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

如果我们知道一个单词的意思，我们就能理解它，这似乎是关于人类语言能力的一个直截了当的说法。然而，事实证明，要提供一个忠实于两种根深蒂固的直觉的词的意义的理论解释是非常困难的。一方面，人们有一种直觉，认为一个词有固定的语言学意义；另一方面，我们在不同的语境中对单词的理解也不同。读着印在防火门上的“保持关闭”的指示，我们明白我们实际上可以打开门并通过它，但应该在我们身后关上它。当指示出现在烤箱门上时，我们意识到我们不应该打开门。解释部分取决于特定的使用情况，但也有一种直觉，即“keep shut”具有恒定的语言学意义。这种现象几乎适用于任何单词。对“油漆”这个动词的解释在以下每一个句子中都不一样：“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“The trees are moving”时，我们如何解释“moving”取决于我们感兴趣的是风力还是山体滑坡的可能性。我们如何解释一种情况是“紧急情况”，部分取决于具体场合的性质。然而，也有一种强烈的直觉认为，“绘画”、“移动”和“紧急”这些词在所有使用场合都具有恒定的语言含义。我们对这种不变的语言意义的了解在解释(1)我们如何在不同的上下文中应用一个词，以及(2)我们如何通过在不同的上下文中说出这个词来理解别人所说的话方面起着至关重要的作用，这似乎是非常可信的。该项目的中心目标是阐明为了发挥这些作用，单词的含义必须是什么样的东西。如果对一个词的语言学意义的了解以一种系统的方式指导了它的应用，但并没有事先确定它在每一个可能的话语语境中的正确应用，那么这个意义似乎一定是概要性的，而不是完全指定的，因此是某种大纲或模板。只有当我们在使用意义图式时能够利用我们的常识或实用知识，它才能引导我们走向正确的解释。该项目将根据图式或大纲的概念发展单词含义的说明。我们将展示如何结合一般的认知-语用能力，这种对词义的解释可以解释一个词在不同语境中的解释范围。为了评估这种词义观的解释力，我们将把它应用于各种不同类型的单词，包括一般术语，如“关闭”、“油漆”和“移动”，专有名词和代词，以及连接词，如“但是”、“如果……”Then和so。最后，我们将用我们的结果来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。

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.