A contextual theory of fictional names
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Gaetano Fiorin is a tenure-track research fellow in Linguistics at the University of Trieste. His research focuses on theoretical linguistics (particularly model-theoretic semantics and the syntax-semantics interface), experimental linguistics (language development, language impairments, and multilingualism) and the philosophy of language (in particular, the metaphysics of meaning and the interface between language and cognition).
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Denis Delfitto is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Verona. His publications – in international scientific journals and peer-reviewed volumes – span from the syntax of reference and quantification in natural language – including issues of comparative syntax and semantics – to issues of language change and language impairment. His core interest is the investigation of the human capacity for language from a broad cognitive and philosophical perspective.
Abstract
We review some of the most prominent challenges in the semantics and pragmatics of fictional names and propose a pragmatic theory of fictional names whereby understanding a fictional name requires imagining possible contexts of interpretation of the name. Similarly to other pragmatic approaches to fiction and fictional contexts, we maintain that fictional texts require that the interpreter engages in a game of pretense of sort and are, therefore, prescriptions to imagine a state of affairs that is not the real one. In contrast to these approaches, however, we propose that interpreting a fictional text does not require imagining a set of possible state of affairs where the text would be true but, rather, requires imagining a set of possible contexts where the text would be meaningful. In order to apply this framework to fictional names, we adopt a contextual theory of proper names, which we have proposed and defended in previous work.
About the authors
Gaetano Fiorin is a tenure-track research fellow in Linguistics at the University of Trieste. His research focuses on theoretical linguistics (particularly model-theoretic semantics and the syntax-semantics interface), experimental linguistics (language development, language impairments, and multilingualism) and the philosophy of language (in particular, the metaphysics of meaning and the interface between language and cognition).
Denis Delfitto is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Verona. His publications – in international scientific journals and peer-reviewed volumes – span from the syntax of reference and quantification in natural language – including issues of comparative syntax and semantics – to issues of language change and language impairment. His core interest is the investigation of the human capacity for language from a broad cognitive and philosophical perspective.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Actuality, indexicality, and knowledge
- A cross-cultural analysis of the gestural pattern of surprise and surprise-disapproval questions
- A contextual theory of fictional names
- Towards a dynamic functional proposition for dynamic discourse meaning
- When cancellation becomes unreasonable
- Dynamism of context: A case of joke interpretation
- Resemblance by meaning and culture between Singapore English and Singapore Mandarin
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Actuality, indexicality, and knowledge
- A cross-cultural analysis of the gestural pattern of surprise and surprise-disapproval questions
- A contextual theory of fictional names
- Towards a dynamic functional proposition for dynamic discourse meaning
- When cancellation becomes unreasonable
- Dynamism of context: A case of joke interpretation
- Resemblance by meaning and culture between Singapore English and Singapore Mandarin
