Ernie LePore

Regardless of its particular topic, each of Donald Davidson's essays is part of a comprehensive progrqamme to address questions about language, mind and action, and their interconnections. Themes from this larger programme permeate and bind his work on semantics: on the notions of meaning and truth, on theories of truth, reference, logical form and inference, compositionality, 'intentional' operators, indeterminacy, conceptual relativism, skepticism and metaphor. Twenty-eight critical essays, including a substantial introduction to Davidson's philosophy of language, and three essays by Davidson himself, make up this volume. The volume's six sections corespond to the major section of Davidson's _inquiries into Truth and Interpretation._ Each contains critical essays addressing, interpreting and further develoing his views. The first section, written by the editor, gives an overview of the whole volume, the second section focuses on truth and meaning; the third, applications of Davidson's semantic theory; the fourth, radical interpretation; the fifth, language and reality, and the sixth, limits of the literal.

The topic of this chapter is the semantics of incomplete definite descriptions or sentences of the form ‘the F is G’ where more than one object satisfies the nominal F. The traditional Russellian analysis holds that definite descriptions are quantifiers which contribute uniqueness conditions to propositions. This view renders all tokens of incomplete definite descriptions false. There are two general strategies for maintaining the quantificational analysis; one is to treat definite descriptions as containing hidden indexicals and the other is to concede their non-denoting nature (and thus the falsehood of their tokens). It is argued that the former ‘semantic’ strategies lead to overgeneration while the latter ‘pragmatic’ strategies share with their semantic counterparts the mistaken claims that when someone speaks, something unique, and exclusively determined by context of utterance, is expressed. Once these errors are revealed, incomplete definite descriptions are shown to pose no problem for the quantificational analysis.

We think it best to keep our observations general and minimal. The essays in this volume are clear and well argued, but we feel the same about our own book, and so, it would be otiose to dive deeper into the dialectic. Instead we will discuss a few areas where we believe additional research is needed to adjudicate central issues concerning the rules of language and the processes of interpretation which we take to be open, focusing primarily on conventions, intentions and coherence relations. We end with some comments on the scope of meaning in language and its consequences for the semantic enterprise.

Our goal in this chapter is to contest the traditional view of indirection in utterances such as, ‘Can you pass the salt?’ by developing a very different way of characterizing the interpretations involved. We argue that the felt “indirection” of such utterances reflects the kind of meaning the utterances have, rather than the way that meaning is derived. So understood, there is no presumption that indirect meanings involve the pragmatic derivation of enriched contents froma literal interpretation; rather, we argue that indirect meanings are explicitly encoded in grammar. We build on recent work on formalizing declarative, interrogative, and imperative meanings as distinct but compatible kinds of content for utterances.

The view put forward in this chapter about slur terms is that their interpretations require expansive, open-ended engagement with an utterance and its linguistic meaning, through a host of distinctive kinds of reasoning. This reasoning may include inferences about the speaker’s psychology and her intentions—in light of the full social and historical context—but it may involve approaching the utterance through strategies for imaginative elaboration and emotional attunement, as required, for example, for metaphor, poetic diction, irony, sarcasm, and humor. In the face of their heterogeneity and open-endedness, these interpretive strategies are most perspicuously elucidated through critical attention to the psychological, social, historical, and even artistic considerations at play in specific cases. Thus, in contrast to the common practice in philosophy and linguistics, this chapter will not offer a general account of the interpretation of slur terms. It puts forward that there can be no such thing.

Over the centuries, the art of poetry has been claimed to be impervious to paraphrase (or translation). This scepticism, although championed by many, has left philosophers and linguists, who hold that there is nothing special about the domain of the poetic, unmoved. In this chapter, data are used to show that the idea behind ‘the heresy of paraphrase’ can be supported and explained while its assumed untoward conclusions avoided. It is argued that poetry concerns an inseparable confluence between form and content which produces _hyperextensional_ contexts not unlike that of quotation in natural language. Essentially, poetry possesses meta-linguistic components which allow it to be part of or refer to its own articulation.

This chapter both explores and critiques Paul Saka’s (1998) theory of mentioning and quoting, in which the phenomena are both distinguished and claimed to be multiply ambiguous. This chapter shows that both aspects of Paul Saka’s view is wrong. This has implications for Paul Saka’s criticism of alternative theories, especially Donald Davidson’s (1979) demonstrative theory. The argument proceeds by considering Paul Saka’s approach as semantic in nature (despite the author’s own confusion on this point) since it would not be a rival to the theories it opposes were it a ‘purely pragmatic’ account.

