Overview

"According to Peter Ludlow, there is a very close relation between the structure of natural language and that of reality, and one can gain insights into long-standing metaphysical questions by studying the semantics of natural language. In this book Ludlow uses the metaphysics of time as a case study and focuses on the dispute between A-theorists and B-theorists about the nature of time. According to B-theorists, there is no genuine change, but a permanent sequence of events ordered by an earlier-than/later-than relation. According to the version of the A-theory adopted by Ludlow (a position sometimes called ""presentism""), there are not past or future events or times; what makes something past or future is how the world stands right now. Ludlow argues that each metaphysical picture is tied to a particular semantical theory of tense and that the dispute can be adjudicated on semantical grounds. A presentism-compatible semantics, he claims, is superior to a B-theory semantics in a number of respects, including its abilities to handle the indexical nature of temporal discourse and to account for facts about language acquisition. Along the way, Ludlow develops a conception ""E-type"" temporal anaphora that can account for both temporal anaphora and complex tenses without reference to past and future events. His view has philosophical consequences for theories of logic, self-knowledge and memory. As for linguistic consequences, Ludlow suggests that the very idea of grammatical tense may have to be dispensed with and replaced with some combination of aspect, modality and evidentiality."

Full Product Details

Author:   Peter Ludlow
Publisher:   MIT Press Ltd
Imprint:   MIT Press
Edition:   New ed.
Dimensions:   Width: 16.00cm , Height: 2.20cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.590kg
ISBN:  

9780262122191

ISBN 10:   0262122197
Pages:   276
Publication Date:   03 September 1999
Audience:   Adult education ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Further / Higher Education ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

Table of Contents

Reviews

A notable work in many respects, with an extremely interesting discussion of the prospects for giving the semantics of tense in a tensed metalanguage. Semantics, Tense, and Time exemplifies the recent, very productive, evolution of the philosophy of language, with its characteristic amalgam of linguistics, metaphysics, and logic. --James Higginbotham, Professor of General Linguistics, University of Oxford

Author Information

Peter Ludlow, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, is the author of Semantics, Tense, and Time: An Essay in the Metaphysics of Natural Language (MIT Press, 1999), among other books, and the editor of Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias (MIT Press, 2001) and High Noon on the Electronic Frontier (MIT Press, 1996).

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions