Ivan Sobolev's article "The Frontier of Semantics and Pragmaticsin the Philosophy of Language" has been published
Ivan Sobolev's article "The Frontier of Semantics and Pragmaticsin the Philosophy of Language" has been published in the journal Epistemology and Philosophy of Science.
Abstract
The article is devoted to a revision of the classical dichotomy be-tween “what is said” and “what is implicated”, originating fromthe seminal works of Paul Grice. The author challenges the thesisthat the division of meaning into semantic (conventional, truth-conditional) and pragmatic (inferred, not affecting truth condi-tions) is exhaustive. The study of meaning components is accom-panied by the analysis of linguistic examples. The central focusofthe work is the examination of two types of borderline phe-nomena that constitute this intermediate zone, or “frontier”.Thefirst type is use-conditional meaning, which refers to conven-tional aspects that affect not the truth of the proposition, butthefelicity conditions of the utterance’s use. This includes con-ventional implicatures (but, even, still), modal particles (Germanja, doch, wohl), and expressives. While being tied to linguisticunits, they do not alter the truth-conditional content but deter-mine the pragmatic appropriateness of speech. The second typeis pragmatic enrichments, which include explicatures and general-ized conversational implicatures. Unlike particularized implica-tures, these elements can intrude into the domain of semantics,directly influencing the truth conditions of the utterance. Usingthe example of the conjunctive and being interpreted as temporalsequence and scalar implicatures (involving words like some,warm), it is demonstrated that a pragmatically enriched interpre-tation can render an utterance false even if its literal meaning istrue, allowing such constructions to be used to mislead. The finalpart of the article provides a comparative analysis of contempo-rary approaches to the described phenomena. The work substan-tiates the need for developing a new taxonomy and outlinesprospects for further experimental research aimed at clarifyingthe boundaries and mechanisms of the interaction between se-mantics and pragmatics in natural language.Keywords:semantics, pragmatics, conversational implicature, con-ventional implicature, use-conditional meaning, explicature, PaulGrice, Kent Bach, relevance theory
Соболев И.А. Фронтир семантики и прагматики в философии языка // Эпистемология и философия науки. 2026. Т. 64, № 2, С. 116–134.