This chapter discusses the issue of quotation, which is revisited with a special focus on the application of the general theory to the case of mixed quotation. In light of Recanati’s paper ‘Open Quotation’, published in 2001, mixed quotation is explored as a means of capturing certain aspects of the interaction between semantic and non-semantic content. After an overview of both approaches, it is argued that a semantic account of mixed quotation is better than a non-semantic one. It is also argued that mixed quotation itself can be used as a test case for drawing the semantics-pragmatics distinction.

This chapter sets out to provide a unified semantic account of the phenomenon of quotation and its various incarnations. It provides a discussion of direct, indirect, pure, and mixed quotation. It starts by showing evidence for the interaction of the different types of quotation and identifies four constraints in accordance with these interactions that an adequate theory needs to satisfy. A joint demonstrative account of direct and pure quotation is combined with that of indirect quotation along the lines of Davidson (1968, 1979), in order to successfully satisfy the constraints of interaction and provide a common explanation of their opacity.

This chapter starts with a puzzle about how a semantic theory can both incorporate the high level of context sensitivity of ‘what is said’ (O1) and the ability speakers have to express the same claim/assertion/proposition across a wide range of contexts (O2). The problem is that these two observations seem to be at odds with one another, and any semantic theory that postulates O1 must do so in a way that respects O2. Various proposed solutions are considered including the denials of O2, shared content, and absolute truth. These solutions are all shown to be unacceptable. A positive solution—Pluralistic Minimalism—is proposed. This option requires us to reject the idea that the variability of ‘what is said’ is relevant to semantics and the view that indirect reports report on semantic contents.

This chapter sets out to defend semantic minimalism. Semantic minimalism holds _inter alia_ that there are relatively few context-sensitive expressions (essentially just the obvious cases involving indexicals, demonstratives, etc.) and that the context of utterance has little to no effect on semantic propositions or truth conditions. Against this thesis, opponents have launched two common objections, (1) it entails that comparative adjectives are context insensitive and (2) it renders the role of semantics in communication inexplicable. In response, it is argued that (1) can be accepted and explained through Speech Act Pluralism while (2) is more problematic for the opponents of semantic minimalism as their accounts of communicated content fail certain tests of psychological reality.

The thesis that the meaning of a sentence determines its truth conditions identifies two classes of sentences, i.e., those with truth conditions _tout court_ and those with semantic values relative to their context-sensitive linguistic items. There are two opposing views: moderate and radical pragmatics. In this chapter, it is argued that there is no principled distinction to be drawn between these two positions and furthermore that both positions are internally inconsistent. In addition, evidence for these positions relies on either an incompleteness charge or a context shifting claim, neither of which establish the thesis that meaning does not determine truth conditions.

An indexical is an expression whose meaning stays constant across contexts while its reference shifts. This chapter confronts the claim that many constructions of natural language contain ‘hidden’ indexical elements. It does so, in the first place, by proffering a _reductio_ argument against Stanley and Szabo’s ‘argument from binding’, which states that there is syntactic evidence to support the claim that hidden domain variables are required to account for domain restriction in quantifier and noun phrases in general. Lastly, it is argued that positing hidden indexical expressions incurs two unmet constraints, namely participation in anaphoric relationships and the generation of a priori truths.

This chapter deals with the phenomenon of context shifting arguments, i.e., arguments to the effect that unambiguous, non-vague, and non-elliptical utterances of a sentence can have in differing truth-conditions (and even truth-values). Three tests for genuine context sensitivity are proposed and defended, namely the _Inter-Contextual Disquotational test_, the _Inter-Contextual Disquotational Indirect Report test_, and the _Collective Descriptions test_. These tests are used to show that the majority of cases claimed to be context shifting, by contextualists and radical contextualists alike, are, in fact, not genuinely so. The tests are robust for uncontroversial cases such as indexicals, pronouns, and adverbs of time while the controversial cases involving ‘know’, ‘red’, and ‘weighs 80kg’ fail. A potential objection in terms of _Contextual Salience Absorption_ is entertained and shown to be more detrimental to the contextualist cause than helpful. Finally, two diagnoses are identified in terms of Kaplanian monsters and direct quotation.

