Savas L. Tsohatzidis

This paper argues that the obvious validity of certain inferences involving indirect speech reports as premises and truth or falsity ascriptions as conclusions is incompatible with Davidson's so-called "paratactic" analysis of the logical form of indirect discourse. Besides disqualifying that analysis, this problem is also claimed to indicate that the analysis is doubly in tension with Davidson's metasemantic views. Specifically, it can be reconciled neither with one of Davidson's key assumptions regarding the adequacy of the kind of semantic theory he recommends nor with one of his key assumptions regarding the inadequacy of a kind of semantic theory he rejects.

An anti-dispositionalist interpretation of grammatical knowledge would maintain that such knowledge exists whether or not it can be behaviourally manifested; a dispositionalist interpretation, on the other hand, would identify that knowledge with the in principle possibility of certain behavioural manifestations. The purpose of this paper is to present a preliminary case for the dispositionalist interpretation by accomplishing two complementary tasks: first, rejecting a prominent argument against the dispositionalist interpretation; second, advancing an original argument against the anti-dispositionalist interpretation. Both tasks involve rebuttals of certain key theses associated with Chomskyan grammatical metatheory, and therefore, provide new opportunities for assessing its viability.