This book shows how research in linguistic pragmatics, philosophy of language, and rhetoric can be connected through argumentation to analyze a recognizably common strategy used in political and everyday conversation, namely the distortion of another’s words in an argumentative exchange. Straw man argumentation refers to the modification of a position by misquoting, misreporting or wrenching the original speaker’s statements from their context in order to attack them more easily or more effectively. Through 63 examples taken from different contexts (including political (...) and forensic discourses and dialogs) and 20 legal cases, the book analyzes the explicit and implicit types of straw man, shows how to assess the correctness of a quote or a report, and illustrates the arguments that can be used for supporting an interpretation and defending against a distortion. The tools of argumentation theory, a discipline aimed at investigating the uses of arguments by combining insights from pragmatics, logic, and communication, are applied to provide an original account of interpretation and reporting, and to describe and illustrate tactics and procedures that can be used and implemented for practical purposes.. This book will appeal to scholars in the fields of political communication, communication in general, argumentation theory, rhetoric and pragmatics, as well as to people working in public speech, speech writing, and discourse analysis. (shrink)

This paper proposes an argumentation-based procedure for legal interpretation, by reinterpreting the traditional canons of textual interpretation in terms of argumentation schemes, which are then classified, formalized, and represented through argument visualization and evaluation tools. The problem of statutory interpretation is framed as one of weighing contested interpretations as pro and con arguments. The paper builds an interpretation procedure by formulating a set of argumentation schemes that can be used to comparatively evaluate the types of arguments used in cases of (...) contested statutory interpretation in law. A simplified version of the Carneades Argumentation System is applied in a case analysis showing how the procedure works. A logical model for statutory interpretation is finally presented, covering pro-tanto and all-things-considered interpretive conclusions. (shrink)

Can the idea of a minimal proposition be successfully held? I will first formulate what the minimal proposition is in the minimalist’s mind, taking Emma Borg as the representative. What a minimalist seeks for a minimal proposition is the abstract and skeletal core meaning of a sentence, and this faith is founded on the notion of minimal word meaning—an atomic, code-like, conceptual thing. I show that the problem of this notion of minimal proposition lies in the three features, intuitive read-off, (...) invariantness, and truth-evaluability, that Borg ascribes to it. I shall argue, first, that positing a conceptual-like thing as the invariant minimal content of word cannot support the invariantness of the minimal proposition of a sentence, and second, that the skeletal content, as the minimal proposition of a sentence, is a grammatically analyzed product and thus is hardly truth evaluable. According to the analyses, the idea of a minimal proposition with these three features identified by minimalists cannot be maintained. (shrink)

Pragmatics, Micropragmatics, Macropragmatics The paper addresses the distinction between micropragmatics and macropragmatics. It is postulated that this differentiation, a consequence of a number of controversies surrounding the core field of pragmatics, does manifest a number of conceptual merits and methodological feasibility. The article also aims to elaborate on the four concepts central to the methodology of pragmatics, i.e. deixis, presupposition, implicature and speech acts, from an essentially ‘micropragmatic’ perspective, describing their contribution to the proposition of an utterance, its illocutionary force, (...) and a wide range of effects the utterance may produce. At the same time, however, three relativities-regularities are indicated and presented as prompts for an integrated study of intentionality at the macro level of discourse/text. (shrink)

The classification of a state of affairs under a legal category can be considered as a kind of con- densed decision that can be made explicit, analyzed, and assessed us- ing argumentation schemes. In this paper, the controversial conflict of opinions concerning the nature of “marriage” in Obergefell v. Hodges is analyzed pointing out the dialecti- cal strategies used for addressing the interpretive doubts. The dispute about the same-sex couples’ right to marry hides a much deeper disa- greement not only (...) about what mar- riage is, but more importantly about the dialectical rules for defining it. (shrink)

