A01=Arnold J. Chien
Author_Arnold J. Chien
Category=CF
Category=CJB
Category=G
Category=QD
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eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
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Product details
- ISBN 9780761824176
- Weight: 354g
- Dimensions: 150 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 08 Nov 2002
- Publisher: University Press of America
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In On What We Mean, Arnold Chien discusses the meaning of a speaker, a notion we use in everyday conversation. Speaker's meaning is a fundamental notion of pragmatics, i.e. the study of the relation between words and speakers. Yet everyday speaker's meaning has not been systematically studied in philosophy or linguistics. Chien's approach to these issues is to take a speaker's meaning as an answer to "what do you (s/he) mean" (WDYM) questions. He then analyzes WDYM-questions in terms of Bas van Fraassen's analysis of why-questions, according to which, a question consists of a set of parameters whose values vary according to the context. The constraints on speaker's meanings are analyzed in terms of certain constraints on answers to WDYM-questions. The account is extended to metaphor, understood to be a kind of conceptual indeterminacy.
Arnold J. Chien is works as a computational linguist in the Boston area.
