Inferentialism and the Compositionality of Meaning

0343040 - FLÚ 2011 RIV NL eng J - Journal Article
Peregrin, Jaroslav
Inferentialism and the Compositionality of Meaning.
International Review of Pragmatics. Roč. 1, č. 1 (2009), s. 154-181. ISSN 1877-3095
R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GA401/07/0904
Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z90090514
Keywords : inferentialism * compositionality * semantics
Subject RIV: AA - Philosophy ; Religion

Inferentialism is a species of use-theory of meaning, which, however, identifies meanings neither with regularities of usage, nor with underlying dispositions, but rather with 'rules' of usage. This id, of coursi, underlain by the picture of language as an assentially rule governed enterprise. One of the frquent challenges to the inferentialis picture is that it cannot come up with a notion of meaning that would be compositional. In this paper I address this objection (as well as some other, related ones) and I show that it stems from a miscontrual of the inferentialist standpoint.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0185613