Abstract

Relevance Theory makes one of the strongest defenses of the thesis of local linguistic underdetermination. According to this thesis, the intuitive concept expressed by a lexical item in the utterance of a sentence is an ad hoc concept. Ad hoc concepts result from a linguistically free pragmatic process. The postulation of ad hoc concepts is due to the fact that the sort of cognitive organization they introduce is held as necessary to satisfy the demands that, for this Theory, imposes the understanding of intuitive concepts. Here I propose that our cognitive system can satisfy these demands without tolerating propositions basically determined by ad hoc concepts. I also suggest that the information provided by ad hoc concepts is dispensable for the understanding of intuitive concepts. Finally, I propose a local lexical position according to which, the intuitive concept expressed by a lexical item is the concept lexically associated with that item.