This paper defends a purely semantic notionof what is said against various recent objections. Theobjections each cite some sort of linguistic,psychological, or epistemological fact that issupposed to show that on any viable notion of what aspeaker says in uttering a sentence, there ispragmatic intrusion into what is said. Relying on amodified version of Grice's notion, on which what issaid must be a projection of the syntax of the utteredsentence, I argue that a purely semantic notion isneeded to account for the (...) linguistically determinedinput to the hearer's inference to what, if anything,the speaker intends to be conveying in uttering thesentence. (shrink)

This paper discusses the proper taxonomy of the semantics-pragmatics divide. Debates about taxonomy are not always pointless. In interesting cases taxonomic proposals involve theoretical assumptions about the studied field, which might be judged correct or incorrect. Here I want to contrast an approach to the semantics-pragmatics dichotomy, motivated by a broadly Gricean perspective I take to be correct, with a contemporary version of an opposing “Wittgensteinian” view. I will focus mostly on a well-known example: the treatment of referential uses of (...) descriptions and descriptive uses of indexicals. The paper is structured as follows. I will start by characterizing in the first section the version of the Gricean approach I favor; in the second section, I will illustrate the differences between the two views by focussing on the example, and in the third section I will object to what I take to be the main Wittgensteinian consideration. (shrink)

The implicit content associated with incomplete definite descriptions is contributed in the form of definite descriptions of situations. A definite description of this kind is contributed by a small structure in the syntax, which is interpreted, in general terms, as ‘the situation that bears R to s’.

Two main methods for analysing de re readings of definite descriptions in intensional contexts coexist: that of evaluating the description in the actual world, whether by means of scope, actuality operators, or non-local world binding, and that of substituting another description, usually one expressing a salient or ‘vivid’ acquaintance relation to an attitude holder, prior to evaluation. Recent work on so-called descriptive indexicals suggests that contrary to common assumptions, both methods are needed, for different ends. This paper aims to show (...) that there is indeed a division of labour between the two methods of analysis and to identify criteria for choosing among alternative ways to model the second, substitutional method. (shrink)

The problem of establishing the best interpretation of a speech act is of fundamental importance in argumentation and communication in general. A party in a dialogue can interpret another’s or his own speech acts in the most convenient ways to achieve his dialogical goals. In defamation law this phenomenon becomes particularly important, as the dialogical effects of a communicative move may result in legal consequences. The purpose of this paper is to combine the instruments provided by argumentation theory with the (...) advances in pragmatics in order to propose an argumentative approach to meaning reconstruction. This theoretical proposal will be applied to and tested against defamation cases at common law. Interpretation is represented as based on a hierarchy of interpretative presumptions. On this view, the development of the logical form of an utterance is regarded as the result of an abductive pattern of reasoning in which various types of presumptions are confronted and the weakest ones are excluded. Conflicts of interpretations and equivocation become essentially interwoven with the dialectical problem of fulfilling the burden of defeating a presumption. The interpreter has a burden of explaining why a given presumption is subject to default, assuming that the speaker is reasonable and acting based on a set of shared expectations. (shrink)

Languages involving modalities and languages involving vagueness have each been thoroughly studied. On the other hand, virtually nothing has been said about the interaction of modality and vagueness. This paper aims to start filling that gap. Section 1 is a discussion of various possible sources of vague modality. Section 2 puts forward a model theory for a quantified language with operators for modality and vagueness. The model theory is followed by a discussion of the resulting logic. In Section 3, the (...) framework will permit us to address a puzzle raised by Elizabeth Barnes and Robert Williams. (shrink)

We pose two arguments for the view that sentences containing definite descriptions semantically express multiple propositions: a general proposition as Russell suggested, and a singular proposition featuring the individual who uniquely satisfies the description at the world-time of utterance. One argument mirrors David Kaplan's arguments that indexicals express singular propositions through a context-sensitive character. The second argument mirrors Kent Bach's and Stephen Neale's arguments for pluralist views about terms putatively triggering conventional implicatures, appositive, and nonrestrictive relative clauses. After presenting these (...) arguments, we show that rival explanations (appeals to implicature, referential use, presupposition, etc.) do not offer equally compelling explanations of the data, and defend the methodology employed in the arguments against some criticisms. (shrink)

semantic minimalism and moderte contextualism.

