Sentence Understanding : Knowledge of Meaning and the Rational-Intentional Explanation of Linguistic Communication

Daenzer, Lars

Brill Mentis; Brill | mentis（2016/08発売）

• 製本 Paperback:紙装版/ペーパーバック版
• 商品コード 9783957430229

Description

What is it to understand a sentence of a language? This question lies at the very heart of philosophy of language due to its intimate connections with two other issues: the nature of linguistic meaning and the workings of linguistic communication. This book presents a systematic attempt to explicate the concept of sentence understanding, guided by two questions: What exactly is the role played by states of sentence understanding in enabling linguistic communication? And what do such states have to be in order to play that role? Adopting a broadly Gricean picture of communication as background, the book reviews some main proposals from the literature and then develops an original line of Argument for a non-standard version of the view that understanding a sentence consists in possessing propositional knowledge of its meaning. A key to a satisfactory account of this sort, it is argued, lies in a particular view of the nature of propositional attitude states. Apart from dealing successfully with a number of challenges, the resulting account also forms part of an attractive general picture of how philosophers of language may go about explaining our use and interpretation of language. Lars Dänzer, born 1981, studied philosophy at the Universities of Zürich and Bielefeld. 2009-2013 member of the Emmy-Noether research group »Understanding and the A Priori«.Visiting Student at New York University 2011-2012. Doctor of philosophy from the University of Cologne in 2013. Currently post-doc at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Research areas: Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind