This dissertation concerns the debate on the priority of idiolect over common language. In the course of this work Michael Dummett's argument for the priority of common language will be elucidated and some of the misunderstandings that have pervaded the debate will be identified. A number of ways to deflate the disagreement between Dummett's position and various philosophical approaches he criticizes will be suggested where possible. One of the main goals of this work will be to assess the strength and the fairness of Dummett's argument as it relates to the work of Quine. It will be argued that given a certain reading of Quine's thesis of indeterminacy of translation Dummett's argument may apply to it, but ultimately remains ineffective. It will be argued that an alternative argument, based on Kripke's reading of Wittgenstein, would be more effective against the idiolect conception of language.

This dissertation critically analyzes current theories of mental representation, with an emphasis on indicator and teleological semantics. Its central claim is that detection-based theories of mental meaning--or more generally, theories which trace the meaning of a cognitive structure S to those environmental conditions which obtain while S executes or acquires its function--cannot explain many of the representational structures invoked in common-sense and computational psychology. The dissertation emphasizes several kinds of representational states (both common-sense and computational) that are not commonly noted in the philosophical literature. By emphasizing the heterogeneity of cognitive contents, the dissertation shows just how robust a notion of content will be needed to naturalize, or even just analyze, mental representation. Chapter one introduces the fundamentals of indicator theories and the notion of a language of thought. Chapter two introduces a class of ordinary beliefs that resist explanation on indicator accounts--viz., mistaken beliefs about the physical appearance of members of a kind. Indicator theories require us to assign propositional contents to these beliefs so as to make them true (counterintuitively), at the additional cost of making false many other beliefs about the kind. Chapter three addresses the implications for content theories of internal instructions in cognitive processing--of structures which specify actions that the cognitive system is to perform. Instructions do not fit naturally within the framework of indicator semantics. Indicator theories take a symbol's meaning to be a function of conditions which regularly precede, and help cause, the symbol's tokening. By contrast, an instruction represents an action which has not yet been performed, an action that will issue from the instruction itself. Indicator theories thus must reconcile the future-directed contents of instructions with the backward-looking mechanism of detection. Chapter four challenges the assumption of both indicator and teleological accounts that meaning is founded on some type of causal interaction between the denoting state and the denoted conditions. It explores the conflict between this foundational assumption and the atomic prototypes invoked in theories of visual object recognition.

This doctoral study aimed to research the origins and languages from which the picture storybooks were translated and published in Taiwan in year 2001, to identify the major themes and genres of those translated picture storybooks, and also to examine the language and cultural suitability of a small number of translated picture storybooks. A two-step research design of content analysis was applied as research methodology, and two sets of research questions were asked. The subject that was investigated in the study was English-to-Chinese picture storybooks from Taiwan. Step one was to survey the picture storybooks in Chinese translation in aspects of country of origin, language, publishers, themes, and genre. A total of 276 children's picture storybooks in Chinese translation were included for examination. Step two was to analyze the translations of 13 books through a content analysis. The in-depth content analysis tried to answer the question: What are patterns in the changes made in the Chinese translation of picture storybooks at the lexical, semantic, aesthetic and cultural levels? The findings of the broad survey showed that the picture storybooks that publishers in Taiwan selected for translation and publication in year 2001 were mostly imported from English speaking countries (the United States and Great Britain), Japan and German speaking countries (Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland). English, German and Japanese were the three predominant languages from which the Chinese versions of the stories were translated. A wide range of themes were found in the stories, and fantasy and realistic fiction were the two major genre identified. It was found in the study that the majority of the books selected to be translated and published in Taiwan in 2001 were universal books, rather than culturally specific books. This study concluded that no mistranslation was found in the 13 books in the in-depth content analysis. The conclusion was drawn based on the analysis of changes made by translators in the aspects of book title, word replacement, sentence and paragraph organization, translation of expressions and cultural concepts and text and illustration relationship.

