Meaning change, in theory and in practice

Semantic change is of interest in its own right in the philosophy of language. For instance, it sheds light on the relationship between the meaning of a word and its use. It also plays a role in ideology critique. Philosophy of language often focuses on explaining synchronic features related to truth, entailment, and implicature. It is presumed an account of language's diachronic features will follow. But the tools developed are imperfectly suited, and mask phenomena of interest. Chapter 1 concerns volitional meaning change of the sort advocated in conceptual engineering and amelioration. The question addressed is not what our concept, say, WOMAN, is, but what our concept should be. I bring to bear underappreciated empirical constraints on this normative project. Usage finely reflects equilibrium between communicative pressures (just as sales do between market pressures).

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Koslow, Allison Robbins.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alex Byrne.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/130209

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/130209