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Natural Languages (natural + languages)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences66%

Selected Abstracts

Frege and Object Dependent Propositions

DIALECTICA, Issue 4 2002
Heimir Geirsson
Gareth Evans and John McDowell have challenged the traditional reading of Frege according to which Frege accepted propositions that are not object dependent, i.e., propositions that can exist even though the proper names that occur in the sentences that express them do not refer. A consequence of the Evans-McDowell interpretation of Frege is that if someone hallucinates that there is an oasis in front of her, then there is no thought of an oasis but only an illusion of a thought. No reference entails no sense, and no sense entails no thought. This paper will focus on Frege's views on the issue and, in particular, whether there is any evidence that the mature Frege, i.e., after he introduced the sense/reference distinction, did not accept propositions that are not object dependent. It will also address one of the consequences of the Evans-McDowell reading of Frege, arguing that they have ignored one of his important insights into natural languages. [source]

,Holmes'and Holmes,A Millian Analysis of Names from Fiction

DIALECTICA, Issue 3 2002
Stefano Predelli
In this paper, I defend a view of names from fiction compatible with the Millian theory of proper names. Unlike other attempts at providing a Millian analysis of names from fiction, my approach gives semantic recognition to our pre-theoretic intuitions without postulating metaphysically dubious entities. The intuitively correct treatment of typical examples, including true negative existential statements, is obtained by appealing only to independently motivated results in the semantics for natural languages. [source]

Handling linguistic web information based on a multi-agent system

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS, Issue 5 2007
Zheng Pei
Much information over the Internet is expressed by natural languages. The management of linguistic information involves an operation of comparison and aggregation. Based on the Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) operator and modifying indexes of linguistic terms (their indexes are fuzzy numbers on [0,T] , R+), new linguistic aggregating methods are presented and their properties are discussed. Also, based on a multi-agent system and new linguistic aggregating methods, gathering linguistic information over the Internet is discussed. Moreover, by fixing the threshold ,, "soft filtering information" is proposed and better Web pages (or documents) that the user needs are obtained. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 435,453, 2007. [source]

Learning to Think: A Response to the Language of Thought Argument for Innateness

MIND & LANGUAGE, Issue 3 2005
Christopher Viger
I argue that because the logical/formal terms of natural languages are given a use-theory of meaning, unlike predicates, logical/formal terms might be learned without a mediating internal representation. In that case, our innate representational system might have less logical structure than a natural language, making it possible that we augment our innate representational system and improve our ability to think by learning a natural language. [source]

XIV,Moral Non -Cognitivism and the Grammar of Morality

PROCEEDINGS OF THE ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY (HARDBACK), Issue 1pt3 2009
Michael Blome-Tillmann
This paper investigates the linguistic basis for moral non-cognitivism, the view that sentences containing moral predicates do not have truth conditions. It offers a new argument against this view by pointing out that the view is incompatible with our best empirical theories about the grammatical encoding of illocutionary force potentials. Given that my arguments are based on very general assumptions about the relations between the grammar of natural languages and a sentence's illocutionary function, my arguments are broader in scope than the familiar semantic objections to non-cognitivism relating to the so-called Frege-Geach problem: even if a solution to the Frege-Geach problem has been found, my arguments still stand. [source]

Weighted Constraints in Generative Linguistics

COGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 6 2009
Joe Pater
Abstract Harmonic Grammar (HG) and Optimality Theory (OT) are closely related formal frameworks for the study of language. In both, the structure of a given language is determined by the relative strengths of a set of constraints. They differ in how these strengths are represented: as numerical weights (HG) or as ranks (OT). Weighted constraints have advantages for the construction of accounts of language learning and other cognitive processes, partly because they allow for the adaptation of connectionist and statistical models. HG has been little studied in generative linguistics, however, largely due to influential claims that weighted constraints make incorrect predictions about the typology of natural languages, predictions that are not shared by the more popular OT. This paper makes the case that HG is in fact a promising framework for typological research, and reviews and extends the existing arguments for weighted over ranked constraints. [source]