LINGUIST List 17.3589

Tue Dec 05 2006

Diss: Philosophy of Lang/Semantics: Maier: 'Belief in Context: Towa...'

Editor for this issue: Hannah Morales <hannahlinguistlist.org>


Directory         1.    Emar Maier, Belief in Context: Towards a unified semantics of de re and de se attitude reports


Message 1: Belief in Context: Towards a unified semantics of de re and de se attitude reports
Date: 03-Dec-2006
From: Emar Maier <emar.maiergmail.com>
Subject: Belief in Context: Towards a unified semantics of de re and de se attitude reports


Institution: Radboud University Nijmegen Program: Department of Philosophy Dissertation Status: Completed Degree Date: 2006

Author: Emar Maier

Dissertation Title: Belief in Context: Towards a unified semantics of de re and de se attitude reports

Dissertation URL: http://www.ru.nl/ncs/~emar/diss/

Linguistic Field(s): Philosophy of Language                             Pragmatics                             Semantics
Dissertation Director:
Bart Geurts Rob van der Sandt
Dissertation Abstract:

This thesis deals with the phenomenon of attitude reporting. Morespecifically, it provides a unified semantics of de re and de se beliefreports. After arguing that de se belief is best thought of as a specialcase of de re belief, I examine whether we can extend this unification tothe realm of belief reports. I show how, despite very promising firststeps, previous attempts in this direction ultimately fail with respect tosome relatively recent linguistic data involving quantified and infinitivalreports, logophoric constructions, and monstrously shifted indexicals.Formalizing my idea of a contextual resolution of acquaintance relations ina dynamic framework, I arrive at an alternative analysis that handles allthese data.