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On Katz on “Chomsky on Meaning”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Sarah J. Bell*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia

Extract

Katz (1980:1) views the meaning of a sentence and its logical form as identical and believes that this logical form should receive an intensional rather than an extensional interpretation. He sees Chomsky’s proposal to separate semantic interpretation into two parts, a logical form (LF), which is strictly determined by rules of sentence grammar, and whatever aspects of meaning remain, which are determined by discourse rules and possibly by other cognitive faculties, as pernicious. He further objects to what he interprets as Chomsky’s supporting extensionalism. He argues that Chomsky’s grounds for separating LF from other aspects of meaning are not compelling, that LF is itself incoherent, and that the results of making such a separation are harmful to the study of semantics in linguistics and philosophy alike.

Type
Remarks/Remarques
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1981

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References

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