Publications
Publication details [#41903]
Turner, Ken. 1999. Semantics vs. Pragmatics. In Östman, Jan-Ola, Jef Verschueren, Jan Blommaert and Chris Bulcaen, eds. Handbook of Pragmatics. 1997 Installment. John Benjamins.
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Keywords
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Annotation
Neo-(Post-))Gricean positions assume a first-order logic as the basis of their semantics and their principal task is to account for the alleged differences in meaning and use between that logic’s connectives and quantifiers and their counterparts in a natural language like English. (Neo-(Post-))Kaplanean positions, on the other hand, seek to defend quantified modal logic as the basis of their semantics and their principal task is to account for the alleged identity of an object as it travels through a suite of identity transforming possible worlds. The two families of positions have certain elements of contact and compatibility and this essay on semantics vs. pragmatics describes the development of a pragmatics that was designed principally on the basis of the first but has more recently been brought into service to interface with the second. Future research will reveal more adequately and accurately the character of the contact and compatibility of the systems discussed here.