Speech Act Theoretic Semantics

Author

Daniel W. Harris, Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

6-2014

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Philosophy

Advisor

Stephen Neale

Subject Categories

Linguistics | Philosophy

Keywords

Herbert Paul Grice, Imperatives, Linguistic Convention, Linguistic Meaning, Pragmatics, Semantics

Abstract

I defend the view that linguistic meaning is a relation borne by an expression to a type of speech act, and that this relation holds in virtue of our overlapping communicative dispositions, and not in virtue of linguistic conventions. I argue that this theory gives the right account of the semantics-pragmatics interface and the best-available semantics for non-declarative clauses, and show that it allows for the construction of a rigorous compositional semantic theory with greater explanatory power than both truth-conditional and dynamic semantics.

Recommended Citation

Harris, Daniel W., "Speech Act Theoretic Semantics" (2014). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/222