Semantics circle: The Origins of Linguistic Meaning - Microsemantics and Macrosemantics

Abstract

How is it that we are able to produce sounds and marks to convey meanings to one another? How does language acquire meaning? This would seem to be the central, foundational problem of philosophical  and linguistic inquiry into meaning. I give a nontechnical overview of my answer to this question.

I divide the problem into two parts, microsemantics and macrosemantics. The first involves modeling a single conversation in detail assuming that the conventional meanings of words are given. I do this by using situation theory and game theory. The second involves relaxing the assumption and letting conventional meanings vary, and modeling how conversations interlock across society, again using situation theory and game theory. This combination of models of microsemantics and macrosemantics results in showing how language acquires meaning assuming only the rationality of interacting agents.   

Please contact benz@leibniz-zas.de for the ZOOM link.

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