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The Copredication Argument, Semantic Externalism, Selectional Restrictions and Ontology

Authors:
Conceptual Engineering, Semantic Externalism, and
Experimental Philosophy
What is the connection?
Enter Copredication
Thesis
1. The Chomskyan argument against Semantic Externalism based on copredication fails as it rests upon
questionable assumptions about Selectional Restrictions (SRs).
2. Semantic Externalists might need to accept an (at least partially) non-semantic account of SRs.
3. A natural language ontology construal accords with independent motivations
The Copredication Argument, Semantic Externalism,
Selectional Restrictions and Ontology
Zhengjie Situ
Semantic Externalism
Semantic properties of
expressions are pinned down
by reference and dependent
on speaker-external factors.
Natural Language Ontology
Cross-disciplinary study, does
not track foundational but
describes linguistic reality as
part of our conceptual scheme.
Assumptions
Counterclaims
Studies
Categorical
Gradient
Resnik (1996), Light &
Greiff (2002)
Fully specified early
Underspecified
initially,‘homed in’ as needed
Sanford & Sturt (2002), Frisson (2009),
Piñango &
Deo (2016)
Static and constant
Susceptible to
goals and intentions of the speaker.
Pustejovsky &
Jezek (2008),
Jezek
& Hanks (2010)
Semantic
Pragmatic
, discourse-sensitive
Nunberg (1995); Brandtner & von Heusinger (2010);
Magidor (2013); Murphy (2021)
The Copredication Argument
(1)‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ is a best-seller and weighs 12 ounces. (Chomsky 2000)
Predicate 1 selects for a ‘publication’ abstract sense while predicate 2 selects for a ‘copy’ concrete sense.
Since no object is both abstract and concrete, reference cannot be determined just by objects in the world.
(2) a. The city has 500,000 inhabitants and outlawed smoking in bars last year.
b. # The city outlawed smoking in bars last year and has 500,000 inhabitants. (Asher 2011)
Selectional Restrictions
Meaning restrictions a word
imposes on the environment
in which it features,
constraining co-occurrence
tendencies.
The Ontological-Presupposition Construal
The paraphrase strategies to explain away speakers ontological commitments (Keller 2015)
Foundational ontologies aside, this option allows the flexibility required for an account of copredication:
-Semantics do not interfere with foundational ontology (Gross 2006; Ritchie 2016)
-SR are gradient & interest-relative (prototype-like concept representation; social ontology (Arapinis, 2013; 2015))
…..initially underspecified (speaker presuppositions are not lexically encoded (Stalnaker 1973, 1974))
…..negotiable (speaker presuppositions can be cancelled (Abbott 2006) and accommodated (von Fintel 2008))
Additional Parsimony Arguments
Natural Language ontology as conceptual scheme (Strawson 1959; Bach 1986); A presuppositional approach to
conceptual schemes (Wang & Xu 2010); lexical presuppositions as ontological preconditions (Roberts & Simons 2022)
References: · Abbott, B. (2006). Where have some of the presuppositions gone?. In B. J. Birner & G. Ward (Eds.), Drawing the Boundaries of Meaning: Neo-Gricean Studies in Pragmatics and Semantics in Honor of Laurence R. Horn. John Benjamins. 120. · Arapinis, A. (2013). Referring to institutional entities: Semantic and ontological
perspectives. Applied Ontology, 8(1), 31-57. · Arapinis, A. (2015). Whole-for-part metonymy, classification, and grounding. Linguistics and Philosophy, 38, 1-29. · Asher, N. (2011). Lexical meaning in context: A web of words. Cambridge University Press. · Bach, E. (1986). Natural language metaphysics. In Studies in Logic and the Foundations of
Mathematics (Vol. 114, pp. 573-595). Elsevier. · Brandtner, R., & von Heusinger, K. (2010). Nominalization in contextConflicting readings and predicate transfer. In M. Rathert & A. Alexiadou (Eds.), The semantics of nominalizations across languages and frameworks (pp. 2549). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. · Chomsky, N. (2000). New horizons
in the study of language and mind. Cambridge University Press. · von Fintel, K. (2008). What is Presupposition Accommodation, Again?. Philosophical Perspectives, 22, 137-170. · Frisson, S. (2009). Semantic underspecification in language processing. Language and Linguistics Compass, 3(1), 111-127. · Gross, S. (2006). Can empirical theories of
semantic competence really help limn the structure of reality?. Noûs, 40(1), 43-81. · Jezek, E., & Hanks, P. (2010). What lexical sets tell us about conceptual categories. Lexis. Journal in English Lexicology, (4). · Keller, J. (2015). Paraphrase, Semantics, and Ontology. In K. Bennett and D. Zimmerman (Eds.) Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 9 (pp 89-
128). Oxford: OUP. Light, M., & Greiff, W. (2002). Statistical models for the induction and use of selectional preferences. Cognitive Science, 26(3), 269-281. · Magidor, O. (2013). Category Mistakes. OUP Oxford. · Murphy, E. (2021). Predicate order and coherence in copredication. Inquiry, 1-37. · Nunberg, G. (1995). Transfers of meaning.
Journal of Semantics, 12(2), 109-132. · Piñango, M. M., & Deo, A. (2016). Reanalyzing the complement coercion effect through a generalized lexical semantics for aspectual verbs. Journal of Semantics, 33(2), 359-408. · Pustejovsky, J., & Jezek, E. (2008). Semantic coercion in language: Beyond distributional analysis. Italian Journal of Linguistics,
20(1), 175-208. · Resnik, P. (1996). Selectional constraints: An information-theoretic model and its computational realization. Cognition, 61(1-2), 127-159. · Ritchie, K. (2016). Can Semantics Guide Ontology?. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 94(1), 24-41. · Roberts, C. & Simons, M. (2022). Preconditions, Presuppositions, and Projection.
Proceedings of the 23rd Amsterdam Colloquium. · Sanford, A. J., & Sturt, P. (2002). Depth of processing in language comprehension: Not noticing the evidence. Trends in cognitive sciences, 6(9), 382-386. · Stalnaker, R. (1973). Presuppositions. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 2(4), 447. · Stalnaker, R. (1974). Pragmatic presuppositions. In M.
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