29.4136, Review: Pragmatics; Semantics: Lasersohn (2018)

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Subject: 29.4136, Review: Pragmatics; Semantics: Lasersohn (2018)

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Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2018 14:23:21
From: Enrico Torre [contact at enricotorre.com]
Subject: Subjectivity and Perspective in Truth-Theoretic Semantics

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-807.html

AUTHOR: Peter  Lasersohn
TITLE: Subjectivity and Perspective in Truth-Theoretic Semantics
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Enrico Torre, Independent Researcher

SUMMARY

In his monograph ‘Subjectivity and perspective in truth-theoretic semantics’,
Peter Lasersohn pursues the following objectives (p. xiii): 1) demonstrating
that a truth-conditional theory can account for the meanings of sentences
which concern matters of opinion; 2) arguing for the use of a model of
semantic contents as determining extensions only relative to parameters left
indeterminate in the context of utterance; 3) motivating the plausibility of a
relativized conception of truth; 4) drawing out the implications of this
strategy for the analysis of a range of specific linguistic phenomena.

The book is divided into eleven chapters. Chapter 1 defines sentences
concerning matters of opinion as those whose contradiction can result in
‘faultless disagreement’ (Kölbel 2004) between two speakers, i.e. a kind of
disagreement which does not imply a factual mistake on either part (e.g.,
‘Licorice is tasty’). However, Lasersohn observes that sentences expressing
matters of opinion are often used as if they had truth values, just like those
expressing matters of fact (e.g., ‘This costs $5’). In order to preserve the
distinction between the two different kinds of sentences, the author proposes
the adoption of a system containing different notions of truth, including a
monadic concept of truth which applies only to the contents of sentences which
deal with matters of fact and, and a relativized notion of truth which applies
to both types of sentences. Following Kaplan (1989), the author distinguishes
a concept of meaning, labeled ‘content’ at an intermediate level between the
semantic content which does not vary with pragmatic context (‘character’, in
Lasersohn’s terms) and the traditional notion of ‘denotation’.

Chapter 2 reviews the following alternatives solutions: analyses which treat
personal tastes as involving some kind of indexical reference; analyses which
consider these sentences as involving a hidden argument to predicates like
‘tasty’, which is treated as a quantified variable; analyses of claims like
‘Licorice is tasty’ as simple one-places predicates whose truth or falseness
is inaccessible, so that people have to rely on their own judgments; claims
that taste sentences do not possess truth values at all; claims that
disagreement between two people asserting and denying that licorice is tasty
are to be explained at a metalinguistic (e.g., different meanings of the word
‘tasty’ for different speakers) or metacontextual levels (e.g., the use of the
sentence may convey information about the context). The author dismisses all
solutions on the grounds that some of them fail to grasp the intuitive
contradiction between two people uttering sentences like “Licorice is tasty”
and “Licorice is not tasty” while others require additional conditions which
are not necessary for the contradiction to arise. 

In the following two chapters, Lasersohn outlines a formal grammar for a
fragment of the English language to be used to the relativist treatment of
taste sentences in Chapter 5. Chapter 3 provides the syntactic and semantic
provisions necessary to distinguish the interpretation exhibited by predicates
of personal taste from that exhibited by indexical expressions. Special
attention is dedicated to noun phrases, in particular to pronouns and their
use as bound variables. Then, a treatment of relevant phenomena like negation
and intensionality is also provided. Chapter 4 expands the grammar provided in
the previous chapter to the analysis of verb tense and expressions of spatial
location and orientation.

Chapter 5 expands the grammar to treat some simple cases of personal taste
sentences as expressing contents whose truth value can vary from person to
person. Importantly, the author introduces the ‘judge’ parameter, which
assigns denotations to contents while being neutral to the determination of
content. The judge parameter is a feature of the context of assessment (i.e.,
the situation in which a truth value is ‘judged’) rather than the context of
use (i.e., the situation in which an expression is used). As a consequence,
the truth value of taste sentences depends on the value of a parameter which
is left indeterminate by the context of use, and this indeterminacy gives the
effect that these sentences are only subjectively true or false. Once the
indeterminacy is resolved, a truth value may be assigned on an objective
basis. In Lasersohn’s words, “to say that ‘Elderberries are tasty’ is true
relative to a context of assessment with John as the judge is to say that it
is objectively true that elderberries are tasty for John” (p. 94).  

Chapter 6 considers several possible alternative analyses which assume the
presence of ‘hidden’ and ‘disguised’ indexical elements. The author outlines
various ways of including them into his grammar: phonological reduction,
pro-drop, syntactic ellipsis, constructional indexicality and sublexical
indexicality, arguing that none of these solutions is viable. Indeed,
appealing to hidden or disguised indexicality is of little help in explaining
why one person saying, “Licorice is tasty” and another one saying, “Licorice
is not tasty” are intuitively understood to be contradicting each other.
Likewise, accounting for the intuition of contradiction by claiming that each
speaker asserts the negation of the content asserted by the other speaker, it
is impossible to explain the intuition of interpersonal variation in truth
value.

