Kaplan claims in Demonstratives that no operator may manipulate the context of evaluation of natural language indexicals. We show that this is not so. In fact, attitude reports always manipulate a context parameter (or, rather, a context variable). This is shown by (i) the existence of De Se readings of attitude reports in English (which Kaplan has no account for), and (ii) the existence of a variety of indexicals across languages whose point of evaluation can be shifted, but only in (...) attitude reports. We develop an alternative account within an extensional framework with overt quantification over times, worlds and contexts. Various typological facts are discussed, esp. the distinction between English, Amharic and Ewe pronouns, and that between English and Russian tenses. (shrink)

We discuss the challenge to truth-conditional semantics presented by apparent shifts in extension of predicates such as ‘red’. We propose an explicit indexical semantics for ‘red’ and argue that our account is preferable to the alternatives on conceptual and empirical grounds.

In this paper, we outline an approach to giving extensional truth-theoretic semantics for what have traditionally been seen as opaque sentential contexts. We outline an approach to providing a compositional truth-theoretic semantics for opaque contexts which does not require quantifying over intensional entities of any kind, and meets standard objections to such accounts. The account we present aims to meet the following desiderata on a semantic theory T for opaque contexts: (D1) T can be formulated in a first-order extensional language; (...) (D2) T does not require quantification over intensional entities­i.e., meanings, propositions, properties, relations, or the like­in its treatment of opaque contexts; (D3) T captures the entailment relations that hold in virtue of form between sentences in the language for which it is a theory; (D4) T has a finite number of axioms. If the approach outlined here is correct, it resolves a longstanding complex of problems in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

Complex demonstratives, expressions of the form 'That F', 'These Fs', etc., have traditionally been taken to be referring terms. Yet they exhibit many of the features of quantified noun phrases. This has led some philosophers to suggest that demonstrative determiners are a special kind of quantifier, which can be paraphrased using a context sensitive definite description. Both these views contain elements of the truth, though each is mistaken. We advance a novel account of the semantic form of complex demonstratives that (...) shows how to reconcile the view that they function like quantified noun phrases with the view that simple demonstratives function as context sensitive referring terms wherever they occur. If we are right, previous accounts of complex demonstratives have misconceived their semantic role; and philosophers relying on the majority view in employing complex demonstratives in analysis have proceeded on a false assumption. (shrink)

Depuis 1967, Donald Davidson defend l'idée qu'une théorie de la signification pour une langue naturelle doit prendre la forme d'une théorie tarskienne de la vérité. Je me propose ici d'exposer les grandes lignes de l a conception davidsonienne de la sémantique des langues naturelles et de chercher à préciser en quel sens une theorie tarskienne de la vérité pour une langue L constitue, selon Davidson, une théorié de la signification pour L. Je ferai pour cela abstraction des obstacles qu'il pourrait (...) y avoir à la réalisation du programme de Davidson. (shrink)

In order to capture our intuitions about the logical consistency of sentences and the logical validity of arguments, a semantics for a natural language has to allow for the fact that different occurrences of a single bare demonstrative, such as “this”, may refer to different objects. But it is not obvious how to formulate a semantic theory in order to achieve this result. This paper first criticizes several proposals: that we should formulate our semantics as a semantics for tokens, not (...) expressions, Kaplan’s idea that syntax associates a demonstration with each occurrence of a demonstrative, Braun’s idea that a context may specify shifts in context across the evaluation of the expressions in a sentence; and Predelli’s idea that we should countenance different classes of contexts. Finally, a solution is proposed that allows that a natural language persists across the addition of basic lexical items but defines logical properties in terms of language stages. A surprising result is that we do not need to think of demonstratives as taking different referents in different situations. (shrink)

Recent philosophical literature has debated the question of how much context-relativity needs to be countenanced in precise semantic theories for natural languages and has displayed different conceptions of the way in which it might be accommodated. This article presents reasons to think that context-relativity is a phenomenon that semantic theory must accommodate and identifies some of the issues concerning how it ought to be accommodated.

Obsessed by the cases where things go wrong, we pay too little attention to the vastly more numerous cases where they go right, and where it is perhaps easier to see that the descriptive content of the expression concerned is wholly at the service of this function [of identifying reference], a function which is complementary to that of predication and contains no element of predication in itself (Strawson [1974], p. 66).An earlier version of the paper was written during an enjoyable (...) year spent as a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. (shrink)

As interest in the study of natural languages has increased, philosophers of language and logicians have, along with linguists, begun to pay more attention to sentences whose truth value varies from context to context. Alternatively, to sentences which are such that, if different speakers utter them, those speakers may say different things. For example, it is well-known that two different people who utter ‘I am hot’ will be saying different things, that two different people who utter ‘Billy is a lush’ (...) may be saying different things, and that different speakers who utter ‘The book on the table is boring’ may say different things. The same sort of familiar point could be made by examples concerning other pronouns, demonstratives, the utterance of ambiguous sentences, and so on. (shrink)

This paper considers a now familiar argument that the ubiquity of context -dependence threatens the project of natural language semantics, at least as that project has usually been conceived: as concerning itself with `what is said' by an utterance of a given sentence. I argue in response that the `anti-semantic' argument equivocates at a crucial point and, therefore, that we need not choose between semantic minimalism, truth-conditional pragmatism, and the like. Rather, we must abandon the idea, familiar from Kaplan and (...) others, that utterances express propositions `relative to contexts' and replace it with the Strawonian idea that speakers express propositions by making utterances in contexts. The argument for this claim consists in a detailed investigation of the particular case of demonstratives, which I argue demand such a Strawsonian treatment. I then respond to several objections, the most important of which allege that the Strawsonian account somehow undermines the project of natural language semantics, or threatens the semantics -pragmatics distinction. Please note that the paper posted here is an extended version of what was published. (shrink)