Changes

=====1.3.4.8. The Conflict of Interpretations=====

=====1.3.4.8. The Conflict of Interpretations=====

One discrepancy that needs to be documented can be observed in the conflict of interpretations between A and B, as reflected in the lack of congruity between their semiotic partitions of the syntactic domain.  This is a problematic but realistic feature of the present example.  That is, it represents a type of problem with the interpretation of pronouns (indexical signs or bound variables) that actually arises in practice when attempting to formalize the semantics of natural, logical, and programming languages.  On this account, the deficiency resides with the present analysis, and the burden remains to clarify exactly what is going on here.

One discrepancy that needs to be documented can be observed in the conflict of interpretations between <math>\text{A}</math> and <math>\text{B}</math>, as reflected in the lack of congruity between their semiotic partitions of the syntactic domain.  This is a problematic but realistic feature of the present example.  That is, it represents a type of problem with the interpretation of pronouns (indexical signs or bound variables) that actually arises in practice when attempting to formalize the semantics of natural, logical, and programming languages.  On this account, the deficiency resides with the present analysis, and the burden remains to clarify exactly what is going on here.

Notice, however, that I have deliberately avoided dealing with indexical tokens in the usual ways, namely, by seeking to eliminate all semantic ambiguities from the initial formalization.  Instead, I have preserved this aspect of interpretive discrepancy as one of the essential phenomena or inescapable facts in the realm of pragmatic semantics, tantamount to the irreducible nature of perspective diversity.  I believe that the desired competence at this faculty of language will come, not from any strategy of substitution that constantly replenishes bound variables with their objective referents on every fixed occasion, but from a pattern of recognition that keeps indexical signs persistently attached to their interpreters of reference.

Notice, however, that I have deliberately avoided dealing with indexical tokens in the usual ways, namely, by seeking to eliminate all semantic ambiguities from the initial formalization.  Instead, I have preserved this aspect of interpretive discrepancy as one of the essential phenomena or inescapable facts in the realm of pragmatic semantics, tantamount to the irreducible nature of perspective diversity.  I believe that the desired competence at this faculty of language will come, not from any strategy of substitution that constantly replenishes bound variables with their objective referents on every fixed occasion, but from a pattern of recognition that keeps indexical signs persistently attached to their interpreters of reference.