If, when asked whether you want more beer, you utter, ‘I’ve had enough’, your interlocutor knows that you have had enough of beer. That is, from the literal content of ‘I’ve had enough’, your interlocutor infers that you say, ‘I’ve had enough [of beer]’. Language theorists convincingly claim that hearers almost always make similar inferences to figure out what speaker say. However, in doing so they also claim that interlocutors do not evaluate literal content for truth in everyday conversation – it is either true or false that you have had enough of beer, not just ‘enough’. That is, they claim that literal content is not useful to interlocutors. In this thesis, I defend Emma Borg’s (2019) claim that literal content actually is useful to interlocutors. First, I argue that Borg is correct in that asking for ‘speaker liability’ shows that interlocutors evaluate literal content for truth in cases of lying. Second, I both consider a challenge to speaker liability and an objection to how the Gricean distinction between saying and implicating, the composite notion of ‘what is said’, I (and Borg) argue for should be drawn.

The present study investigated the effects of semantic and nonsemantic analyses of words on list differentiation (LD). It was suggested that the memory of when stimulus events occurred might be due to the storage of information about judgments made about words and that this information may be differentially available to subjects as a function of the number of prototypes, or instances of an orienting task's criterion. In the first experiment, subjects judged two lists of word pairs on semantic or nonsemantic criteria. The results indicated that information about these judgments about words was stored with semantic task subjects and to a lesser with nonsemantic task subjects. In the second experiment, the effects of word-pair comparisons and single word ratings on a semantic criterion were examined. It was observed that single words were later assigned correctly to lists more often than word-pairs, although information appeared to be stored with the word-pairs as well. It was also found that information about judgments about words is stored with these words regardless of their subjective relatedness to the orienting task's criterion. The results of both experiments were interpreted in terms of Anderson and Bower's (1972) which suggests that information about the context in which a stimulus is presented may become associated to that stimulus. / Master of Science

Thesis (M.A. (Translation and Linguistics)) -- University of Limpopo, 2011.

The overarching topic of this dissertation is the semantics and pragmatics of definite descriptions. It focuses on the question whether sentences such as ‘the king of France is bald’ literally assert the existence of a unique king (and therefore are false) or simply presuppose the existence of such a king (and thus fail to express propositions). One immediate obstacle to resolving this question is that immediate truth value judgments about such sentences (sentences with non-denoting descriptions) are particularly unstable; some elicit a clear intuition of falsity whereas others simply seem awkward or strange. Because of these variations, truth value judgments are generally considered unreliable. In the first chapter of the dissertation, an explanation of this phenomenon is developed. It is observed that when these types of sentences are considered in the context of a discourse, a systematic pattern in judgments emerges. This pattern, it is argued, should be explained in terms of certain pragmatic factors, e.g. whether a speaker’s utterance is interpreted as cooperative. A detailed and general explanation of the phenomenon is then presented which draws importantly on recent research in the semantics and pragmatics of questions and focus. It is shown that the behavior of these judgments can be systematically explained, that truth value judgments are not as unreliable as standardly assumed, and that the proposed explanation best supports the conclusion that definite descriptions presuppose rather than assert existence. In the second chapter, the following problem is investigated. If definite descriptions are assumed to literally assert existence, a sentence such as ‘Hans wants the ghost in his attic to be quiet’ is incorrectly predicted to be true only if Hans wants there to be a (unique) ghost in his attic. This prediction is often considered evidence against Russell’s quantificational analysis and evidence in favor of the referential analysis of Frege and Strawson. Against this claim, it is demonstrated that this problem is a general problem about the existence commitments of natural language determiners, i.e. not an argument in favor of a referential analysis. It is shown that in order to avoid these undesirable predictions, quite radical changes to the semantic framework are required. For example, it must be assumed that a sentence of the form ‘The F is G’ has the open sentence ‘x is G’ as its asserted content. A uniform quantificational and presuppositional analysis of definites and indefinites is outlined which by exploiting certain features of so-called dynamic semantics unproblematically assumes that the asserted contents indeed are open sentences. In view of the proposed quantificational/presuppositional analysis, the dissertation is concluded by a rejection of the argument put forward by Reimer (1998) and Devitt (2004) that definite descriptions are ambiguous between attributive (quantificational) and referential (indexical) uses. Reimer and Devitt’s argument is (in contrast to Donnellan, 1966) based primarily on the assumption that definite descriptions are conventionally used to communicate singular thoughts and that the conventional meaning of a definite description therefore must be fundamentally indexical/directly referential. I argue that this argument relies crucially on tacit assumptions about semantic processing for which no empirical evidence is provided. I also argue that the argument is too general; if sound, it would be an argument for an indexical treatment of most, if not all, other determiners. I then conclude by demonstrating that the view does not explain any new data and thus has no clear motivation. In short, this dissertation provides a detailed pragmatic explanation of a long-standing puzzle about truth value judgments and then outlines a novel dynamic semantic analysis of definites and indefinites. This analysis solves a significant problem about existence commitments — a problem that neither Russell’s nor the Frege/Strawson analysis are equipped to handle. This analysis is then defended against the claim that definite descriptions are ambiguous.

