Abstract

A great deal of discussion in recent philosophy of language has centered on the idea that there might be hidden contextual parameters in our sentences. But relatively little attention has been paid to what those parameters themselves are like, beyond the assumption that they behave more or less like variables do in logic. My goal in this paper is to show this has been a mistake. I argue there are at least two very different sorts of contextual parameters. One is indeed basically like variables in logic, but the other is very different, and much more like overt referring expressions. Most of this paper is an in-depth study of an example where we see both classes of contextual parameters at work: the case of predicates of personal taste. I claim they have standard parameter, like all gradable predicates, which behaves much as a variable does. But I also claim they have an experiencer parameter, which behaves strikingly like an overt referring expression, syntactically, semantically, and pragmatically. I show that the different properties of these two classes of parameters are reflected in different sorts of evidence we can bring to bear in showing their existence, and in different ways they interact with the contents speakers intuitively seek to convey with their utterances