Pragmatic referring functions as Montague semantic operators

In this dissertation, the thesis is defended that lexical semantics is not a subdomain of semantics, but rather a subdomain of pragmatics. That is, knowledge about the meaning of words is not part of one's knowledge of the language, but rather part of one's knowledge of the world. This distinction marks the traditional difference between dictionary and encyclopedia. One consults a dictionary to find out what the word lemon means (on the assumption that one knows what lemons are), while one goes to the encyclopedia to find out about lemons (on the assumption that you know how English speakers name them). The view suggested here is that this is a distinction that is not possible to maintain in a formal description of a language. Such a formal description, it is claimed, should contain only minimal semantic information about any lexical item. Almost all semantic information would be regarded as encyclopedic world-knowledge.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Linguistics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Helmreich, Stephen Christian

Contributors dc:contributor

• Green, Georgia M.

• Language, Linguistics

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1996 Helmreich, Stephen Christian

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

9780591198942
AAI9712304
(UMI)AAI9712304

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/19314