We analyse the semantics of aspect-oriented extensions to functional languages by presenting compositional translations of these primitives into languages with traditional notions of state and control. As a first step, we examine an existing semantic description of aspects which allows the labelling of program points. We show that a restriction of these semantics to aspects which do not preempt the execution of code can be fully abstractly translated into a functional calculus with higher order references, but that removing this restriction requires a notion of exception handling to be added to the target language in order to yield a sound semantics. Next, we proceed to show that abandoning the labelling technique, and consequently relaxing the so-called ``obliviousness'' property of aspectual languages, allows preemptive aspects to be included in the general references model without the need for exceptions. This means that the game model of general references is inherited by the aspect calculus. The net result is a clean semantic description of aspect-orientation, which mirrors recently published techniques for their implementation, and thereby provides theoretical justification for these systems. The practical validity of our semantics is demonstrated by implementing extensions to the basic calculus in Standard ML, and showing how a number of useful aspect-oriented features can be expressed using general references alone. Our theoretical methodology closely follows the proof structure that often appears in the game semantics literature, and therefore provides an operational perspective on notions such as ``bad variables'' and factorisation theorems.

With the popularity of model-driven methodologies and the abundance of modelling languages, a major question for a modeller is: Which language is suitable for modelling a system under study? To answer this question, one not only needs to know the range of relevant languages for modelling the system under study, but also needs to be able to compare these languages. In this dissertation, I consider these challenges from a semantic point of view for a diverse range of behavioural modelling languages that I refer to as the family of Big-Step Modelling Languages (BSMLs). There is a plethora of BSMLs, including statecharts, its variants, SCR, un-clocked variants of synchronous languages (e.g., Esterel and Argos), and reactive modules. BSMLs are often used to model systems that continuously interact with their environments. In a BSML model, the reaction of the model to an environmental input is a big step, which consists of a sequence of small steps, each of which can be the concurrent execution of a set of transitions. To provide a systematic method to understand and compare the semantics of BSMLs, this dissertation introduces the big-step semantic deconstruction framework that deconstructs the semantic design space of BSMLs into eight high-level, independent semantic aspects together with the enumeration of the common semantic options of each semantic aspect. The dissertation also presents a comparative analysis of the semantic options of each semantic aspect to assist one to choose one semantic option over another. A key idea in the big-step semantic deconstruction is that the high-level semantic aspects in the deconstruction recognize a big step as a whole, rather than only considering its constituent transitions operationally. A novelty of the big-step semantic deconstruction is that it lends itself to a systematic semantic formalization of most of the languages in the deconstruction. The dissertation presents a parametric, formal semantic definition method whose parameters correspond to the semantic aspects of the deconstruction, and thus it produces prescriptive semantics: The manifestation of a semantic option in the semantics of a BSML can be clearly identified. The way transitions are ordered to form a big step in a BSML is a source of semantic complexity: A modeller needs to be aware of the possible orders of the execution of transitions when constructing and analyzing a model. The dissertation introduces three semantic quality attributes that each exempts a modeller from considering an aspect of ordering in big steps. The ranges of BSMLs that support each of these semantic quality attributes are formally specified. These specifications indicate that achieving a semantic quality attribute in a BSML is a cross-cutting concern over the choices of its different semantic options. The semantic quality attributes together with the semantic analysis of individual semantic options can be used in tandem to assist a modeller or a semanticist to compare two BSMLs or to create a new, desired BSML from scratch. Through the big-step semantic deconstruction, I have discovered that some of the semantic aspects of BSMLs can be uniformly described as forms of synchronization. The dissertation presents a general synchronization framework for behavioural modelling languages. This framework is based on a notion of synchronization between transitions of complementary roles. It is parameterized by the number of interactions a transition can take part in, i.e., one vs. many, and the arity of the interaction mechanisms, i.e., exclusive vs. shared, which are considered for the complementary roles to result in 16 synchronization types. To enhance BSMLs with the capability to use the synchronization types, a synchronizer syntax is introduced for BSMLs, resulting in the family of Synchronizing Big-Step Modelling Languages (SBSMLs). Using the expressiveness of SBSMLs, the dissertation describes how underlying the semantics of many modelling constructs, such as multi-source, multi-destination transitions, various composition operators, and workflow patterns, there is a notion of synchronization that can be systematically modelled in SBSMLs.

