Does Meaning Evolve--论文代写范文精选

法学派理想语言的语义，得到的关系连接的符号语言与世界上可见的实体,或一个人的感觉经验的数据,或两者兼而有之。由于很大一部分普通和哲学话语,特别是关于形而上学和道德问题,无法捕捉到一个理想的语言。下面的essay代写范文进行详述。

Abstract 
A common method of making a theory more understandable, is by comparing it to another theory which has been better developed. Radical interpretation is a theory which attempts to explain how communication has meaning. Radical interpretation is treated as another time-dependent theory and compared to the time dependent theory of biological evolution. The main reason for doing this is to find the nature of the time dependence; producing analogs between the two theories is a necessary prerequisite to this and brings up many problems. Once the nature of the time dependence is better known it might allow the underlying mechanism to be uncovered. Several similarities and differences are uncovered, there appear to be more differences than similarities.

Introduction 
Semantics is the systematic study of meaning, see for example Vendler (1974) [66]. In the 19th century logic underwent a period of growth. The main motivation for a renewed interest in logic was a search for the foundations of mathematics; however two of the main investigators of the foundations of mathematics, Frege and Russell, extended their enquiry into the domain of natural languages. The influence of mathematical thinking thus left a permanent mark on the subsequent study of semantics. To positivists of the Vienna circle such as Carnap the symbolism of modern logic represented the grammar or syntax of an ”ideal” language. 

The semantics of the positivists ideal language had been given terms of a relationship connecting the symbols of this language with observable entities in the world, or the data of one’s sense experience, or both. Against such a rigid ideal as logic, natural language appeared to the positivists as vague. Since a large part of ordinary and philosophical discourse, particularly that concerning metaphysical and moral issues, could not be captured by an ideal language, the positivistic approach provided a way to brand all such talk as nonsensical, or in some sense meaningless. The positivists engaged in a prolonged, and largely unsuccessful, effort to formulate a criterion of meaningfulness in terms of empirical verifiability with respect to the sentences formed in natural language. 

Another source of dissatisfaction with natural languages is the SapirWhorf hypothesis, see for example Kay and Kempton (1984) [33]. This hypothesis of linguistic relativity implied that the particular language a person learns and uses determines the framework of his perceptions and thought. If that language is vague and inaccurate, as the positivists suggested, or is burdened with the prejudices and superstitions of an ignorant past, as some cultural anthropologists averred, then it is bound to render the user’s thinking confused. Natural language did not remain without champions in the face of the above two approaches. 

The philosophy of ”ordinary language” came into its own in the 1940’s. According to the philosophers of this group, natural language, far from being the crude instrument the positivists alleged it to be, provides the basic and unavoidable source of all thought; suggesting that any formal language can make sense only as an extension of, but never as a replacement for, natural language. If philosophical problems arise as a result of a failure to see the workings of man’s language then they can ”dissolve” with improved understanding. Harris and Chomsky developed transformational, or generative, grammar thus opening a fresh insight into the syntax of natural languages. Instead of merely providing a structural description in the form of parsing of sentences, this approach demonstrates how sentences are built up, from basic small ingredients, thus elucidating the formal components of natural language.

Prefix Meaning 
Appealing to context is a vague procedure without elucidating the nature of its component factors. On the other hand meaning can be assigned to small linguistic segments such as prefixes and affixes, for example bi-, trans-, etc. . . , which certainly have some meaning associated with themselves, as for example given by the normative definitions of a dictionary. A codon is a unit that consists of three adjacent bases on a DNA molecule and that determines the position of a specific amino acid in a protein molecule during protein synthesis. The counterpart of a codon could be a declension or a grammatical inflection. A codon could be both the counterpart to that and also to affix meaning, the ”s” denoting plural, is both an affix and a decliner. A stop codon might correspond to a full stop. Another analog of prefix meaning is content addressable memory, which is the ability of people and some machine programs to retrieve information based on its contents rather than simply from an address. The more information which is available the easier it is to retrieve the rest: analogously for meaning, the greater the linguistic structure and context present the easier it is to assign meaning. 

A formal concept which perhaps encompasses both cases is distal access, Touretzky (1990) [64], which is the ability to reference a complex structure via an abbreviated tag. Thus when it comes to assigning meaning to language the size of structure that this happens to is unclear. There appears to be nothing analogous a traditional gene; there is no unit between part of a word and a whole language that it is possible to say encapsulates meaning. Molecular biology shows the inadequacy of the traditional idea of a gene as having definite size and information content, thus the difference is more one of degree rather than an absolute, however the absence of a unit is much more severe in language. 7 Conclusion To summarize it is sometimes said that we lean by approximation: radical interpretation is a prescientific theory which hopes to describe and perhaps ultimately model how, by iterative approximation, we learn what meaning 29 is. It is prescientific in the sense that it is not well enough developed to say what data would refute it; also there appears to be no alternative theory to judge against it. 

If a correspondence theory of language is assumed then radical interpretation is a process by which mental representations of the world become more accurate. Here it has been argued that radical interpretation applies not just to sentences, but to all socially contrived non-physical structure; in particular it applies to noemes, memes, and conventions. It was argued that radical interpretation is a typical time dependent process with the properties that, subject to certain qualifications explained in the text: on the fine-grained time scale it proceeds by punctuated equilibrium but on the coarse-grained time scale it proceeds gradually. 

Exaptation occurs, an example being metaphor. Spandrels, homologues, analogues, and convergence also occur. Reticulate evolution can only occur in a formal language for an individual user where it can be introduced by fiat; this cannot happen for a language community using a formal language or for natural languages. Radical interpretation shows little sensitivity to initial conditions. Viewed as a time dependent process radical interpretation has more differences than similarities with biological evolution; the origin of this is that (for the purposes of pre-1945 biology at least) a convenient unit, with a definite information content, the traditional gene, exists in biology, but no such unit can be found in a theory of meaning.（essay代写)

51Due网站原创范文除特殊说明外一切图文著作权归51Due所有；未经51Due官方授权谢绝任何用途转载或刊发于媒体。如发生侵犯著作权现象，51Due保留一切法律追诉权。（essay代写)
更多essay代写范文欢迎访问我们主页 www.51due.com 当然有essay代写需求可以和我们24小时在线客服 QQ:800020041 联系交流。-X（essay代写)