The purpose of this study was to translate the Verran and Snyder-Halpern (VSH) Sleep Scale into Spanish and assess equivalence of translation. Criteria for establishing cross-cultural equivalence and concepts in translation served to guide the research and provide impetus in developing a flow chart for equivalence of meaning in asymmetrical translation. Nineteen Mexican national or Mexican-American bilingual subjects were recruited from the community. The translation protocol contained two phases. Phase One consisted of four steps, specifically: (1) content equivalence analysis, (2) back translation, (3) analysis of translations and back translations, and (4) bilingual meaning error checks. Phase Two involved field pretesting using the random probe technique. Descriptive statistics were used in Phase One. Qualitative data analysis was done in Phase One and Phase Two. Findings indicated tool items were relevant in the target culture and cultural equivalents were available. In addition, equivalence of meaning was established.

<p> The purpose of this study was to analyze attitudes and perspectives of university students towards D/deafness before and after studying American Sign Language, ASL, and to determine if any relationship between them exists. A double pre-test quasiexperiment design was used with participants who were students enrolled in a basic ASL course at a metropolitan university.Participants were in either a &ldquo;control&rdquo; or &ldquo;treatment&rdquo; group. There were 3 instruments used for this study: an attitude scale, a perspective scale, and a control group questionnaire. The control group survey purpose was to decrease chances of pre-sensitization. The attitude survey served to score student opinions about capabilities of Deaf Adults. Scores ranged from negative to positive. The perspective survey was used to reflect student views of D/deafness ranging from medical to cultural. There were 228 ASL I students requested to participate. Of the 228, there were 110 respondents. The control group had <i>n</i>=52 and the treatment group had <i>n</i>=58. Of the 110 pre-survey participants, 71 responded to the post-survey. A Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was run to determine any relationship between attitudes and perspectives of students before and after they studied ASL. Aninverse relationship between attitudes and perspectives was found. Before the students studied ASL, the treatment group attitude and perspective <i> r</i>=-.508 (<i>n</i>=58, <i>p</i>&lt;.01). After participants studied one course of ASL the relationship was <i>r</i>=-.537 (<i>n</i>=71, <i>p</i>=&lt;.01). As attitude score values increased to a negativeopinion about capabilities of Deaf adults,perspective scores decreased towards a medical view. While scores that leaned lower on the attitude scale were deemed more positive, they corresponded with higher score values on the perspective scale indicating a cultural view of D/deafness. There were 6 of the 71 post-survey respondents who had matching coded pre and post-survey response forms. A dependent <i>t</i> test was run to analyze if attitude or perspective scores changed for university students after studying ASL. It was determined one course of ASL does not significantly change attitudes or perspectives about and/or D/deafness (<i> p</i>=>.05). A PPMCC was conducted to determine if a relationship between attitudes and perspectives of the six matched participants existed. Although not significant at the &alpha;&lt;.05 level, the matched participants had an inverse relationship between attitudes and perspectives before studying ASL (<i>n</i>=6, <i>r</i>=-.660, <i>p</i>>.05). After studying ASL the matched participants had a significant inverse correlation between attitudes and perspectives towards D/deaf people (<i>n</i>=6, <i> r</i> =-.922, <i>p</i>&lt;.01). In conclusion there is a relationship between attitudes of university students about capabilities of D/deaf adults and their medical or cultural perspective of D/deafness.</p>

