Word Meaning: What it is and what it is not.

词义：它是什么，它不是什么。

基本信息

批准号：
AH/I000216/1
负责人：
Mark Textor
金额：
$ 40.12万
依托单位：
King's College London
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2011
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2011 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FI000216%2F1
关键词：
Word Meaning What what not.

项目摘要

It appears to be a straightforward claim about human language abilities that we understand a word if we know its meaning. However, it has proven remarkably difficult to provide a theoretical account of word meaning that is faithful to two deeply ingrained intuitions. On the one hand, there is an intuition that a word has a fixed linguistic meaning; on the other hand, we interpret words differently in different contexts. Reading the instruction 'Keep shut' printed on a fire door, we understand that we may in fact open the door and pass through it, but should shut it behind us. When the instruction occurs on an oven door in which a soufflé is rising, we realize we should not open the door. Interpretation depends in part on the particular situation of use, yet there is also an intuition that 'keep shut' has a constant linguistic meaning. This phenomenon can be replicated for almost any word. Interpretation of the verb 'paint' differs in each of the following: 'Michelangelo painted a picture', 'John painted his house', 'Mary painted her fingernails'. How we interpret 'moving' when we say 'The trees are moving' depends on whether we are interested in wind strength or in the possibility of a landslide. How we interpret the claim that a situation is an 'emergency' depends in part on the nature of the specific occasion. Yet there is also a robust intuition that the words 'painted', 'moving', and 'emergency' have a linguistic meaning which is constant across all occasions of use. It seems highly plausible that our knowledge of this constant linguistic meaning plays a crucial role in the explanation of (i) how we apply a word in different contexts, and (ii) how we understand what someone says by uttering the word in different contexts. The central aim of the project is to spell out what kind of a thing word meaning must be in order to play these roles.If knowledge of the linguistic meaning of a word guides its application in a systematic way but does not determine in advance its correct application for every conceivable context of utterance, it seems that the meaning must be schematic rather than fully specified, hence some kind of outline or template. A meaning schema guides us toward the correct interpretation only if we can draw on our common-sense or pragmatic know-how when using it. The project will develop an account of word meaning in terms of this notion of a schema or outline. We will show how, in conjunction with general cognitive-pragmatic abilities, this account of word meaning can explain the range of interpretations a word may have in different contexts. In order to assess the explanatory weight of this view of word meaning, it will be applied to various different kinds of words, including general terms like 'shut', 'paint', and 'moving', proper names and pronouns, and connectives like 'but', 'if ...then' and 'so'. Finally, we will use our results to shed light on some longstanding debates in linguistics and philosophy, including the relation between word meanings and concepts.

这似乎是关于人类语言能力的直接主张，如果我们知道它的含义，我们就会理解一个单词。但是，事实证明，提供对单词含义的理论描述非常困难，该含义忠于两个深切的归纳。一方面，有一个直觉，一个单词具有固定的语言含义。另一方面，我们在不同的情况下对单词进行了不同的解释。阅读印刷在火门上的“保持关闭”的说明，我们知道我们实际上可能打开门并通过它，但应该将其关闭在我们身后。当指示发生在蛋奶酥上升的烤箱门上时，我们不应该打开门。解释部分取决于特定的使用情况，但也有一个直觉，即“保持关闭”具有恒定的语言意义。几乎任何单词都可以复制这种现象。动词“油漆”的解释在以下每个方面有所不同：“米开朗基罗画了一张图片”，“约翰画了他的房子”，“玛丽画了她的指甲”。当我们说“树木正在移动”时，我们如何解释“移动”取决于我们对风强度还是有可能产生滑坡的可能性。我们如何解释局势是“紧急情况”的说法部分取决于特定场合的性质。然而，还有一个强大的直觉，即“绘制”，“移动”和“紧急”一词具有语言含义，在所有情况下都是恒定的。我们对这种不断的语言含义的了解在解释（i）（i）我们如何在不同环境中应用一个单词的解释以及（ii）我们如何通过在不同上下文中说出这个词来理解什么。该项目的核心目的是阐明扮演这些角色必须是什么样的单词含义。含义模式只有在使用时可以借鉴常识性或务实的知识，才能引导我们采取正确的解释。该项目将根据模式或大纲的概念来开发单词含义的说明。我们将展示如何与一般认知触发能力结合使用，对单词含义的说明可以解释单词在不同上下文中可能具有的解释范围。为了评估这种单词含义的爆炸性重量，它将应用于各种不同类型的单词，包括诸如“ shut”，“ oft”，“ paint”和“移动”，“专有名称和代词”的一般术语，以及诸如“但是”，“如果...然后”和“ so”之类的连接。最后，我们将利用结果来阐明语言学和哲学上的一些长期辩论，包括单词含义和概念之间的关系。