-
32Unarticulated constituentsLinguistics and Philosophy 25 (3): 299-345. 2002.In a recent paper (Linguistics and Philosophy 23, 4, June 2000), Jason Stanley argues that there are no `unarticulated constituents', contrary to what advocates of Truth-conditional pragmatics (TCP) have claimed. All truth-conditional effects of context can be traced to logical form, he says. In this paper I maintain that there are unarticulated constituents, and I defend TCP. Stanley's argument exploits the fact that the alleged unarticulated constituents can be `bound', that is, they can be ma…Read more
-
39Open quotationMind 110 (439): 637-687. 2001.The issues addressed in philosophical papers on quotation generally concern only a particular type of quotation, which I call ‘closed quotation’. The other main type, ‘open quotation’, is ignored, and this neglect leads to bad theorizing. Not only is a general theory of quotation out of reach: the specific phenomenon of closed quotation itself cannot be properly understood if it is not appropriately situated within the kind to which it belongs. Once the distinction between open and closed quotat…Read more
-
167Compositionality, Flexibility, and Context-DependenceIn Markus Werning, Wolfram Hinzen & Edouard Machery (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality, Oxford University Press. pp. 175-191. 2012.It has often been observed that the meaning of a word may be affected by the other words which occur in the same sentence. How are we to account for this phenomenon of 'semantic flexibility'? It is argued that semantic flexibility reduces to context-sensitivity and does not raise unsurmountable problems for standard compositional accounts. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to assume too simple a view of context-sensitivity. Two basic forms of context-sensitivity are distinguished in the p…Read more
-
20Response to Dokic's contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop
-
1Truth-conditional pragmaticsIn Asa Kasher (ed.), Pragmatics: Critical Concepts, . pp. 509-511. 1998.
-
13Putnam is known for having demonstated the existence of a new form of context-dependence, namely that which characterizes natural kind terms. Terms like ‘tiger' and ‘water' are indexical, Putnam says, since their conditions of application varies with the context of use — in a suitably broad sense of ‘context'. In this talk I focus on the relation between Putnam's semantics and a body of views I call ‘contextualism'. Contextualism generalizes context-sensitivity : it claims that sentences carry c…Read more
-
100Contextual Dependence and Definite DescriptionsProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 87 57-73. 1987.François Recanati; IV*—Contextual Dependence and Definite Descriptions, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 87, Issue 1, 1 June 1987, Pages 57–74, h.
-
16Relativized PropositionsIn Michael O'Rourke & Corey Washington (eds.), Situating Semantics : Essays on the Work of John Perry, Mit Press. pp. 119-153. 2007.Can we solve the problem of the essential indexical, and account for de se belief, by appealing to 'relativized propositions' (functions from rich indices to truth-values)? According to John Perry, we cannot. This paper offers a detailed examination and a critique of Perry's argument.
-
108The communication of first person thoughtsIn Petr Kotatko & John Biro (eds.), Frege: Sense and Reference one Hundred Years later, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 95-102. 1995.A discussion of Frege's views concerning the meaning of 'I' and his distinction between the 'I' of soliloquy and the 'I' of conversation.
-
Le paradoxe de la première personneIn Robert Vion (ed.), Les sujets et leurs discours: énonciation et interaction, Presses De L'université De Provence. pp. 7-17. 1998.
-
"La sémantique des noms propres: remarques sur la notion de "désignateur rigideLangue Française 57 106-118. 1983.
-
27Embedded implicaturesPhilosophical Perspectives 17 (1). 2003.Conversational implicatures do not normally fall within the scope of operators because they arise at the speech act level, not at the level of sub-locutionary constituents. Yet in some cases they do, or so it seems. My aim in this paper is to compare different approaches to the problem raised by what I call 'embedded implicatures': seeming implicatures that arise locally, at a sub-locutionary level, without resulting from an inference in the narrow sense.
-
12Response to Voltolini's contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop
-
24Does linguistic communication rest on inference?Mind and Language 17 (1-2). 2002.It is often claimed that, because of semantic underdetermination, one can determine the content of an utterance only by appealing to pragmatic considerations concerning what the speaker means, what his intentions are. This supports ‘inferentialism' : the view that, in contrast to perceptual content, communicational content is accessed indirectly, via an inference. As against this view, I argue that primary pragmatic processes (the pragmatic processes that are involved in the determination of tru…Read more
-
5Response to Fernandez-Moreno's contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop
-
82Pragmatics and Logical FormIn E. Romero & B. Soria (eds.), Explicit Communication: Robyn Carston's Pragmatics, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 25-41. 2007.Robyn Carston and I share a general methodological position which I call ‘Truth-Conditional Pragmatics' (TCP). TCP is the view that the effects of context on truth-conditional content need not be traceable to the linguistic material in the uttered sentence. Some effects of context on truth-conditional content are due to the linguistic material (e.g. to context-sensitive words or morphemes which trigger the search for contextual values), but others result from ‘free' pragmatic processes. Free pra…Read more
-
125Deixis and AnaphoraIn Zoltán Gendler Szabó (ed.), Semantics Versus Pragmatics, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 286--316. 2004.A defence of the 'pragmatic' theory of anaphora (which stresses the analogy between anaphora and deixis) against an argument put forward by Gareth Evans.
-
21My contribution to the 'MIMESIS, METAPHYSICS AND MAKE-BELIEVE' conference held in honour of Kendall Walton in the University of Leeds
-
81Moderate relativismIn G. Carpintero & M. Koelbel (eds.), Relative Truth, Oxford University Press. pp. 41-62. 2008.In modal logic, propositions are evaluated relative to possible worlds. A proposition may be true relative to a world w, and false relative to another world w'. Relativism is the view that the relativization idea extends beyond possible worlds and modalities. Thus, in tense logic, propositions are evaluated relative to times. A proposition (e.g. the proposition that Socrates is sitting) may be true relative to a time t, and false relative to another time t'. In this paper I discuss, and attempt …Read more
-
20Content, Mood, and ForcePhilosophy Compass 8 (7): 622-632. 2013.In this survey paper, I start from two classical theses of speech act theory: that speech act content is uniformly propositional and that sentence mood encodes illocutionary force. These theses have been questioned in recent work, both in philosophy and linguistics. The force/content distinction itself – a cornerstone of 20‐century philosophy of language – has come to be rejected by some theorists, unmoved by the famous ‘Frege–Geach’ argument. The paper reviews some of these debates.
-
14Response to Carston's paper, 'How Many Pragmatic Systems Are There'?
-
174Force cancellationSynthese 196 (4): 1403-1424. 2019.Peter Hanks and Scott Soames both defend pragmatic solutions to the problem of the unity of the proposition. According to them, what ties together Tim and baldness in the singular proposition expressed by ‘Tim is bald’ is an act of the speaker : the act of predicating baldness of Tim. But Soames construes that act as force neutral and noncommittal while, for Hanks, it is inherently assertive and committal. Hanks answers the Frege–Geach challenge by arguing that, in complex sentences, the force i…Read more
-
16The limits of expressibilityIn Barry Smith (ed.), John Searle, Cambridge University Press. pp. 189-213. 2002.