I propose some rules that regiment substitutions of NPs.

attributive/referential. Pragmatic intrusion.

Explicatures are not cancellable. Theoretical considerations.

This paper has two purposes: the first is to critically examine Kripke’s well-known arguments against Descriptivism and suggest that they are not as decisive as many have thought; the second is to argue that proper names do encode descriptive information of various kinds, that such information may be truth-conditionally significant, and hence that a name’s truth-conditional contribution is not limited to its referent.

Grimberg identifies four arguments which she alleges are used in my paper‘Pragmatics and Singular Reference’(Bezuidenhout, 1996a) in order to establish the truth-conditional relevance of de re modes of presentation. In fact, only one of these, properly understood, is an argument which I would endorse. However, I do plead guilty to having used examples with features which misleadingly suggest that I endorse these various arguments. It is an easy matter to construct examples free from these defects, which is what I attempt (...) to do. (shrink)

A widely accepted thesis in the philosophy of language is that natural language proper names are rigid designators, and that they are so de jure, or as a matter of the “semantic rules of the language.” This paper questions this claim, arguing that rigidity cannot be plausibly construed as a property of name types and that the alternative, rigidity construed as a property of tokens, means that they cannot be considered rigid de jure; rigidity in this case must be viewed (...) as a pragmatic and not a semantic property. (shrink)

This paper continues an ongoing debate between Michael Devitt and me on referential uses of definite descriptions. He has argued that definite descriptions have referential meanings, and I have argued that they do not. Having previously rebutted the view that referential uses are akin to particularized conversational implicatures, he now he rebuts the view that they are akin to generalized conversational implicatures. I agree that the GCI is not the best model, but I maintain that in exploiting the quantificational meaning (...) of definite descriptions, referential uses involve a different sort of pragmatic regularity. Also, I try to bolster my objection to Devitt’s claim that the word ‘the’ is semantically ambiguous. (shrink)

The paper defends a version of Direct Reference for indexicals on which reference-fixing material (token-reflexive conditions) plays the role of an ancillary presupposition.

Even though it’s based on a bad argument, there’s something to Strawson’s dictum. He might have likened ‘referring expression’ to phrases like ‘eating utensil’ and ‘dining room’: just as utensils don’t eat and dining rooms don’t dine, so, he might have argued, expressions don’t refer. Actually, that wasn’t his argument, though it does make you wonder. Rather, Strawson exploited the fact that almost any referring expression, whether an indexical, demonstrative, proper name, or definite description, can be used to refer to (...) different things in different contexts. This fact, he argued, is enough to show that what refers are speakers, not expressions. Here he didn’t take seriously the perfectly coherent view that an expression’s reference can vary with context. So, he concluded, what varies from context to context is not what a given expression refers to but what a speaker uses it to refer to. Strawson went on to suggest that there are several dimensions of difference between various sorts of referring expressions: degree of dependence on context, degree of “descriptive meaning,” and being governed by a general convention vs. an expressionspecific one. But despite these differences, he insisted that regardless of kind, referring expressions don’t themselves refer — speakers use them to refer. (shrink)

Self-awareness is commonly expressed by means of indexical expressions, primarily, first- person pronouns like.

