Meaning-driven unacceptability, the semantics–pragmatics interface and the "spontaneous logicality of language".
There is a class of expressions which are perceived as 'ungrammatical' not because they are syntactically ill-formed but because they have interpretations which are informationally trivial. Triviality-driven unacceptability constrains the distribution of determiners, modals, attitude verbs, exhausti...
| Published in: | Philosophical Studies Vol. 182; no. 3; pp. 989 - 1022 |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Published: |
Springer Nature
Apr2025
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=185037351&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 185037351 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00318116 4L8 jtl: Philosophical Studies issn: 00318116 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Apr2025 vid: 182 iid: 3 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 185037351 10.1007/s11098-025-02298-9 ppf: 989 ppct: 33 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 608KB tig: atl: Meaning-driven unacceptability, the semantics–pragmatics interface and the "spontaneous logicality of language". aug: au: Del Pinal, Guillermo affil: https://ror.org/0072zz521 Guillermo Del Pinal University of Massachusetts Amherst, E305 South College 150 Hicks Way Amherst, MA 01003, Amherst, USA su: Semantics Pragmatics Quantifiers (Linguistics) Contextualism (Philosophy) Determiners (Grammar) sug: subj: Semantics Pragmatics Quantifiers (Linguistics) Contextualism (Philosophy) Determiners (Grammar) keyword: Contextualism Grammaticality Implicatures Logicality Natural logic Presuppositions Quantifiers Semantics versus pragmatics Triviality ab: There is a class of expressions which are perceived as 'ungrammatical' not because they are syntactically ill-formed but because they have interpretations which are informationally trivial. Triviality-driven unacceptability constrains the distribution of determiners, modals, attitude verbs, exhaustifiers, approximatives, among many other classes of logical terms. At the same time, many superficial tautologies and contradictions—pre-theoretically, the clearest examples of trivial expressions—are judged to be perfectly acceptable. This paper discusses two promising yet fundamentally opposed attempts to model triviality-driven unacceptability without over-generating 'ungrammaticality' judgments. One approach combines the 'Logicality' view that the language system includes a deductive-inferential system (DS) that automatically identifies and filters out expressions with trivial interpretations, with the hypothesis that the DS runs on 'modulated logical forms', i.e., structures where all content-based terms and variables are subject to meaning-modulation operations. The other approach downplays Logicality and tries to reduce triviality-driven unacceptability to familiar kinds of pragmatic infelicities. The Logicality-based approach, I argue, is superior to the most sophisticated attempts to treat triviality-driven unacceptability as a species of pragmatic infelicity. This result suggests that our purely linguistic and logical competences are deeply intertwined, and sheds new light on the division of labor between syntax, semantics and pragmatics. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Philosophical Studies is a copyright of Springer, 2025. All Rights Reserved. item: Philosophical Studies holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|