Chapter 7 pairs Lasersohn’s semantic theory with a pragmatic theory that
explains how the context of assessment provides specific values for their
parameters and how people assess the truth values of each other’s assertions.
The author argues that a system of pragmatic norms establishes default values,
but in appropriate circumstances, a sentence use may be intentionally assessed
relative to non-normal parameter values. Normally, the truth or falsity of a
sentence content will be assessed relative to the assessor’s current
perspective (‘autocentric stance’). However, a person may perform a truth
assessment from another perspective than one’s own (‘exocentric stance’) to
serve a specific purpose. For instance, if Mary tells John that the
merry-go-round is fun, and John is trying to decide whether to buy a ticket
for his son Bill, John will consider if what Mary said is likely to be true
relative to Bill, rather than himself. A sentence may also be considered in
the abstract, without performing a truth assessment (‘acentric stance’).

In Chapter 8, the author extends his semantic and pragmatic theory to deal
with sentences ascribing mental attitudes. This is accomplished by treating
attitude predicates as creating intensional contexts. The bearer of a mental
attitude involving truth assessment is expected to adopt a stance in
performing that assessment, which is supposed to be somehow reflected in the
semantics of attitude predicates. The adoption of this perspective is
illustrated through the analysis of attitudes, grammatical constructions, and
their intersection, which are formalized and discussed, with a particular
attention reserved to pro-dropping strategies. In the end of the chapter, the
author addresses and refutes non-indexical contextualism, on the grounds that
it forces a distinction between what we accept as true and what we accept
someone as having truthfully said.

Chapter 9 considers the notion of relative truth as applied to the theory of
speech acts, in particular, the act of assertion. First of all, the author
shows that it is possible to make sense of the idea of asserting a content
which is true in relation to certain perspectives but not others. This is
argued both from a normative point of view (i.e., the perspective of Grice’s
Maxims of Conversation) and a contextual point of view (which includes the
‘common ground’ between all the participants in a conversation). Then, the
author enquires into why people insist on assertions with regard to matters of
taste even in the face of opposition, despite the fact that there are no facts
which can resolve the issue, arguing that the answer is to be found in terms
of social advantage for one’s own tastes. At the end of the chapter, the
author shifts his attention to questions, which differ from assertions in
being by default exocentric. 

Chapter 10 deals with the theoretical possibility that certain sentence
contents may vary in truth value from perspective to perspective but, at the
same time, have an objective truth value which cannot be relativized. More
informally, sentence contents which can be seen as neither entirely matter of
opinion nor entirely matter of fact. The author identifies and discusses
several types of sentences which can be analyzed in this way: aesthetic
judgments and refinement of taste, contingent futures, epistemic modality, and
also cases of sentences unrelated to taste (scalar cut-offs, sufficiency,
derogation). All of these are discussed in some detail and with the aid of a
range of examples.

Finally, Chapter 11 enquires into the notion of truth itself. The author
approaches the question by telling an evolutionary fable, arguing that truth
is an idealization of the more basic one of ‘reliability’: a representation of
the environment is reliable when it works for the relevant participant in a
representation process. For instance, John’s communicating that a wolf is
nearby will be received by Mary, who will imagine herself in John’s position,
identify the relevant mental representation, and assess the utterance for
reliability. According to the author, truth differs from reliability in three
aspects: 1) it abstracts away from practical consequences of representation
use; 2) reliability is scalar whereas truth is bivalent; 3) a representation
can be reliable for certain purposes but not others, whereas truth is not
purpose-sensitive. The argument is then developed and formalized

EVALUATION

Overall, this monograph represents a welcome contribution to the study of
sentences concerning matters of opinion within the framework of logical
semantics. As a result, it will be particularly appealing to specialists in
formal linguistics and, more generally, scholars who are interested in the
study of linguistic expressions of subjectivity. As such, it fits in very well
in the series ‘Oxford Studies in Semantics and Pragmatics’, which include
other authoritative studies such as Elbourne (2013) and Chierchia (2013).
Lasersohn’s book is well-written, its background and aims are made clear in
the beginning, and each chapter has a specific function. Although the volume
as a whole coheres, most chapters may also stand as self-contained
contributions. This is no surprise, given that the book presents the result of
a research program whose ad interim results were published in several journal
articles over the last fifteen years. The objectives of the book are listed at
the very beginning and consistently pursued over the following chapters.

