No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
One of the intriguing features of the semantic theories proposed by Jerry Fodor and Jerrold Katz is that they attempt to provide a criterion for semantic anomaly. Ostensibly, the criterion would enable one to determine when a phrase is semantically absurd or incongruous even in cases where the phrase appears to be grammatically proper. For example, phrases such as ‘spinster insecticide’ and ‘female uncle’ would be marked as anomalous in the semantic theory even though they seem grammatically on a par with ‘gaseous insecticide’ and ‘unemployed uncle’.
Recently, however, a number of criticisms have been raised concerning the theoretical devices that Fodor and Katz supply for marking such anomalies. In this essay I want to examine these criticisms and suggest a modification of the theories which would answer the critics on this point and, at the same time, significantly enhance the explanatory power of the theories.
1 Katz, Jerrold J. and Fodor, Jerry A. “The Structure of a Semantic Theory,” Language, vol. 39 (April-June, 1963).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Reprinted in The Structure of Language,ed. by Fodor, Jerry A. and Katz, Jerrold J. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964).Google Scholar
2 “The Structure of a Semantic Theory” in The Structure of Language, p. 497.
3 Ibid.
4 An obvious objection would be that the information contained in the above distinguisher might play a role in determining semantic anomaly (as in the case of ‘married spinster’). Cf. Bolinger, Dwight “The Atomization of Meaning” in Readings in the Psychology of Language,ed. by Jakobovits, Leon A. and Miron, Murray S. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1967).Google Scholar
5 This is a slight modification of Cornman’s formulation of the criterion. I have eliminated the incorrect assumption, implicit in his formulation, that semantic markers are simply linguistic expressions in the natural language with parentheses around them. See Cornman, James “Categories, Grammar and Semantics,” Inquiry, vol. 13 (Autumn, 1970), p. 303Google Scholar, and Schnitzer, Marc “Some Criticisms of the Katzian Metatheory of Semantics,” Inquiry,vol. 13(Winter, 1970), p. 452.Google Scholar
6 Weinrich, Uriel “Explorations in Semantic Theory” in Current Trends in Linguistics, vol. 3, ed. by Sebeok, Thomas A. (The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1966), pp. 406–407.Google Scholar
7 Katz, Jerrold J. “Recent Issues in Semantic Theory,” Foundations of Language,vol. 3 (1967), pp. 162–164.Google Scholar
8 Cornman, op. cit., p. 303.
9 Schnitzer, op. cit., pp. 451-452.
10 Cf. Cornman, op. cit., p. 305.
11 Katz, Jerrold J. Philosophy of Language(New York: Harper and Row, 1966), pp. 229–233.Google Scholar
12 Jerrold J. Katz, “Analyticity and Contradiction in Natural Language” in The Structure of Language.
13 Simply eliminate (female) from the path for ‘pretty’. In this case, it would be possible to eliminate both (animate) and (inanimate) and provide only one path for ‘pretty’.