This paper builds a nine-step method for determining whether a straw man fallacy has been committed in a given case or not, by starting with some relatively easy textbook cases and moving to more realistic and harder cases. The paper shows how the type of argument associated with the fallacy can be proved to be a fallacy in a normative argumentation model, and then moves on to the practical task of building a hands-on method for applying the model to real (...) examples of argumentation. Insights from linguistic pragmatics are used to distinguish the different pragmatic processes involved in reconstructing what is said and what is meant by an utterance, and to differentiate strong and weak commitments. In particular, the process of interpretation is analyzed in terms of an abductive pattern of reasoning, based on co-textual and contextual information, and assessable through the instruments of argumentation theory. (shrink)

The interpretation and the indirect reporting of a speaker’s communicative intentions lie at the crossroad between pragmatics, argumentation theory, and forensic linguistics. Since the leading case Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., in the United States the legal problem of determining the truth of a quotation is essentially equated with the correctness of its indirect reporting, i.e. the representation of the speaker’s intentions. For this reason, indirect reports are treated as interpretations of what the speaker intends to communicate. Theoretical considerations, (...) aimed at establishing the pragmatic meaning of an utterance and differentiating between presumptive and non-presumptive interpretation, are thus interwoven with the practical legal need of distinguishing a correct indirect report from an indirect one or a misquotation. An incorrect report or a misquotation has the dialectical effect of attributing to the misquoted party commitments that he never held, which the latter needs to rebut. This shifting of the burden of persuasion can be increased by using strategically the conflict between the presumptive interpretation of an utterance and the non-presumptive one, i.e. the different types of pragmatic ambiguity. When an interpreter is confronted with an utterance taken out of its dialogical context, his interpretative process is not guided by the actual context or intention, but rather the most frequent or prototypical dialogical setting or the most typical individual purpose that it could have served to achieve. This presumptive reconstruction can be used to provide a prima facie case that the other party needs to reject. The stronger the interpretative presumptions a speaker needs to rebut, the more effective the misquotation strategy. The conflict between the systematic and the presumptive process of interpretation can be represented as an argumentative mechanism of reconstruction of the individual intention, which allows one to assess the reasonableness of the interpretative reasoning. (shrink)

The fallacy of ignoring qualifications, or secundum quid et simpliciter, is a deceptive strategy that is pervasive in argumentative dialogues, discourses, and discussions. It consists in misrepresenting an utterance so that its meaning is broadened, narrowed, or simply modified to pursue different goals, such as drawing a specific conclusion, attacking the interlocutor, or generating humorous reactions. The “secundum quid” was described by Aristotle as an interpretative manipulative strategy, based on the contrast between the “proper” sense of a statement and its (...) meaning taken absolutely or in a certain respect. However, how can an “unqualified” statement have a proper meaning different from the qualified one, and vice versa? This “linguistic” fallacy brings to light a complex relationship between pragmatics, argumentation, and interpretation. The secundum quid is described in this paper as a manipulative argument, whose deceptive effect lies in its pragmatic dimension. This fallacy is analyzed as a strategy of decontextualization lying at the interface between pragmatics and argumentation and consisting of the unwarranted passage from an ut-terance to its semantic representation. By ignoring the available evidence and the presumptive interpretation of a statement, the speaker places it in a different context or suppresses textual and contextual evidence to infer a specific meaning different from the presumable one. (shrink)

This paper proposes an argumentation-based procedure for legal interpretation, by reinterpreting the traditional canons of textual interpretation in terms of argumentation schemes, which are then classified, formalized, and represented through argument visualization and evaluation tools. The problem of statutory interpretation is framed as one of weighing contested interpretations as pro and con arguments. The paper builds an interpretation procedure by formulating a set of argumentation schemes that can be used to comparatively evaluate the types of arguments used in cases of (...) contested statutory interpretation in law. A simplified version of the Carneades Argumentation System is applied in a case analysis showing how the procedure works. A logical model for statutory interpretation is finally presented, covering pro-tanto and all-things-considered interpretive conclusions. -/- . (shrink)