Lasersohn’s ingenious truth-conditional treatment of sentences which
intuitively concern matters of opinion is backed by convincing arguments,
which provide solid support in favor of the adequacy of logical semantics to
account for this kind of sentence. Indeed, by means of a rigorous, yet
relatively flexible formal grammar, the author is able to provide an explicit
account of a range of possible linguistic expressions dealing with taste and
other matters of opinion. In this respect, a the adoption of a grammar which
allows multiple notions of truth, including relativistic notions of truth
(which apply to all examples) and absolute notions of truth (restricted to
sentences about matters of fact), plays a key role, enabling the author to
demonstrate the virtues of the notion of relativized truth on both formal and
theoretical grounds. At the same time, the author’s concise but thorough
comparison between his own approach to subjectivity and analyses which were
previously provided in the literature is appropriate, spelling out some subtle
yet crucial differences which may not be immediately identified (especially by
non-specialists).   

The author’s choice to write a simplified grammar for a fragment of the
English language rather than a wholly artificial logical language is to be
praised since it is helpful for the reader, especially if s/he is not familiar
with a high level of formalization. Likewise, Lasersohn’s selection of the
examples to be illustrated throughout the book is very sensible. Indeed, the
sentence contents taken into consideration are relatively simple and their
discussion is clear; as a result, the task for the reader is again
substantially simplified. Given that the range of linguistic phenomena covered
in the book is relatively wide, the adoption of these strategies are very
important to help the reader follow the development of the argument.

For the reasons mentioned above, my evaluation of Lasersohn’s monograph is
overall positive. Indeed, this book represents a fine contribution to the
study of (apparently) problematic sentences in truth-conditional semantics and
it will certainly spark a lively debate in the formal linguistic circles.
However, I will now focus on what I consider to be the basic weaknesses of
this book. Although the book is a valuable contribution, the achievement of
its objectives is partly held back by the very perspective adopted by the
author. Indeed, Lasersohn’s truth-conditional treatment of sentences
concerning matters of opinion is mainly directed to an audience of ‘insiders’
(i.e., formal linguists and analytical philosophers); as such, it adopts a
style which may seem irksome for semanticists who do not share the same
background. 

Although this is a legitimate choice, this reviewer cannot help seeing this as
a missed opportunity because, in principle, the book might interest a wider
audience. As a matter of fact, an account of sentences concerning matters of
opinion in truth-conditional terms may be of considerable interest for
advocates of different approaches. For instance, the adoption of an
intermediate level of meaning between ‘character’ and ‘denotation’ may be of
interest to proponents of (European) structural semantics, who normally
distinguish ‘signification’ from ‘denotation’. Likewise, not all advocates of
functional/cognitive linguistics are happy with the abrogation of the
distinction between semantics and pragmatics, which often implies a reduction
of the former to the latter; on the contrary, some of them are happy to admit
of the use of truth conditions, in particular to deal with assertions (on this
point, see Itkonen 2018). As a consequence, adopting a less technical, more
accessible point of view may have helped broadening the debate, allowing a
discussion of the potential of truth-conditional semantics to reveal some
points of contact among different, but not necessarily watertight theoretical
paradigms. To this end, keeping the level of formalization to a minimum in
favor of a more narrative style may remarkably help scholars from a plurality
of backgrounds to engage in the debate. The full version of the formal grammar
could still have been included as an appendix.

At the end of this review, I will just outline a couple of (in a sense,
complementary) issues with the very structure of the book. On the one hand,
the book does not have a concluding chapter. Of course, this is no fatal
problem, but the book would have benefitted from the presence of a general
conclusion providing a summary of how the objectives listed in the preface
were achieved, what solution were adopted for each of the issues encountered
in the previous chapters, and the directions which may be taken in the near
future. Conversely, it is less than clear how the last chapter fits in with
the rest of the monograph. Indeed, the question of why a language might employ
expressions whose interpretations depend on context is surely important and
Lasersohn’s proposed explanation is intriguing, but this issue seems to be
collocated at a different, more general theoretical level than those dealt
with in the previous chapters. As such, it would appear more consistent to
either present this argument at the beginning of the book or omit it
altogether. 

REFERENCES

Chierchia, Gennaro. 2013. Logic in Grammar: Polarity, Free Choice, and
Intervention. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Elbourne, Paul. 2013. Definite Descriptions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Itkonen, Esa. 2018. In Defense of Traditonal Semantics (and Against All-Out
Psychologism).
http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen/In%20defense%20of%20traditional%20semantics.pdf
(04 May, 2018)

Kaplan, David. 1989. Demonstratives. In J. Almog, J. Perry, and H.K. Wettstein
(eds.), Themes from Kaplan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 481-563.

Kölbel, Max. 2004. Faultless Disagreement. Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society 104. 53-73.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Enrico Torre holds a PhD in Linguistics from Lancaster University, UK. His
research interests include English linguistics, theories of language and the
philosophy of linguistics. He is currently investigating the notions of
analogy, pattern, and family resemblance in the history of linguistics.
Moreover, he is exploring the connections between contemporary linguistic
theories and the structuralist tradition. In the recent past, he has analysed
the patterns of use of Italian idioms.





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