Essences and the Meaning of Metaphorical Language
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4375278 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eddy M Zemach (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1983 |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 259 |
| Publication date | 1983-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Poetics Today (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0333-5372 • E-ISSN: 1527-5507 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1772288 |
| OpenAlex | W2331802885 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 2 |
1. The Problem It is customary, in modern intensional semantics, to identify statements (meanings of sentences) with sets of possible worlds. Thus the statement made by Jones on May the fourth when he uttered the sentence 'Texas is larger than Florida' is the set of all possible worlds in which Texas is larger than Florida; the statement made by Jones on May the fourth when he uttered the sentence 'I am hungry today' is the set of all possible worlds in which Jones is hungry on May the fourth; etc. This semantics may be very useful in the theory of literature if we let, for example, the terms 'Hamlet' and 'Ophelia' denote Hamlet and Ophelia., The meaning of 'Ophelia loved Hamlet' would then be the set of all possible worlds in which Ophelia loved Hamlet. The meaning of Shakespeare's Hamlet, as a whole, under a certain interpretation, is thus one set of possible worlds. One can then see different interpretations of Hamlet as assigning to Hamlet distinct subsets of some such worlds. One of these sets, for example, is the set of worlds in which Hamlet, consumed by desire for his mother, has never touched Ophelia; another is the set of worlds in which Ophelia has been made pregnant by Hamlet, and that is why she kills herself. Thus an inter
Epistemology · Linguistics · Sociology · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
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