frequently').

Typical manner adverbials are as in (1) below, thematic adverbs as in (2) and adverbs of quantification as in (3):

(1) John walked slowly/quietly/more quickly than Mary. (2) Mary apparently/reluctantly went to New York. (3) Mary occasionally/always walks to work.

Discourse particles, considered briefly below, include `but', `anyway' and several others. We discuss these cases in turn.

The essential logical problem of manner adverbials is already apparent in the simplest examples. A verb combines with a manner adverb to form a complex verbal construction of the same type. Thus `walk' and `walk slowly' are both predicates, and the syntax of the combination may be depicted as follows: [V [V walk][Adv slowly]]

If (disregarding tense) we take `walk' as a one-place predicate, then the semantics of this combination might be given by positing that `slowly' is interpreted as a predicate operator; that is, as a function that maps one-place predicate interpretations onto other one-place predicate interpretations. Alternatively, it may be suggested that `slowly' and the other manner adverbials are, logically speaking, predicates in their own right, specifically predicates of actions. The adjectives to which they are related do seem to play this role. Corresponding to (1), for instance, we have the adjectival predications

(4) John's walk was slow/quiet/quicker than Mary's.

If we take the further step of supposing that the verb `walk' is in fact a two-place predicate, with a position for actions, then the combination `walk slowly' can be interpreted as

walk(x, e) & slow(e),

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998)

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