One of the central topics of analytical philosophy and especially the theory of language is concerned with is the concept of logical form. As typically understood the concept of logical form not only covers investigations into universal logical features underlying languages. Conceived that way the logical form of, say, arguments, sentences, and other parts of language may be the focus of linguists and semanticists. However, from Frege and Russell on logical form analysis were not confined to such a narrow linguistic perspective. For them investigating the logical form of languages always followed the wider philosophical perspective of trying to understand the structure of language as our principle means for representing the world. From Russell's theory of definite descriptions up to Davidson's truth-theoretical analyses of adverbial modification, citation and reported speech, to lay open the logical structure underlying language was always seen as a means to reveal the structure and features of the thereby represented world. Following such a broader philosophical perspective, the book contains several new essays which discuss for example: Russell's understanding of logical form analysis, the relational structure of belief-sentences, the descriptivist view of that-clause-structures in languages; the logical sources of intensionality; the logical content of de se attitudes; the relation between ontological questions and questions regrading logical form.The collection brings together work by philosophers from diverse points of view, and as such, it illuminates the lively and ongoing debate the concept of logical form still arouses within contemporary philosophy.
''This volume brings together some of the worlds most distinguished linguistically-minded philosophers and philosophically-minded linguists in an outstanding collection of new papers on what logical form is supposed to be and why it matters for the study of language.'' -Zoltan Szabo, Cornell University
Gerhard Preyer, Georg Peter: Introduction (Contents/sample-PDF)
Stephen Neale: Abbreviation, Scope and Ontology
Ernie Lepore, Kirk Ludwig: What is Logical Form?
Paul M. Pietroski: Function and Concatenation
Jeffrey King: Two Sorts of Claim about "Logical Form"
Peter Ludlow: LF and Natural Logic. The Syntax of Directional Entailing Environments
Robert May/R.F. Fiengo: Identity Statements
James Higginbotham: Why is Sequence of Tense Obligatory?
Richard Larson: The Grammar of Intensionality
Barry Schein: Events and the Semantic Content of Thematic Relations
Norbert Hornstein: A Grammatical Argument for A Davidsonian Semantics
Jason Stanley: Nominal Restriction
Bernard Linsky: Russell's Logical Form, LF and Truth Conditions
Lenny Clapp, Robert Stainton: Russell and the Logical Form of Belief Reports
Robert Matthews: Logical Form and the Relational Conception of Belief
Marga Reimer: Ordinary Proper Names
Oxford
University Press (OUP):
Oxford 2002,
530 pages