Linguistic pragmatism and weather reporting / John Collins.

Linguistic pragmatism and weather reporting / John Collins.

9780191885877 (electronic book)

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2020.

English

1 online resource (240 pages).

P129

410.1

Linguistic pragmatism claims that what we literally say goes characteristically beyond what the linguistic properties themselves mandate. In this book, John Collins provides a novel defence of this doctrine, arguing that linguistic meaning alone fails to fix truth conditions. While this position is supported by a range of theorists, Collins shows that it naturally follows from a syntactic thesis concerning the relative sparseness of what language alone can provide to semantic interpretation. Language - and by extension meaning - provides constraints upon what a speaker can literally say, but does not characteristically encode any definite thing to say. Collins then defends this doctrine against a range of alternatives and objections, focusing in particular on an analysis of weather reports: 'it is raining/snowing/sunny'.

Linguistic pragmatism claims that what we literally say goes characteristically beyond what the linguistic properties themselves mandate. In this book, John Collins provides a novel defence of this doctrine, arguing that linguistic meaning alone fails to fix truth conditions. While this position is supported by a range of theorists, Collins shows that it naturally follows from a syntactic thesis concerning the relative sparseness of what language alone can provide to semantic interpretation. Language - and by extension meaning - provides constraints upon what a speaker can literally say, but does not characteristically encode any definite thing to say. Collins then defends this doctrine against a range of alternatives and objections, focusing in particular on an analysis of weather reports: 'it is raining/snowing/sunny'.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on April 23, 2020).

Oxford scholarship online.

Print version: 9780198851134

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