•  3
    Précis for Context and Coherence
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 23 (69): 243-259. 2023.
    This précis outlines some of the key themes in Context and Coherence. At the core of Context and Coherence is the meta-semantic question: what determines the meaning of context-sensitive language and how do we interpret it as effortlessly as we do? What we can express with language is obviously constrained by grammar, but it also seems to depend on various non-linguistic features of an utterance situation, for example, pointing gestures. Accordingly, it is nearly universally assumed that grammar…Read more
  • The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Language (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
  •  19
    Semantics and What is Said
    In Alessandro Capone, Una Stojnic, Ernie Lepore, Denis Delfitto, Anne Reboul, Gaetano Fiorin, Kenneth A. Taylor, Jonathan Berg, Herbert L. Colston, Sanford C. Goldberg, Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri, Cliff Goddard, Anna Wierzbicka, Magdalena Sztencel, Sarah E. Duffy, Alessandra Falzone, Paola Pennisi, Péter Furkó, András Kertész, Ágnes Abuczki, Alessandra Giorgi, Sona Haroutyunian, Marina Folescu, Hiroko Itakura, John C. Wakefield, Hung Yuk Lee, Sumiyo Nishiguchi, Brian E. Butler, Douglas Robinson, Kobie van Krieken, José Sanders, Grazia Basile, Antonino Bucca, Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri & Kobie van Krieken (eds.), Indirect Reports and Pragmatics in the World Languages, Springer Verlag. pp. 21-38. 2018.
    A once commonplace view is that only a semantic theory that interprets sentences of a language according to what their utterances intuitively say can be correct. The rationale is that only by requiring a tight connection between what a sentence means and what its users intuitively say can we explain why, normally, those linguistically competent with a language upon hearing its sentences uttered can discern what they say. More precisely, this approach ties the semantic content of a sentence to in…Read more
  •  55
    Being called
    Synthese 201 (2): 1-20. 2023.
    The dominant view maintains that names are directly referring, rigid terms, the primary function of which is to designate an individual. But, as has long been noted, proper names also allow for predicative uses and combine with quantifiers and definite, indefinite, and numerical determiners. Any adequate semantic account of proper names thus must make sense not just of their referential uses but also of their seemingly predicative ones. Predicativists maintain that such uses manifest a name’s se…Read more
  • Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Language (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
  •  107
    Just Words: Intentions, Tolerance and Lexical Selection
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 105 (1): 3-17. 2021.
    We all make mistakes in pronunciation and spelling, but a common view is that there are limits beyond which a mistaken pronunciation or spelling becomes too dramatic to be recognized as of a particular word at all. These considerations have bolstered a family of accounts that invoke speaker intentions and standards for tolerance as determinants of which word, if any, an utterance tokens. I argue this is a mistake. Neither intentions nor standards of tolerance are necessary or sufficient (individ…Read more
  •  76
    Formal properties of "now" revisited
    Semantics and Pragmatics 14. 2021.
    The traditional view is that 'now’ is a pure indexical, denoting the utterance time. Yet, despite its initial appeal, the view has faced criticism. A range of data reveal 'now’ allows for discourse-bound (i.e., anaphoric) uses, and can occur felicitously with the past tense. The reaction to this has typically been to treat ‘now’ as akin to a true demonstrative, selecting the prominent time supplied by the non-linguistic context or prior discourse. We argue this is doubly mistaken. The…Read more
  •  91
    Natural languages are riddled with context-sensitivity. One and the same string of words can express many different meanings on occasion of use, and yet we understand one another effortlessly, on the fly. How do we do so? What fixes the meaning of context-sensitive expressions, and how are we able to recover the meaning so effortlessly? This book offers a novel response: we can do so because we draw on a broad array of subtle linguistic conventions that determine the interpretation of context-s…Read more
  •  19
    Fodor and demonstratives in LOT
    with Ernie Lepore
    Theoria : An International Journal for Theory, History and Fundations of Science 35 (1): 75-92. 2020.
    In this paper, we consider a range of puzzles for demonstratives in the language of thought we had raised in our last philosophical conversation we had with Jerry Fodor. We argue against the Kaplan-inspired indexing solution Fodor proposed to us, but offer a Fodor-friendly account of the demonstratives in the language of thought in its stead, building on our account of demonstrative pronouns in English.
  •  11
    Expressions and their Articulations and Applications
    with Ernie Lepore
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 19 (3): 477-496. 2019.
