Prepositions and Points of View
1985; Springer Nature (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês
10.1007/978-94-009-5414-4_5
ISSN2215-034X
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Linguistics and Language Studies
ResumoThere are many words in our language whose meaning seems to make reference to a point of view or an hypothetical observer of the scene. I have in mind particularly such words as come, go, left, right, behind and others, all of which seem to depend for their meaning on looking at things from a certain point of view. Charles Fillmore [17] has recently shown how pervasive the use of points of view is in discourse. Indeed his work makes the task of formalizing it look well-nigh impossible. The aim of this present paper is therefore very much more restricted, and in two ways. First I have in mind semantics conceived in the narrow sense of the contribution a word or expression makes to the truth conditions of sentences in which it occurs. Second I shall be restricting myself solely to the formal semantics of the points of view involved in some spatial senses of English prepositions. The kind of fact I wish to explain is how the truth conditions of a sentence like (1) Across a meadow a band is playing excerpts from H.M.S. Pinafore depend, via the meaning of across, on the point of view from which the band is being observed.
Referência(s)