Michael Glanzberg

In this essay, I explore the nature of convention in language. The common notion of convention focuses on social aspects of coordination, but I identify two others that make minimal use of social coordination. I then explore in depth one example of a feature of language that has appeared to some not to be conventional: the information-structural notion of topic. I argue that the evidence strongly supports a conventional view of topic; but I also argue that it suggests a sort of convention that relies only minimally on social aspects of coordination. From this example, I conclude that we can often extend the reach of conventions in language, but that we should be careful about what those conventions are. Not everything that looks conventional is the same, and as we expand the scope of convention in language, we uncover very different sorts of conventions.

This paper has two goals. The first is to defend a form of context-dependence for knowledge ascriptions. The second is to explore the different sources of context-dependence that natural language provides. Using knowledge ascriptions as an illustration, it argues that there are two very different sorts of sources of context-dependence in language. One is highly specific, typically lexical context-dependence. The other is general. Highly general features of extremely broad categories of expressions can create context-dependence that is only minimally associated with any one expression. The case of knowledge ascriptions provides an example of this kind of context-dependence. When it comes to philosophical concerns about contextualism, the difference points to something not always fully noted. Specific context-dependence can often reveal something important about the concept a given word expresses. General context-dependence does this in at best highly limited ways.

This chapter aims to articulate and place on a firmer footing a substantial theory of truth—in particular, a modern version of the correspondence theory of truth. It is explained how the modern theory improves upon more traditional correspondence theories by unburdening itself of a metaphysically contentious commitment to a structural correspondence relation between truth-bearers and facts. In addition, the relation of the modern theory to semantics is explained. Following Davidson, it is argued that we can learn a lot about the notion of truth by studying its inter-relations with other basic notions, as exhibited in the semantics of natural languages.

This chapter argues for a form of partiality in semantics. In particular, it argues that semantics, narrowly construed as part of our linguistic competence, is only a partial determinant of truth‐conditional content. Likewise, truth‐conditional semantic theories in linguistics function as partial theories of content. It offers an account of where and how this partiality arises, which focuses on how lexical meaning combines elements of distinctively linguistic competence with elements from our broader cognitive resources. This account shows how we can accommodate some partiality in semantic theories without falling into skepticism about semantics or its place in linguistic theory. Along the way, the chapter reexamines the roles disquotation and model theory play in semantic theories. It argues that disquotation plays an ineliminable role, but that this shows us a way in which semantic theories are explanatorily partial.

One of the great successes in the study of language has been the application of formal methods, including those of formal logic. Even so, this chapter argues against one way of accounting for this success, by arguing that the study of natural language semantics and of logical consequence relations are not the same. There is indeed a lot we can glean about logic from looking at our languages, and at our inferential practices, but the semantic properties of natural languages do not determine genuine logical consequence relations. We can get from natural language semantics to logical consequence, but only by a significant process of identification of logical constants, abstraction, and idealization. The chapter also discusses different approaches to the nature of logical consequence, and examines which allow logic and natural language to come closer together.

The study of truth is often seen as running on two separate paths: the nature path and the logic path. The former concerns metaphysical questions about the ‘nature’, if any, of truth. The latter concerns itself largely with logic, particularly logical issues arising from the truth-theoretic paradoxes. Where, if at all, do these two paths meet? It may seem, and it is all too often assumed, that they do not meet, or at best touch in only incidental ways. It is often assumed that work on the metaphysics of truth need not pay much attention to issues of paradox and logic; and it is likewise assumed that work on paradox is independent of the larger issues of metaphysics. Philosophical work on truth often includes a footnote anticipating some resolution of the paradox, but otherwise tends to take no note of it. Likewise, logical work on truth tends to have little to say about metaphysical presuppositions, and simply articulates formal theories, whose strength may be measured, and whose properties may be discussed. In practice, the paths go their own ways. Our aim in this paper is somewhat modest. We seek to illustrate one point of intersection between the paths. Even so, our aim is not completely modest, as the point of intersection is a notable one that often goes unnoticed. We argue that the ‘nature’ path impacts the logic path in a fairly direct way. What one can and must say about the logic of truth is influenced, or even in some cases determined, by what one says about the metaphysical nature of truth. In particular, when it comes to saying what the well-known Liar paradox teaches us about truth, background conceptions — views on ‘nature’ — play a significant role in constraining what can be said. This paper, in rough outline, first sets out some representative ‘nature’ views, followed by the ‘logic’ issues (viz., paradox), and turns to responses to the Liar paradox. What we hope to illustrate is the fairly direct way in which the background ‘nature’ views constrain — if not dictate — responses to the main problem on the ‘logic’ path..

This paper argues for the thesis that, roughly put, it is impossible to talk about absolutely everything. To put the thesis more precisely, there is a particular sense in which, as a matter of semantics, quantifiers always range over domains that are in principle extensible, and so cannot count as really being ‘absolutely everything’. The paper presents an argument for this thesis, and considers some important objections to the argument and to the formulation of the thesis. The paper also offers an assessment of just how implausible the thesis really is. It argues that the intuitions against the thesis come down to a few special cases, which can be given special treatment. Finally, the paper considers some metaphysical ideas that might surround the thesis. Particularly, it might be maintained that an important variety of realism is incompatible with the thesis. The paper argues that this is not the case.

This chapter examines how concepts relate to lexical meanings. It focuses on how we can appeal to concepts to give specific, cognitively rich contents to lexical entries, while at the same time using standard methods of compositional semantics. This is a problem, as those methods assume lexical meanings provide extensions, while concepts are mental representations that have very different structure from an extension. The chapter proposes a way to solve this problem which is by casting concepts in a metasemantic role for certain expressions, notably verbs, but more also generally, with expressions that function as content-giving predicates in a sentence.

Semanticists will often casually remark that Noam Chomsky rejects semantics. Chomsky has frequently noted how poorly understood some aspects of semantics are, and has shown little inclination to grant the status of reasonably well‐developed science to many parts of semantics. One specific reason Chomsky has often voiced skepticism about semantics is that he saw the wrong kinds of appeals to semantics in the wrong places. The arguments for the autonomy of syntax in Chomsky's early writing have been described as part of an extended argument for the “existence of syntax”. Semantics for Chomsky must be part of I‐language: the part that provides useful information from the Language Faculty to the Conceptual‐Intentional system. There are many traditions in semantics, and many current research programs in sematics are embedded in firmly anti‐Chomskyan views of language in general. Chomsky's skepticism about truth‐conditional semantics has been, and remains strong.