With the popularity of model-driven methodologies and the abundance of modelling languages, a major question for a modeller is: Which language is suitable for modelling a system under study? To answer this question, one not only needs to know the range of relevant languages for modelling the system under study, but also needs to be able to compare these languages. In this dissertation, I consider these challenges from a semantic point of view for a diverse range of behavioural modelling languages that I refer to as the family of Big-Step Modelling Languages (BSMLs). There is a plethora of BSMLs, including statecharts, its variants, SCR, un-clocked variants of synchronous languages (e.g., Esterel and Argos), and reactive modules. BSMLs are often used to model systems that continuously interact with their environments. In a BSML model, the reaction of the model to an environmental input is a big step, which consists of a sequence of small steps, each of which can be the concurrent execution of a set of transitions. To provide a systematic method to understand and compare the semantics of BSMLs, this dissertation introduces the big-step semantic deconstruction framework that deconstructs the semantic design space of BSMLs into eight high-level, independent semantic aspects together with the enumeration of the common semantic options of each semantic aspect. The dissertation also presents a comparative analysis of the semantic options of each semantic aspect to assist one to choose one semantic option over another. A key idea in the big-step semantic deconstruction is that the high-level semantic aspects in the deconstruction recognize a big step as a whole, rather than only considering its constituent transitions operationally. A novelty of the big-step semantic deconstruction is that it lends itself to a systematic semantic formalization of most of the languages in the deconstruction. The dissertation presents a parametric, formal semantic definition method whose parameters correspond to the semantic aspects of the deconstruction, and thus it produces prescriptive semantics: The manifestation of a semantic option in the semantics of a BSML can be clearly identified. The way transitions are ordered to form a big step in a BSML is a source of semantic complexity: A modeller needs to be aware of the possible orders of the execution of transitions when constructing and analyzing a model. The dissertation introduces three semantic quality attributes that each exempts a modeller from considering an aspect of ordering in big steps. The ranges of BSMLs that support each of these semantic quality attributes are formally specified. These specifications indicate that achieving a semantic quality attribute in a BSML is a cross-cutting concern over the choices of its different semantic options. The semantic quality attributes together with the semantic analysis of individual semantic options can be used in tandem to assist a modeller or a semanticist to compare two BSMLs or to create a new, desired BSML from scratch. Through the big-step semantic deconstruction, I have discovered that some of the semantic aspects of BSMLs can be uniformly described as forms of synchronization. The dissertation presents a general synchronization framework for behavioural modelling languages. This framework is based on a notion of synchronization between transitions of complementary roles. It is parameterized by the number of interactions a transition can take part in, i.e., one vs. many, and the arity of the interaction mechanisms, i.e., exclusive vs. shared, which are considered for the complementary roles to result in 16 synchronization types. To enhance BSMLs with the capability to use the synchronization types, a synchronizer syntax is introduced for BSMLs, resulting in the family of Synchronizing Big-Step Modelling Languages (SBSMLs). Using the expressiveness of SBSMLs, the dissertation describes how underlying the semantics of many modelling constructs, such as multi-source, multi-destination transitions, various composition operators, and workflow patterns, there is a notion of synchronization that can be systematically modelled in SBSMLs.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1985 S36 / Master of Science

No description available.

This thesis documents research providing improvements in the field of accessibility modelling, which will be of particular interest as computing becomes increasingly ubiquitous. It is argued that a new approach is required that takes into account the dynamic relationship between users, their technology (both hardware and software) and any additional Assistive Technologies (ATs) that may be required. In addition, the approach must find a balance between fidelity and transportability. A theoretical framework has been developed that is able to represent both users and technology in symmetrical (hierarchical) recursive profiles, using a vocabulary that moves from device-specific to device-agnostic capabilities. The research has resulted in the development of a single unified solution that is able to functionally assess the accessibility of interactions through the use of pattern matching between graph-based profiles. A self-efficacy study was also conducted, which identified the inability of older people to provide the data necessary to drive a system based on the framework. Subsequently, the ethical considerations surrounding the use of automated data collection agents were discussed and a mechanism for representing contextual information was also included. Finally, real user data was collected and processed using a practically implemented prototype to provide an evaluation of the approach. The thesis represents a contribution through its ability to both: (1) accommodate the collection of data from a wide variety of sources, and (2) support accessibility assessments at varying levels of abstraction in order to identify if/where assistance may be necessary. The resulting approach has contributed to a work-package of the Sus-IT project, under the New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) programme of research in the UK. It has also been presented to a W3C Research and Development Working Group symposium on User Modelling for Accessibility (UM4A). Finally, dissemination has been taken forward through its inclusion as an invited paper presented during a subsequent parallel session within the 8th International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction.