Naming And Indexicality

This book provides an accessible, comprehensive and critical overview of theories of linguistic reference and meaning in the 20th century.

The book offers the first full-scale focused treatment of linguistic indexicality as a tool for analysis and explanation of the organization of linguistic structures. The book demonstrates the application of the concept of indexicality in the description of a broad range of linguistic phenomena, from the internal workings of morphology via relations within syntactic constructions to lexical and grammatical elements designed to hook on to features outside the clause in the interactional context. The book offers a focused treatment of the general nature of linguistic indexicality in the larger perspective of the semiotics of language, including examinations of domain-straddling indexical functions. It presents studies of the role of indexicality in synchrony and diachrony with descriptive cases from a number of languages from diverse language families and it examines the way indexicality enters into the mechanisms of change, including examinations of semiotic shifts from indexical to symbolic function and vice versa. The book is relevant for researchers and students in historical and synchronic linguistics from a variety of linguistic frameworks with an interest in the role of semiotics in linguistic analysis.

Reference and indexicality are two central topics in the Philosophy of Language that are closely tied together. In the first part of this book a description theory of reference is developed and contrasted with the prevailing direct reference view with the goal of laying out their advantages and disadvantages. The author defends his version of indirect reference against well-known objections raised by Saul Kripke, mainly in his work Naming and Necessity, and his successors, while also addressing linguistic aspects such as compositionality. In the second part, a detailed survey on indexical expressions is given based on a variety of typological data. Topics addressed are, among others: Kaplan's logic of demonstratives, conversational versus utterance context, context-shifting indexicals, the deictic center, token-reflexivity, vagueness of spatial and temporal indexicals, reference rules, and the epistemic and cognitive role of indexicals. From a descriptivist perspective on reference, various examples of simple and complex indexicals are analyzed in first-order predicate logic with reified contexts. A critical discussion of essential indexicality, de se readings of attitudes and accompanying puzzles round up the investigation.

In this book the authors argue that there are no such things as essential indexicality, irreducibly de se attitudes, or self-locating attitudes.

The relationship between thought, language, and the world is an intimate one. When we have an idea or thought about the world and we wish to express that idea or thought to others we utter a sentence or make a statement. If the statement correctly describes the world then it is true. Moreover, it seems as though our ability to have more complex or sophisticated thoughts about the world increases as the complexity of our language or our ability to use the language increases. Understanding the complex relationship between language, thought, and the world is one of the central aims of philosophy. This book is an attempt to increase our understanding of this complex relationship by focusing on certain philosophical issues that arise from our ability to refer to objects in the world though the use of language. In particular, it is an attempt to solve the puzzles of reference and belief that Frege and Russell presented within the context of a theory of direct reference for proper names.

This volume is a compilation of revised versions of papers presented at a conference held in spring 1994 at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) in Bielefeld, Germany.

Soames introduces a new conception of the relationship between linguistic meaning and assertions made by utterances. He gives meanings of proper names and natural-kind predicates and explains their use in attitude ascriptions.