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RUcore Resource Object
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TitleConditionals, meaning and mood
NameStarr, William B. (author), Lepore, Ernest (chair), Stanley, Jason (co-chair), King, Jeffrey (internal member), Weatherson, Brian (internal member), Stone, Matthew (outside member), Rutgers University, Graduate School - New Brunswick,
Degree Date2010-10
Date Created2010
SubjectPhilosophy,
Semantics,
Language--Philosophy,
Pragmatics
DescriptionThis work explores the hypothesis that natural language is a tool for changing a language user's state of mind and, more specifically, the hypothesis that a sentence's meaning is constituted by its characteristic role in fulfilling this purpose. This view contrasts with the dominant approach to semantics due to Frege, Tarski and others' work on artificial languages: language is first and foremost a tool for representing the world. Adapted to natural language by Davidson, Lewis, Montague, et. al. this dominant approach has crystalized as truth-conditional semantics: to know the meaning of a sentence is to know the conditions under which that sentence is true. Chapter 1 details the animating ideas of my alternative approach and shows that the representational function of language can be understood in terms of the more general function of changing representational mental states. Chapters 2-4 argue that the additional resources of this more general conception of meaning allow us to explain certain phenomena involving conditionals (e.g. `if Bob danced then Leland danced') and grammatical mood (e.g. declarative, interrogative, imperative mood) that truth-conditional semantics does not. In the analysis of these specific phenomena and the articulation of the general approach on offer, it emerges that this approach combines insights and benefits from both use-theoretic and truth-theoretic work on meaning.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
NoteIncludes vita
Noteby William B. Starr
Genretheses
Persistent URLhttp://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.1/rucore10001600001.ETD.000056780
Languageeng
CollectionGraduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.