This paper is an example of how contextual information interacts with the interpretation of noun phrases (NPs) in discourse. When we encounter an NP escorted by the definite article or a proper name, the expectation is triggered that the speaker is referring to some referent x that the hearer can normally identify. Strawson and Russell have agreed that a referent must be associated with a definite description so that the assertion containing it can be said to be true. In the (...) case where a description does not refer to anything, the assertion is considered by Russell to be false, while Strawson says that the issue of truth or falsity does not arise. In this paper, we examine a case in which contextual information interacts with the interpretation of NPs in discourse and the hearer is not expected to identify a referent when hearing a proper name. In this case, the issue of truth or falsity does not arise, because the hearer does not identify the referent. In fact, s/he does not intend for the discourse to about a referent at all. These situations are primarily represented by sentences uttered during the course of a grammar lecture, in which the lecturer is explaining a rule of language and does not focus on external reality. The hearers are aware of this focus and do not process the NP (in general a proper name) to identify a specific referent. This discourse is of three types, which will be discussed at the end of this paper. -/- Keywords: reference; pragmeme; presupposition; fictional discourse; exemplification acts. (shrink)

It is generally thought that definite determiners exclusively mark nouns as definite. In several languages, however, definite determiners may modify both nouns and verbs. As I will argue, the existence of these “multi‐functional” elements suggests that determiners are in fact phrases. This syntactic move has a philosophical payoff. Among other things, it allows us to cast Donnellan's distinction as an ordinary consequence of the context‐invariant compositional semantics of natural language, not as a matter of contextual manipulation or lexical ambiguity. Multi‐functional (...) determiners show us that Donnellan's distinction is,contraDonnellan, a matter of grammar. (shrink)

Within the Gricean framework in pragmatics, communication is understood as an inferential activity. Other approaches to the study of linguistic communication have contended that language is argumentative in some essential sense. My aim is to study the question of whether and how the practices of inferring and arguing can be taken to contribute to meaning in linguistic communication. I shall suggest a two-fold hypothesis. First, what makes of communication an inferential activity is given with its calculability, i.e. with the possibility (...) to rationally recover the assigned meaning by means of an explicit inference. Secondly, the normative positions that we recognize and assign each other with our speech acts comprise obligations and rights of a dialectical character; but this fact does not entail nor presuppose an argumentative nature in language or speech. Both inferring and arguing are needed, however, in the activity of justifying and assessing our speech acts. (shrink)

The objectives of this paper are twofold. The first is to present a differentiation between two kinds of deferred uses of indexicals: those in which indexical utterances express singular propositions (I term them deferred reference proper) and those where they express general propositions (called descriptive uses of indexicals). The second objective is the analysis of the descriptive uses of indexicals. In contrast to Nunberg, who treats descriptive uses as a special case of deferred reference in which a property contributes to (...) the proposition expressed, I argue that examples in which a general proposition is indeed expressed by an indexical cannot be treated by assuming that the property is a deferred referent of the pronoun. I propose an analysis of descriptive uses of indexicals by means of a pragmatic mechanism of ‘descriptive anaphora’, which attempts to explain the special kind of contribution of the property retrieved from the context to the proposition that is characteristic of the descriptive interpretation. (shrink)

The analysis of multimodal argumentation in advertising is a crucial and problematic area of research. While its importance is growing in a time characterized by images and pictorial messages, the methods used for interpreting and reconstructing the structure of arguments expressed through verbal and visual means capture only isolated dimensions of this complex phenomenon. This paper intends to propose and illustrate a methodology for the reconstruction and analysis of “double-mode” arguments in advertisements, combining the instruments developed in social semiotics, pragmatics, (...) and argumentation theory. An advertisement is processed through a five-step path. The analysis of its context, text genre, and images leads to a first representation of the messages that it encodes both pictorially and verbally (step 1). These first semantic representations are further enriched by including their polyphonic articulations and presuppositions (step 2), their explicatures (step 3), and their dialogical functions and illocutionary forces (step 4). These pragmatic steps retrieve the commitment structure of the ad, which allows a further argument analysis conducted through argumentation schemes (step 5). (shrink)

