Many philosophers suppose that sometimes we think we are saying or thinking something meaningful when in fact we’re not saying or thinking anything at all: we are producing nonsense. But what is nonsense? An account of nonsense must, I argue, meet two constraints. The first constraint requires that nonsense can be rationally engaged with, not just mentioned. In particular, we can reason with nonsense and use it within that-clauses. An account which fails to meet this constraint cannot explain why nonsense (...) appears meaningful. The second constraint requires that nonsense does not express thoughts. An account which fails to meet this constraint undercuts the critical force of the concept of nonsense. I offer an account which meets both constraints. The central idea is that to be under the illusion that some nonsense makes sense is to enter a pretence that the nonsense is meaningful. (shrink)

It is well known that occurrences of sentences such as “Every bottle is empty” will sometimes be understood relative to a subset of the set of all bottles in the universe. Much has been written about what mechanism should be used to model this phenomenon of domain restriction. However, comparatively little attention has been paid to the question of when domain restriction is triggered. I will begin by challenging a recent partial answer to this question. I will then develop my (...) own partial answer based on observations pertaining to information structure. (shrink)