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The Many Faces of Sameness : Perfect Intralinguistic Synonymy in Competence-Oriented Semantics

In Meaning as Species, Mark Richard provides an argument to the conclusion that stipulation can transiently create perfect intralinguistic synonymy. The key to achieve this is the notion of meaning as "abstracted common ground” (ACG). In this thesis, I argue that Richard’s argument is not enough to ensure the existence of perfect synonymy. It remains possible to coin a new term, stipulate that it has the same meaning(-cum-ACG) as a previous one, and yet make the case that the coined term is only an instance of the original term. This is important if we use a notion of perfect synonymy for which it is necessary, for two words to be synonyms, that they are different words. To defend my claim, I deal with two distinct notions of perfect synonymy, the criterion of equinormality, and the distinction between word-instances and word-types.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-516444
Date January 2023
CreatorsBazet Velásquez, Luis Enrique
PublisherUppsala universitet, Filosofiska institutionen
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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