This dissertation investigates some philosophical theories of metaphor, those of Aristotle, Black, Lakoff and Johnson, Kittay, Mac Cormac, Searle, and Davidson, then proposes a theory that incorporates some of their insights while seeking to avoid their weaknesses. Part I constitutes exposition and critique of these theories; Part II presents the outline of a resulting philosophical theory of metaphor, a semantic intentionality theory that mediates primarily between the theories of Searle and Kittay. This semantic intentionality theory of metaphor is grounded in a compositional general semantic account and claims that for metaphor to be present, there must be (1) an appropriate conventional meaning of the linguistic item to be used, (2) a propitious discourse situation (context), and (3) a metaphorically competent speaker/writer who intends to speak/write metaphorically. Metaphor turns out to be a speaker/writer's semantic use of conventional meaning to express a meaning inexpressible in literal language. Most metaphor is therefore entirely novel; conventional metaphors are rare. There is a radical blurring of the traditional semantic and pragmatic categories. Metaphorical meaning is semantic in nature and must be sharply distinguished from metaphorical interpretation. It arises when speakers' metaphorical intentions (possibly not fully conscious) operate to select appropriate conventional meanings whose respective affinity and contrast relations with other items in their semantic fields are transferred to organize and structure a semantic field not previously structured by those specific relations. There is no special kind of metaphorical truth nor does the theory require a specific general theory of truth to the exclusion of others. Metaphor is more cognitively important and widespread in natural language than philosophers used to think. But it is less widespread than some current philosophical theories of metaphor claim: they tend to overlook the vast polysemy in literal language and often (wrongly) assimilate a synchronic account of metaphor to a diachronic account.

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Abstract not available.

This study addresses the translatability of emotive expressions in the poetry of the distinguished Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. The study gives translators and readers an example of how to look at emotiveness in the Arabic poetry by studying main sources of emotiveness like cultural expressions, figures of speech such as rhetorical questions and repetitions as well as expressions of direct emotiveness such as proper names. The ambition of this study is to enrich the literature on translation with new examples of emotiveness by pointing out the expected problem areas when translating emotive expressions. Furthermore, this study is significant since it attempts to answer the question of whether emotiveness constitutes a problem when translating from Arabic into English and whether the meaning and the musicality of poetry are translatable or not. The English translations are selected from: 1. Unfortunately, It Was Paradise translated and edited by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forche with Sinan Antoon and Amira El-Zein (2003) e 2. The Butterfly's Burden translated by Fady Joudah (2007). The original poems can be found in Darwish's most recent poetry collections included in the 2009 edition of The Complete Recent Works by Mahmoud Darwish, published in Beirut. The emotive expressions selected from the English collections and compared to the Arabic original are divided into three categories: the cultural expressions, the linguisticexpressions, and the political expressions. The study highlights different emotive devices used in the selection of poems, by carrying out an analysis of the English translation as well as the Arabic original text. The emotive expressions selected are carefully analyzed to show how the translation was able to render the emotive meaning expressed and intended by the poet in the text in its original form.

Interpreter certification has been largely ignored by the literature in Interpreting Studies. What little research that does exist on the topic is understandably elementary, discussing concerns that are general in nature or describing the development of individual certification instruments. No research has as yet examined the psychometric properties of certification instruments, despite the urgings of legal precedent, the weight of professional opinion, and the requirements of professional standards. The present study has attempted to bridge this gap in two ways. First, to gain some sense of the current state of affairs in interpreter testing, a validation study of an existing certification test was conducted. Particular attention was paid to information about the test's constructs. Second, in a bid to improve construct validity, a new certification test was constructed and subsequently validated. Constructs in the new test were based on a discursive model of the interpreting process. Validation of the two tests revealed some interesting findings. Constructs in the existing test bore only a weak relationship to the interpreting profession. Also, the constructs did not prove to be useful in predicting relationships among the existing test scores. It was expected that three separate constructs would emerge from the data; instead, empirical evidence suggested that the data were unidimensional in nature. In contrast, constructs in the new test were strongly linked to the interpreting profession. They also proved to effectively predict relationships among the new test scores. It was expected that three separate constructs would emerge from the data, and empirical evidence suggested that this was, in fact, the case. The results of the present study indicate that there is room for improvement in the current state of interpreter testing, and that a test instrument based on discursive constructs is likely to demonstrate acceptable levels of validity. There is obviously a need for a great deal of future research on the psychometric aspects of interpreter certification, and it is strongly recommended that this research adopt a discursive approach.