Browsing Linguistics and Philosophy - Ph.D. / Sc.D. by Issue Date
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Browsing Linguistics and Philosophy - Ph.D. / Sc.D. by Issue Date
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012)This dissertation examines the syntax of clausal structure in Tseltal (Mayan) with a particular focus on agreement phenomena. The first domain of investigation is the External Possession Construction, in which the clausal ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012)This thesis is about the philosophical and scientific significance of chance. Specifically, I ask whether there is a single notion of chance that both plays a well-defined scientific role and proves useful for various ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012)This thesis investigates three topics relating to the semantics of phi features on pronouns. Part I focuses on gender features on pronouns. Following previous studies (Cooper 1983, Heim & Kratzer 1998), I claim that they ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012)This dissertation is about agents like us, who are both epistemically flawed and morally imperfect. First, how should such agents form and revise their moral beliefs? Second, how should we morally evaluate the actions of ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012)This thesis concerns epistemic and practical rationality. That is, it is about what to believe and what to do. In Chapter 1, 1 argue that theories of practical rationality should be understood as evaluating decisions as ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012)In this dissertation I defend some controversial "level-bridging" principles in epistemology. In the first chapter, I defend the KK principle-the principle that if one knows that P, then one knows that one knows that P. I ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012)This thesis argues that clausal arguments of mental-state predicates divide into two main types: those that express the content, or "subject matter" of the mental state, and those that express the cause of the mental state. ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012)This dissertation investigates the constraints on referential dependency relations that can hold between epithets and their antecedents under c-command. The initial observation, presented here in (1), is that epithets can ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012)This dissertation proposes a theory of temporal implicatures, and applies it to the study of tense in Mbyá Guaraní. It is composed of two parts. In the first one, I discuss the analyses of temporal implicatures developed ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012)In this thesis, I examine some core grammatical phenomena - case licensing, agreement, the EPP - through the lens of the Bantu language Zulu. Zulu has a number of remarkable and puzzling properties whose analysis affords ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012)Being rational and being moral can be difficult. However, some theories of rationality and morality make living up to these ideals too difficult by imposing requirements which are excessively rigid. In this dissertation, ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012)In this dissertation, I argue that a variety of probabilistic patterns in natural language phonology derive from communicative efficiency. I present evidence from phonetically transcribed dictionaries of 60 languages from ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011)My dissertation is about the relationship between theoretical and practical reason. I argue that these two kinds of reason are unified in important respects. In Chapter One I argue that there is a single, fundamental kind ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011)This dissertation is about whether and how non-representational attitudes could play a role in our theories of rationality. In Chapter 1 ('Negation, expressivism, and intentionality') I argue that the best explanation for ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011)Many have thought that it is impossible to rationally persuade a skeptic that we have knowledge of the external world. My dissertation aims to show that this can be done. In chapter one I consider a common reason for ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011)The overarching theme of this dissertation is the relationship between information and context-how context interacts with the contents of speech and thought. I pursue three issues within this broad theme. Chapter 1 concerns ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011)The three chapters of my dissertation develop and defend a new Humility thesis, Categorical Humility. Humility theses tell us there is some fundamental aspect of the world that we lack knowledge of. All such theses share ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011)In this thesis, I argue that the obligatory nature of agreement in [phi]-features (henceforth, [phi]-agreement) cannot be captured by appealing to "derivational time-bombs"-elements of the initial representation that cannot ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011)In this thesis, I investigate the nature of metaphysics and the role it plays in our broader theoretical pursuits. In doing so, I defend it against various criticisms and offer a novel conception of why metaphysical disputes ...
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(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011)This dissertation is concerned with the broad question of why auxiliary verbs occur in natural language. Much previous work has assumed that the occurrence of auxiliary verbs is morphologically or syntactically arbitrary. ...
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