Kamran Ghayoomzadeh; Alireza Dastafshan
Abstract
The problem of existential commitment is how and to what extent we are committed to accept the existence of certain objects in the world and especially the objects we talk about because of our use of language. “Geach’s Puzzle” which is an interesting and famous problem in existential ...
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The problem of existential commitment is how and to what extent we are committed to accept the existence of certain objects in the world and especially the objects we talk about because of our use of language. “Geach’s Puzzle” which is an interesting and famous problem in existential commitment induced by an anaphoric text is a general problem about the existential commitments of the third speaker (narrator) in a discourse with more than two speakers. The solution defended in this dissertation is that if the first two speakers speak of an object which didn’t initially exist, they have actually created it as an abstract mythical object. Now, the third speaker can commit himself to accept the existence of that object while reporting what those two speakers had said without any need to agree with the properties they had ascribed to that object. The object indeed exists, because it was created in a myth.
Mohammad Yazdani; Alireza dastafshan
Volume 9, Issue 2 , October 2018, , Pages 99-131
Abstract
Complex demonstratives are linguistic expressions of the form "that F", that result from combining demonstrative pronouns with simple or complex common noun phrases. There are two well-known theories about the semantic behavior of complex demonstratives: the first is the direct reference theory and the ...
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Complex demonstratives are linguistic expressions of the form "that F", that result from combining demonstrative pronouns with simple or complex common noun phrases. There are two well-known theories about the semantic behavior of complex demonstratives: the first is the direct reference theory and the second is the quantificational theory. According to direct reference theory, complex demonstratives are referring terms and their contents, in demonstrative use, are individuals, and 'f' contributes to fixing the referent of "that F" but contributes nothing to the semantic content of the containing sentence. By contrast, quantificational theory treats complex demonstratives as quantifier phrases, and holds that a two-place relation between properties is contributed to the proposition expressed by the sentence containing the complex demonstrative. This theory claims to account for all sorts of uses of complex demonstratives, such as, demonstrative, NDNS, QI, bound-variable and anaphoric, which have been used by the defenders of this theory to pose objections to the direct reference theory. Yet, direct reference theorists not only can reply to these objections, but also present problems involving given uses in modal contexts and other contexts against quantificational theory, that such contexts can raise serious difficulties for quantificational theory. Altogether, it seems the direct reference theory presents more intuitive explanation about the complex demonstratives
