Overview
- Explores the directival theory of meaning for the first time in English
- Offers a new approach to functional role semantics
- Contributes a novel combination of distributed and embodied semantics
Part of the book series: Synthese Library (SYLI, volume 409)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book presents a new approach to semantics based on Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s Directival Theory of Meaning (DTM), which in effect reduces semantics of the analysed language to the combination of its syntax and pragmatics. The author argues that the DTM was forgotten because for many years philosophers didn’t have conceptual tools to appreciate its innovative nature, and that the theory was far ahead of its time.
The book shows how a redesigned and modernised version of the DTM can deliver a new solution to the problem of defining linguistic meaning and that the theory can be understood as a new type of functional role semantics. The defining feature of the DTM is that it presents meaning as a product of constraints on the usage of words. According to the DTM meaning is not use, but the avoidance of misuse.
Readers will see how the DTM was shelved for reasons that we don’t find so dramatic anymore, and how it contains enough original ideas and solutions to warrant developing it into a full-blown contemporary account. It is shown how many of the underlying ideas of the theory have been embraced later by philosophers and treated simply as brute facts about natural languages or even as new philosophical discoveries.
Philosophers of language and researchers with an interest in how languages and the mind work will find this book a fascinating read.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Paweł Grabarczyk is a Polish philosopher of language and mind, working as an assistant professor at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Lodz and as a post-doc at IT University of Copenhagen. He is the author of several articles on the notion of “meaning”, “concept” and Ajdukiewicz’s directival theory of meaning. He is the head of the Centre for Philosophical Research, the largest Polish non-governmental philosophical organization and the editor in chief of two journals: HYBRIS and Replay: Polish Journal of Game Studies.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Directival Theory of Meaning
Book Subtitle: From Syntax and Pragmatics to Narrow Linguistic Content
Authors: Paweł Grabarczyk
Series Title: Synthese Library
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18783-5
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-18781-1Published: 01 July 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-18783-5Published: 18 June 2019
Series ISSN: 0166-6991
Series E-ISSN: 2542-8292
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 238
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Philosophy of Language, Semantics, Philosophy of Mind