Initially, the semantics of quantifiers seems to suggest a context-insensitive account of their interpretation unlike, say, indexical or demonstrative noun phrases. However, most philosophers think that incomplete quantifiers and the need for domain restriction shows that all quantifiers are, in fact, context sensitive. This chapter carefully establishes a set of intuitions prevalent in the literature in favour of a context-sensitive analysis of the semantics of quantifiers. These intuitions are shown to be misguided through a Kripke test, a technique which establishes the consistency of a set of assumed counter-examples and a given phenomenon by showing that in a language in which this phenomenon is stipulated, these counter-examples persist. This task is achieved by using the connection (or rather lack thereof) between reports of what is said/asserted/claimed and semantic content to show that the context-sensitive intuitions are the result of the _non-interpretive_, _non-semantic_ effects of true indirect reports.

In this chapter, the dialectic of the book is set out. In 1995, the authors began a collaboration on two series of papers: one series of papers began with their 1997 paper ‘On an Alleged Connection between the Theory of Meaning and Indirect Speech’. The other series started with their 1997 paper ‘Varieties of Quotation’. The first series led ultimately to their 2005 book _Insensitive Semantics_ and the second to their 2007 book _Language Turned on Itself_. This volume collects many of those joint efforts combined with some of their single-authored papers along the same lines. In this introduction they briefly locate these papers in their historical context, provide some reflections on their legacy, and say a bit about how they see the connection between the papers and the two books.

This chapter discusses reasons why the practice of quotation is of central significance to the philosophy of language and to philosophy more generally. It argues that quotation is an important but neglected philosophical topic. The chapter sketches seven topics that can be illuminated significantly by understanding quotation, and together constitute a strong _prima facie case_ for its philosophical significance. These are: understanding metalinguistic discourse, opacity, the language-world connection, what is said, compositionality, the semantics-pragmatics divide; and indexicality, context sensitivity, and monsters.

Some theorists argue that the data surrounding the practice of mixed quotation establish that it is not a real form of quotation (and in so doing they present a particular interpretation of (D7) and (D8)). In particular, these theorists argue that quotation marks in mixed quotes can be dropped without a loss of meaning. This chapter examines these data and their various interpretations. It is argued that “impure quotes” do not pose a challenge to a theory of quotation, though they do present a challenge for a theory of the _saying relation_.

The thesis of Quotation Context Sensitivity (QCS) states that: let S be a sentence with a quotation Q. Two utterances, u and u', of S can express different propositions because Q in u and in u' quotes different items. This chapter refutes any semantic interpretation of QCS and shows that even a pragmatic construal of the data encounters problems. The first section presents four arguments against a semantic construal of QCS. These arguments are not intended to deny data that support QCS, but only to deny that they should be explained by a semantic theory. The next section presents some pragmatic options for explaining these data in support of QCS, and then argues that some of these variability data resist even pragmatic explanation. That result leaves an explanatory gap that is addressed in Chapter 12.

The chapter introduces an obvious (though surprisingly overlooked) distinction between signs and expressions and invoke this distinction and the Minimal Theory of Chapter 11 to underwrite an account of quotation expression individuation. It then exploits this account of quotation expression individuation in order to explain (away) the recalcitrant variability data from Chapter 7. The chapter explains why so many authors (and speakers) are misled into thinking a single quotation expression can be used to pick out distinct quotable items on different occasions.

This chapter examines the Proper Name and Definite Description Theories. According to Quine and Tarski, quotations lack semantic structure (their position is often misleadingly called the “Proper Name Theory”.) According to (other passages by) Quine and Tarski, and also Geach, quotations are structured definite descriptions. The Definite Description Theory fails for reasons very similar to those that undermine the Proper Name Theory. It is argued that quotation appears to provide a counter-example to Neale's NC theory: Every meaningful noun phrase (NP) in natural language is either a semantically unstructured, referring expression (singular term) or else a semantically structured, restricted quantifier. Quotation expressions don't fit easily into either of the two categories Neale claims that all noun phrases belong to (and quotation expressions are, at least sometimes, noun phrases). The versions of the Proper Name and Description Theories discussed in this chapter were at the centre of the semantics for quotation until Davidson's paper “Quotation”. Since then there have been few, if any, attempts to resurrect these theories.

This chapter focuses on Donald Davidson's paper “Quotation”, which is the most discussed and influential paper on quotation. Davidson's view is alternatively called “the Demonstrative Theory of Quotation” or “the Paratactic Theory of Quotation”. The strengths and weaknesses of the Demonstrative Theory are discussed. It is argued that seen in its historical context, Davidson's proposal is extraordinarily interesting and highly original. It took into account data that no other theory at the time could accommodate, and took the device of quotation more seriously than any other theory at the time did. However, it is now time to leave that theory firmly behind. The subject has moved to a point where we are much clearer on the totality of data and the relevant facts about syntax and semantics than Davidson was. As a result, the Demonstrative Theory is no longer a useful starting point.