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.

如果我们知道一个词的含义，我们就能理解它，这似乎是关于人类语言能力的一个简单说法。然而，事实证明，提供忠实于两种根深蒂固的直觉的词义的理论解释是极其困难的。直觉上，一个词有固定的语言含义；另一方面，我们在不同的上下文中对词有不同的解释，读到防火门上印着的“保持关闭”的说明，我们知道我们实际上可以打开门。并穿过它，但应该把它关在后面当指令出现在正在升起蛋奶酥的烤箱门上时，我们意识到我们不应该打开门，其解释部分取决于特定的使用情况，但也有一种直觉认为“保持关闭”具有一定的意义。这种现象几乎可以在任何单词中重复出现，以下每个动词的解释都不同：“米开朗基罗画了一幅画”，“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”取决于我们是对风力感兴趣还是对山体滑坡的可能性感兴趣，我们如何解释“紧急情况”的说法部分取决于情况。然而，还有一种强烈的直觉，即“绘画”、“移动”和“紧急”这些词在所有使用场合中都具有恒定的语言含义，我们对此的了解似乎非常合理。恒定的语言意义在解释（i）中起着至关重要的作用我们如何在不同的上下文中应用一个单词，以及（ii）我们如何通过在不同的上下文中说出这个单词来理解某人所说的内容该项目的中心目标是阐明单词含义必须是什么样的东西才能发挥作用。如果对一个词的语言意义的了解能够以系统的方式指导其应用，但不能预先确定其对每个可想象的话语上下文的正确应用，那么该意义似乎必须是示意性的，而不是完全指定的，因此有些一种大纲或模板。只有当我们在使用它时能够利用常识或实用知识时，图式才能引导我们做出正确的解释。该项目将根据图式或大纲的概念来解释单词的含义。结合一般的认知语用能力，这种词义解释可以解释一个词在不同上下文中可能具有的解释范围。为了评估这种词义观点的解释权重，它将应用于各种不同的情况。词的种类,包括“关闭”、“绘画”和“移动”等通用术语、专有名称和代词以及“但是”、“如果...那么”和“所以”等连接词最后，我们将使用我们的结果来摆脱。阐明语言学和哲学中一些长期存在的争论，包括词义和概念之间的关系。