Is Semantics Scientific?

Is Semantics Scientific?

1. it is prescientific

   • the fallacy that science progresses
     • Karl Popper P1 =>TT => EE=> P22...
   • scientific theory requirements
     • FALSIFIABLE
     • BASIC STATEMENTS'
     • EXPLICIT
     • COMPLETE (Data)
     • SIMPLER than other theories
     • it should be testable by OBJECTIVE

2. Hypothetico-deductive method

3. The Contextual View of Meaning

   • CONTEXTUALISM
     • Bloomfield behaviourist
       • CONTEXTUALISM is incapable of dealing with any but the simplest and most unsophisticated cases of language use
       • Relation between context and meaning
     • Charles Morris five basic components

4. How do we deal with context?

   • Context eliminates some ambiguities
   • Context indicates the referent
   • Context supplies information
   • competence and performance

5. Mentalist and 'intuition'

   • Chomsky
     • Communication of ideas
       • Basic statements : the control of intuition
         • X presuposes Y
         • X is a contradiction with Y
         • X is a tautology with Y
         • X is semantically anomalous
         • X is inconsistent with Y
         • X is entails with Y
         • X is synonymous with Y

6. Semantic data

   • Meaning are mental phenomena
     • Behavioural evidence
     • Physiological evidence

7. Truth based semantics

   • X is "equal" to Y

8. Ambiguity

   • one-many relation between sentence and sense

9. Translation equivalence

   • communication value
     • meaning equivalence
     • sense equivalence

10. Semantic testing

    • Basic statements
      • can lead us to follow more systematic evidence

11. Is Semantics Scientific?

    • Analytic and Synthetic
      • Analytic truth
        • is true in virtue of meaning alone
          • "All bachelors are unmarried,”
      • Synthetic truth
        • is true because of what they mean and because of the way the world is
          • "Snow is white"
      • Prototypic categories
        • Nominal view of meaning
    • Elements of semantic description
      • Language universals
      • relates the meaning on Pracmatics
        • use of the language
      • relates the meaning to syntax
        • referring meaning to basic statements
      • The theory predicts
        • Synonymy
        • entailment
        • Tautology
        • contradiction