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246Semantics vs. pragmatics (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2005.Leading scholars in the philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics present brand-new papers on a major topic at the intersection of the two fields, the distinction between semantics and pragmatics. Anyone engaged with this issue in either discipline will find much to reward their attention here. Contributors: Kent Bach, Herman Cappelen, Michael Glanzberg, Jeffrey C. King, Ernie Lepore, Stephen Neale, F. Recanati, Nathan Salmon, Mandy Simons, Scott Soames, Robert J. Stainton, Jason Stanle…Read more
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55Problems of CompositionalityRoutledge. 2015.This book is a critical discussion of the principle of compositionality, the thesis that the meaning of a complex expression is fully determined by the meanings of its constituents and its structure. The aim of this book is to clarify what is meant by this principle, to show that its traditional justification is insufficient, and to discuss some of the problems that have to be addressed before a new attempt can be made to justify it.
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130Finding the questionPhilosophical Studies 174 (3): 779-786. 2017.Yablo gives us an account of subject-matter - a characterization of what declarative sentences are about. I argue that this account can be seen as a way of adjusting Frege’s theory of meaning, so as it no longer carries the implausible commitment that declarative sentences refer to their truth-values. I also point out that Yablo’s approach faces an unpleasant choice: give up a uniform compositional semantics for interrogative sentences or abandon the idea that ordinary characterizations of subje…Read more
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3Adjectives in contextIn Darragh Byrne & Max Kolbel (eds.), Arguing about language, Routledge. 2010.0. Abstract In this paper, I argue that although the behavior of adjectives in context poses a serious challenge to the principle of compositionality of content, in the end such considerations do not defeat the principle. The first two sections are devoted to the precise statement of the challenge; the rest of the paper presents a semantic analysis of a large class of adjectives that provides a satisfactory answer to it. In section 1, I formulate the context thesis, according to which the conten…Read more
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61Things in ProgressNoûs 42 (1): 499-525. 2008.I argue that sentences like ‘ John is building a house’ entail the existence of some thing John is building, althoguh they do not entail that this thing is a house. It is a house in progress. On the way, I argue against intensional analyses of the progressive. This is a follow-up of my earlier paper ‘On the Progressive and the Perfective.’
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54These are the comments I gave at Ohio State in October 2006 on Kai von Fintel’s paper on presupposition accommodation.
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92Definite descriptions without uniqueness: A reply to Abbott (review)Philosophical Studies 114 (3). 2003.
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112Semantics Versus Pragmatics (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2004.Leading scholars in the philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics present brand-new papers on a major topic at the intersection of the two fields, the distinction between semantics and pragmatics. Anyone engaged with this issue in either discipline will find much to reward their attention here. Contributors: Kent Bach, Herman Cappelen, Michael Glanzberg, Jeffrey C. King, Ernie Lepore, Stephen Neale, F. Recanati, Nathan Salmon, Mandy Simons, Scott Soames, Robert J. Stainton, Jason Stanle…Read more
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198Knowledge of Meaning: An Introduction to Semantic TheoryPhilosophical Review 106 (1): 122. 1997.To the best of my knowledge, no one in recent decades has written a book of this magnitude about the semantics of natural language. Certainly, nothing available today matches this volume in depth, precision, and coherence. The authors present classical and recent results of linguistic semantics within the framework of interpretative T-theories and defend the philosophical foundations of their approach by showing how it fits into the larger enterprise of cognitive linguistics. The book also inclu…Read more
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74I present two challenges to fictionalism. According to the first, the reasons fictionalists offer for acceptance without belief often warrant a somewhat different attitude. According to the second, the possibility of fictionalist acceptnace rests on the poorly supported hypothesis that there is a clear distinction between philsophical and ordinary contexts. This is forthcoming in Noûs
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81Against logical formIn Gerhard Preyer (ed.), Donald Davidson on truth, meaning, and the mental, Oxford University Press. 2012.
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Semantics andIn Ernie Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. 2005.
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239Expressions and their representationsPhilosophical Quarterly 49 (195). 1999.It is plausible to think that our knowledge of linguistic types can bejustified by what we know about the tokens of these types. But one then hasto explain what it is about the relation a type bears to its tokens that makespossible the move from knowledge of the concrete to knowledge of theabstract. I argue that the standard solution to this difficulty, that the relevant relation is instantiation and that the transition is inductive generalization, is inadequate. I propose an alternative, accord…Read more
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107When we utter sentences containing quantifiers, typically we are not to be taken to speak about absolutely everything there is. Suppose Mary has invited her friend John to a party to which she is going. If, upon entering the party, Mary turns to Jack and utters (1), it would be rather odd of Jack to object by pointing out that John in fact knows several people who are not present.
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174The Distinction between Semantics and PragmaticsIn Ernie Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. pp. 361--389. 2005.Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning, or more precisely, the study of the relation between linguistic expressions and their meanings. This article gives a sketch of the distinction between semantics and pragmatics; it is the intention of the rest of this article to make it more precise. It starts by considering three alternative characterizations and explain what the article finds problematic about each of them. This leads to the discussion of utterance interpretation, which situates sem…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
| Metaphysics |
| Philosophy of Language |
Areas of Interest
| Metaphysics |
| Philosophy of Language |