Using Language

John T. Kearns is Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York, Buffalo. He is the author of Deductive Logic, A Programmed Introduction and numerous articles on logic and philosophy.

"A truly novel treatment of language. It combines the approach of action theory and the theory of speech acts with the program of more formal treatments of language that have heretofore been largely restricted to treating language as a set of inscriptions rather than as a human activity. It is a highly knowledgeable piece of work that incorporates much of what is good in recent philosophy of language. And there is much that is ingenious in this book." — Michael A. Simon

• Acknowledgments Introduction 1. A Speech-Act Theory2. The More General Framework3. The Plan of the Book4. Some Other Views 1. Intentional Acts 1. Introduction2. Acts for a Purpose3. Completable and Completing Acts4. Complex Acts5. The Structures of Acts6. Enabling Acts7. Trying8. Instrumental Acts9. Developing a Theory 2. Linguistic Acts 1. Sentential Acts2. Illocutionary Acts3. Audience Participation4. Habitual Acts5. Plain and Consummated Acts6. Propositional Acts7. Tree Diagrams 3. The System of Language 1. Representational Meaning2. Inferential Meaning3. Accepting and Rejecting Sentences4. Commitment5. Semantic Features 4. The Role of Experience in the System of Language 1. Experience2. The Levels of Experience3. Taking To Be and Taking For4. The Sentential Structure of Experience5. First-Level Experience6. Habitual Acts Again7. The Structure of the System of Language8. Systems of Language 5. Semantics 1. Significance with Respect to Experience2. Experiential Connections3. Semantics Is Possible4. Semantic Theories5. Theories of Representational Meaning6. The Broader System of Language 6. Logical Form and Grammatical Form 1. The Original Distinction2. Some Problems with the Distinction3. Reformulating the Distinction4. Additional Problems 7. Deep Structure, Surface Structure, Semantic Structure 1. Deep and Surface Structure2. Abandoning the Linguist's Picture3. Speech-Act Syntactic Structure4. Speech-Act Structure Instead of Deep Structure5. English Adjectives 8. The Language L 1. A Simplification2. The Syntax and Truth Conditions of L3. Some Translations4. Tree Diagrams5. The First-Order Fragment of L6. The Deductive System L7. Soundness and Completeness of L 9. Speech-Act Structures 1. Syntax is Part of Semantics2. Denoting Acts3. The Individual Transformation4. Representing5. Depicting6. Picturing7. Multiple Structures 10. Pronouns and the Language L 1. The Variable Transformation2. The Reflexive Transformation3. The Language L4. Ordinary Pronouns5. Quantified Antecedents6. Rethinking the Conditional7. More Radical Operators 11. A Semantic Account for L: Part 1 1. A Scaled-Down Model2. Sentential Structures3. Negation4. Disjunction and Conjunction5. The Horseshoe6. Two Quantifiers 12. A Semantic Account for L: Part 2 1. Representational Meaning2. The Return of Quantifiers3. The Name-Like Use of the Indefinite Phrase4. The Quantifiers 'A' and 'n'5. The Definite Phrase6. The Unique Quantifier7. Passive Voice and Relative Clauses8. Pronomial Transformations9. Speech Act Structures 13. More Heuristic Models 1. The Cognitive Map2. Supplemented Systems of Language3. Purely Proper Names4. More of the Same5. Jobs6. Referring7. Referring with other Expressions8. Presuppositions 14. The Language (L) 1. Some Differences between Referring and Non-referring Uses2. The New Transformations3. Some Other Changes4. More Existential Presuppositions5. Inferential Meaning 15. Odds and End 1. Lexical Transformations2. The Broadest System of Language3. A New Division of Experience4. Identity and Difference5. Logical Expressions Index