    The discussion that follows rehearses some familiar arguments and replies from the Kripke/Putnam/Burge critique of the traditional Frege/Russell/Wittgenstein views on names and predicates. Its main contributions are, first, to introduce a novel way of individuating tokens of the same expression, (what we call “articulations”) second, to then revise standard views on deference, (as this notion is understood to pertain to securing access to meaning for potentially ignorant, and confused agents in …Read more
  •  17
    On the Alleged Gap between Semantic Content and Objects of Assertion
    Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy 53 153-158. 2018.
    There are various reasons one might think that the semantic content of occurrences of sentences does not coincide with assertoric content –content of belief and assertion– corresponding to those sentences. But if a semantic theory exploiting such distinction is to play a role in explaining communication, there needs to be a tight connection between the two types of content. Drawing upon the considerations of McDowell and Evans concerning rigidity, Stanley proposes to extend Lewis’ argument for t…Read more
  •  96
    Pointing things out: in defense of attention and coherence
    Linguistics and Philosophy 43 (2): 139-148. 2020.
    Nowak and Michaelson have done us the service of presenting direct and clear worries about our account of demonstratives. In response, we use the opportunity to engage briefly with their remarks as a useful way to clarify our view.
  •  106
    Context (review)
    Philosophical Review 127 (3): 408-413. 2018.
  •  584
    On the Connection between Semantic Content and the Objects of Assertion
    Philosophical Topics 45 (2): 163-179. 2017.
    The Rigidity Thesis states that no rigid term can have the same semantic content as a nonrigid one. Drawing on Dummett (1973; 1991), Evans (1979; 1982), and Lewis (1980), Stanley (1997a; 1997b; 2002) rejects the thesis since it relies on an illicit identification of compositional semantic content and the content of assertion (henceforth, assertoric content). I argue that Stanley’s critique of the Rigidity Thesis fails since it places constraints on assertoric content that cannot be satisfied by …Read more
  •  603
    Content in a Dynamic Context
    Noûs 53 (2): 394-432. 2017.
    The standing tradition in theorizing about meaning, since at least Frege, identifies meaning with propositions, which are, or determine, the truth-conditions of a sentence in a context. But a recent trend has advocated a departure from this tradition: in particular, it has been argued that modal claims do not express standard propositional contents. This non-propositionalism has received different implementations in expressivist semantics and certain kinds of dynamic semantics. They maintain tha…Read more
  •  63
    Fixing Reference, by Imogen Dickie: New York: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. x + 333, £37.50 (review)
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (1): 189-193. 2018.
  •  574
    Discourse and logical form: pronouns, attention and coherence
    Linguistics and Philosophy 40 (5): 519-547. 2017.
    Traditionally, pronouns are treated as ambiguous between bound and demonstrative uses. Bound uses are non-referential and function as bound variables, and demonstrative uses are referential and take as a semantic value their referent, an object picked out jointly by linguistic meaning and a further cue—an accompanying demonstration, an appropriate and adequately transparent speaker’s intention, or both. In this paper, we challenge tradition and argue that both demonstrative and bound pronouns ar…Read more
  •  637
    One's Modus Ponens: Modality, Coherence and Logic
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 95 (1): 167-214. 2017.
    Recently, there has been a shift away from traditional truth-conditional accounts of meaning towards non-truth-conditional ones, e.g., expressivism, relativism and certain forms of dynamic semantics. Fueling this trend is some puzzling behavior of modal discourse. One particularly surprising manifestation of such behavior is the alleged failure of some of the most entrenched classical rules of inference; viz., modus ponens and modus tollens. These revisionary, non-truth-conditional accounts tout…Read more
  •  107
    Situated Utterances and Discourse Relations
    with Ernest Lepore and Matthew Stone
    In Proceedings of the 10 th International Conference on Computational Semantics, Iwcs. 2013.
    Utterances in situated activity are about the world. Theories and systems normally capture this by assuming references must be resolved to real-world entities in utterance understanding. We describe a number of puzzles and problems for this approach, and propose an alternative semantic representation using discourse relations that link utterances to the nonlinguistic context to capture the context-dependent interpretation of situated utterances. Our approach promises better empirical coverage an…Read more
  •  366
    Meaning and Demonstration
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6 (1): 69-97. 2015.
    In demonstration, speakers use real-world activity both for its practical effects and to help make their points. The demonstrations of origami mathematics, for example, reconfigure pieces of paper by folding, while simultaneously allowing their author to signal geometric inferences. Demonstration challenges us to explain how practical actions can get such precise significance and how this meaning compares with that of other representations. In this paper, we propose an explanation inspired by Da…Read more