Paradigms for Language Theory and Other Essays [Hardcover]

Several of the basic ideas of current language theory are subjected to critical scrutiny and found wanting, including the concept of scope, the hegemony of generative syntax, the Frege-Russell claim that verbs like `is' are ambiguous, and the assumptions underlying the so-called New Theory of Reference. In their stead, new constructive ideas are proposed.Several of the basic ideas of current language theory are subjected to critical scrutiny and found wanting, including the concept of scope, the hegemony of generative syntax, the Frege-Russell claim that verbs like `is' are ambiguous, and the assumptions underlying the so-called New Theory of Reference. In their stead, new constructive ideas are proposed.Introduction. Origin of the Essays. 1. The Games of Logic and the Games of Inquiry. 2. No Scope for Scope. 3. Informational Independence as a Semantical Phenomenon (with Gabriel Sandu.) 4. `Is', Semantical Games and Semantical Relativity. 5. Logical Form and Linguistic Theory. 6. On the Any-Thesis and the Methodology of Linguistics. 7. Paradigms for Language Theory. 8. (with Gabriel Sandu.) The Fallacies of the New Theory of Reference. 9. Perspectival Identification, Demonstratives and `Small Worlds'. 10. Game-theoretical Semantics as a Synthesis of Verificationist and Truth-conditional Meaning Theories. 11. (with Gabriel Sandu.) Metaphor and Other Kinds of Nonliteral Meaning.Jaakko Hintikka is the author or co-author of thirty volumes and of some 300 scholarly articles in mathematical and philosophical logic, epistemology, language theory, philosophy of science, history of ideas and history of philosophy, including Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Peirce, The Bloomsbury Group, Husserl and Wittgenstein. He has also been active in international scholarly organizations, most recently as the First Vice-President of FISP, Vice-President of IIP and Co-Chair of the American Organizing Committee of the Twentieth World Congress l“'