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    Definite descriptions such as 'Pedro's sister' can be acc... — Carmelics
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    Definite descriptions such as 'Pedro's sister' can be accommodated when no prior discourse referent is available.

    Philosophy of Language
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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Accommodation becomes feasible when the referring expression provides enough descriptive content to identify a new referent.
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    • 2.Definite descriptions like 'Pedro's sister' supply richer descriptive content than pronouns.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Accommodation is not a semantic operation but a pragmatic inference, so DRT's formal machinery cannot directly encode it without appeal to extra-theoretical resources.
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    • 2.Lewis (1979) showed that accommodation is governed by context-sensitive salience conditions that resist reduction to descriptive content richness alone.
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    • 3.If accommodation requires pragmatic reasoning beyond DRT's formal system, then 'Pedro's sister' succeeds not by DRT's rules but despite them.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Strawson (1950) argued that definite descriptions presuppose a uniquely identifiable referent already available to interlocutors, not one constructed mid-discourse.
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    • 2.If Strawson is correct, then 'Pedro's sister' in a context without prior discourse referent produces presupposition failure, not successful accommodation.
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    Philosophy of Language

    Related

    Accommodation becomes feasible when the referring expression provides enough des...Accommodation is not a semantic operation but a pragmatic inference, so DRT's fo...Definite descriptions like 'Pedro's sister' supply richer descriptive content th...If Strawson is correct, then 'Pedro's sister' in a context without prior discour...
    +3 moreShow less
    If accommodation requires pragmatic reasoning beyond DRT's formal system, then '...Lewis (1979) showed that accommodation is governed by context-sensitive salience...Strawson (1950) argued that definite descriptions presuppose a uniquely identifi...

    Similar

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    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: discourse-representation-theory
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    The binding theory incorporates the notion of accommodation as follows. Presuppositions, according to the theory, introduce information that prefers to be linked to discourse referents that are already available in the DRS, and in this respect they are like pronouns. However, if a suitable discourse referent is not available, a new one will be accommodated, and the presupposition is linked to that. Generally speaking, accommodation is not an option in the interpretation of pronouns, and a possi
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit