Believing in Words

• Published in: Synthese (Dordrecht) Vol. 127; no. 3; pp. 279 - 301
• Main Authors: Cappelen, Herman, Dever, Josh
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Kluwer Academic Publishers 01-06-2001; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Attitudes; Braille; Context; Language; Language attitudes; Lexical semantics; Lexicon; Linguistic complements; Morphology; Onomastics; Overman; Philosophical logics. Philosophy of language; Philosophy; Phonology; Polysemy; Puzzles; Semantics; Syntactics; Theoretical linguistics; Words; Belief; Word; Ontology; Constraint; System; Substitution; Semantics; Chomsky (N.); Linguistics; Cognitive; Proper Name; Sign; Lexical; Functionalism
• ISSN: 0039-7857; 1573-0964
• DOI: 10.1023/A:1010372531110

[...]uA:S,CK will name an utterance made in an active context for the lexical pair Superman, Clark Kent.BELIEVING IN WORDS 283What lexical theories have in common, then, is not that the lexical material is relevant in all context, only that there are some contexts in which the lexical material used in the report is a functional component of the objects of the attitudes.1.2. The lexical information included in LOAs, as discussed above, are intended to explain certain failures of material equivalence of attitude reports in contexts active for that lexical material. [...]the semantics of the verbs of attitude reporting believes, doubts, wishes, etc. must appeal to a relationship between the attitude-holding agent and the object of his attitude which is sensitive to(i.e., the holding or not holding of which can be determined by) those pieces of lexical information.Following the lead of lexical theorists, we will not attempt to give a full explanation of the factors which contribute to the holding or failing of the attitudinal relation. Even when linguists are explicitly concerned with the nature of the lexicon, the kinds of concerns they have will typically be orthogonal to the concerns inherited by lexical theorists. [...]the detailed studies made by Di Sciullo and Williams (1987) of the internal morphology of words and by Pustejovsky (1995) of the lexical- semantic sources of polysemy, whatever their other virtues, will do nothing to differentiate coreferential proper names which lack internal morphology and share perfectly semantic properties.BELIEVING IN WORDS 2933.1. [...]3) will appeal to a psychological relation between Lois and a LOA containing lexical items as understood by Chomsky clusters of information, with the informational content of Superman and Clark Kent being differentiated (for this speaker) only phonologically.