Fictional names, their use and pragmatic interpretations
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Tomasz Puczyłowski
Abstract
The aim of the paper is to defend the view according to which all simple fictional sentences are meaningless. If their assertions seem to convey some truth evaluable information, and fictional sentences themselves seem to be true or false, it is because some pragmatic mechanisms are operative, enabling the expression of propositions not encoded in the semantic content of these sentences. According to some theorists, the mechanisms responsible for that process are the same as those responsible for generating conversational implicatures. I argue against that claim and maintain that to comprehend the information conveyed by a fictional assertion, one must determine what kind of fictional assertion it is and only then apply the relevant interpretative rule adjusted to the fictional sentence used in that act.
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© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- An introduction: use and meaning – a special issue of Semiotica devoted to Jerzy Pelc
- Research Articles
- Functional logical semiotics of natural language
- The manner of use, the uses and sub-uses of terms in social sciences: from the functional approach to natural language to applied semiotics and the philosophy of science
- Investigations of an anti-semiote: Stanisław Lem’s semiotic ideas in light of semiotic functionalism of Jerzy Pelc
- Metaphilosophical metamorphoses of analytic philosophy of language
- Four puzzling paragraphs: Frege on ‘≡’ and ‘=’
- On how to legitimately constrain a semantic theory
- Łukasiewicz, determinism, and the four-valued system of logic
- The representation of gappy sentences in four-valued semantics
- Fictional names, their use and pragmatic interpretations
- Names of places
- Groundwork for a pragmatics for formalized languages
- Token reflexivity and logic
- Indexicals and essential demonstrations
- On the logical form and ontology of inferences in conversational implicatures
- Omnipresent meaning-interdependence and ubiquitous analyticity
- Are representations glorified receptors? On use and usage of mental representations
- Sounds and gestures of linguistic reference: the endurance of reality in the poetry of Wallace Stevens
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- An introduction: use and meaning – a special issue of Semiotica devoted to Jerzy Pelc
- Research Articles
- Functional logical semiotics of natural language
- The manner of use, the uses and sub-uses of terms in social sciences: from the functional approach to natural language to applied semiotics and the philosophy of science
- Investigations of an anti-semiote: Stanisław Lem’s semiotic ideas in light of semiotic functionalism of Jerzy Pelc
- Metaphilosophical metamorphoses of analytic philosophy of language
- Four puzzling paragraphs: Frege on ‘≡’ and ‘=’
- On how to legitimately constrain a semantic theory
- Łukasiewicz, determinism, and the four-valued system of logic
- The representation of gappy sentences in four-valued semantics
- Fictional names, their use and pragmatic interpretations
- Names of places
- Groundwork for a pragmatics for formalized languages
- Token reflexivity and logic
- Indexicals and essential demonstrations
- On the logical form and ontology of inferences in conversational implicatures
- Omnipresent meaning-interdependence and ubiquitous analyticity
- Are representations glorified receptors? On use and usage of mental representations
- Sounds and gestures of linguistic reference: the endurance of reality in the poetry of Wallace Stevens
