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Workshop number
11
Workshop title
The Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction: What Is It, and Does It Really Matter?
Organizers
Isidora STOJANOVIC
Contact email
Affiliation
Philosophy Department Stanford Univ.//CNRS sect 35
Country
US/ France
Duration
1 day
Abstract
Despite many attempts to draw the distinction between semantics and pragmatics, there seems to be no general agreement as to what the distinction really amounts to. For a long time, the notion of context was a key element, since it was held that all context-dependent phenomena of natural language belonged in the realm of pragmatics. However, it is widely accepted today that some arguably semantic phenomena, such as indexicality or deixis, are deeply contextual. It has been suggested that semantics only appeals to 'narrow' context, but how should we draw the distinction between broad and narrow context in the first place?
The semantics/pragmatics 'interface' is one of the hottest topics in philosophy of language today. Part of the problem is that the different criteria used in drawing the line between semantics and pragmatics do not quite coincide. For example, the idea that pragmatics is concerned with the use of words while semantics is concerned with their linguistic meaning squares badly with the conception of semantics as the study of truth conditions, given that truth value sometimes depends on how one and the same word is being used (eg on who is using the pronoun "I").
The aim of the workshop is to confront proposals made not only by philosophers, but also by linguists working in semantics or pragmatics. Is there a sharp boundary between semantics and pragmatics? What are the criteria of delineation? Do they converge? What makes some better than others? How does the notion of context help in distinguishing semantics from pragmatics? Finally, is the whole issue substantial or merely terminological? Although the main topic is the pragmatics/semantics distinction understood in most general terms, questions of whether some particular phenomenon, such as reference, is pragmatic rather than semantic, will also be addressed in the workshop.
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