conjunktionalism

Conjunktionalism is a theoretical framework in philosophy of language and formal semantics that centers on conjunctions—such as and, or, but—in reasoning and discourse. The term covers a family of approaches rather than a single doctrine, all of which emphasize conjunctions in semantic composition and inferential structure.

Central claims include that conjunctions do more than simply conjoin truth conditions. In conjunktionalist accounts, they function as operators that shape how propositions are linked, influence the formation of joint commitments, and interact with context. Versions differ on whether conjunctions are primarily semantic operators, syntactic heads, or pragmatic devices.

Historically, conjunktionalism arose from debates about the nature of connectives and their role in mental representations of discourse. Critics worry that the framework can overstate the unifying role of conjunctions or neglect pragmatic factors such as focus, discourse context, and polysemy across languages and genres.

Applications span formal semantics, linguistic theory, and computational linguistics. Researchers use tools from lambda calculus, type theory, and discourse representation to model conjunktional effects, with potential implications for natural language understanding and narrative modeling.

See also: conjunction, semantics, pragmatics, discourse representation theory. Critics and supporters alike discuss empirical adequacy and the limits of the approach.