Propositionalism in Linguistic Semantics

这个项目调查了自然语言语义分析中一个基本但很少涉及的分裂的原因。这种分裂涉及到什么样的表达可以表示信息内容的问题：命题主义方法将语言内容专门与可评估真值的从句意义联系在一起，而更自由的内涵主义方法假设信息内容不一定是可评估真值的，原则上可以与所有类型的表达相联系。该项目旨在批判性地检验命题论者的假设，即意义构成完全可以根据指称和命题内容来解释。该项目将汇集语言语义学、形式逻辑和语言哲学的专业知识，重点关注命题在理论语言学中的前景。我们预计，根据命题论者的确切表述，命题论者的假说要么因形式原因而微不足道，要么因经验原因而不充分。在预期这一结果的情况下，该项目还将探索命题主义的替代方案及其语言内容以外的解释资源。

This project investigates the grounds for a fundamental yet rarely addressed schism in the semantic analysis of natural language. This schism regards the question of what kinds of expressions may denote information content: while propositionalist approaches link linguistic content exclusively to truth-evaluable, clausal meaning, more liberal intensionalist approaches assume that information content need not be truth-evaluable and may in principle be connected with all types of expressions. The project aims to critically examine the propositionalist hypothesis that meaning composition can be accounted for entirely in terms of reference and propositional content. The project will bring together expertise from linguistic semantics, formal logic, and philosophy of language, focussing on the prospects of propositionalism in theoretical linguistics. We expect that, depending on its exact formulation, the propositionalist hypothesis will turn out to be either trivial for formal reasons or inadequate on empirical grounds. In anticipation of this result, the project will also explore alternatives to propositionalism and their explanatory resources beyond linguistic content.