This chapter proposes a dialectical approach to legal interpretation, consisting of three dimensions: a formalization of the canons of interpretation in terms of argumentation schemes; a dialectical classification of interpretive schemes; and a logical and computational model for comparing the arguments pro and contra an interpretation. The traditional interpretive maxims or canons used in both common and civil law are translated into defeasible patterns of arguments, which can be evaluated through sets of corresponding critical questions. These interpretive argumentation schemes are (...) classified in general categories and a distinction is drawn between schemes supporting and rebutting an interpretation. This framework allows conceiving statutory interpretation as a dialectical procedure consisting in weighing arguments pro and contra an interpretation. This procedure is formalized and represented computationally through tools from formal argumentation systems. (shrink)

Viebahn (2018) has recently argued that several tests for ambiguity, such as the conjunction-reduction test, are not reliable as tests for polysemy, but only as tests for homonymy. I look at the more fine-grained distinction between regular and irregular polysemy and I argue for a more nuanced conclusion: the tests under discussion provide systematic evidence for homonymy and irregular polysemy but need to be used with more care to test for regular polysemy. I put this conclusion at work in the (...) context of the debate over the alleged referential-attributive ambiguity of the definite article. In reply to various criticisms, defenders of the ambiguity view argue that this is a case of polysemy. But opponents object that the dual use of the definite article fails tests for ambiguity. The debate seems to have come to stalemate, unless the relevance of the tests is determined for cases of alleged polysemy. I conclude that the balance of considerations incline towards rejecting the ambiguity thesis. (shrink)

The argument from convention contends that the regular use of definite descriptions as referential devices strongly implies that a referential semantic convention underlies such usage. On the presumption that definite descriptions also participate in a quantificational semantic convention, the argument from convention has served as an argument for the thesis that the English definite article is ambiguous. Here, I revisit this relatively new argument. First, I address two recurring criticisms of the argument from convention: its alleged tendency to overgenerate and (...) its apparent evidential inadequacy. These criticisms are found wanting. Second, following Zacharska, I argue that while the argument from convention does alter the landscape of logical possibilities insofar as it provides good grounds for treating Donnellan’s referential–attributive distinction as having truth-conditional consequences, the argument from convention nonetheless fails to demonstrate that ‘the’ requires two lexical entries. (shrink)

Contextualism, Pragmatics and Definite Descriptions Very few philosophers and linguists doubt that definite descriptions have attributive uses and referential uses. The point of disagreement concerns whether the difference in uses is grounded on a difference in meaning. The Ambiguity Theory holds while the Implicature Theory denies that definite descriptions are ambiguous expressions, having an attributive meaning and a referential meaning. Contextualists have attempted to steer between the Ambiguity Theory and the Implicature Theory. I claim that the early contextualist account provided (...) by Recanati and Bezuidehnout based on the idea that definite descriptions are semantically underdetermined and in need of a completion from the contextually available information through an optional top-down pragmatic process suffers from an explanatory gap. (shrink)

Paul Horwich is aware of the fact that his theory as stated in his works is directly applicable only to a language in which a word, understood as a syntactic type, is connected with exactly one literal meaning. Yet he claims that the theory is expandable to include homonymy and indexicality and thus may be considered as applicable to natural language. My concern in this paper is with yet another kind of ambiguity—systematic polysemy—that assigns multiple meanings to one linguistic type. (...) I want to combine the characteristics of systematic polysemy with the Kaplanian insight that meanings of expressions may be defined by semantic rules which assign content in context and to ask the question if minimalism about truth and meaning is compatible with such rule-based systematic polysemy. I will first explain why the expressions that exhibit rule-based systematic polysemy are difficult to combine with a truth theory that is based on a use theory of meaning before proceeding to argue that indexicals and proper names are such expressions. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a non-referential interpretation of some uses of indexicals embedded under epistemic modals. The so-called descriptive uses of indexicals come in several types and it is argued that those embedded within the scope of modal operators do not require non-referential interpretation, provided the modality is interpreted as epistemic. I endeavor to show that even if we allow an epistemic interpretation of modalities, the resulting interpretation will still be inadequate as long as we retain a referential (...) interpretation of indexicals. I then propose an analysis of descriptive indexicals that combines an epistemic interpretation of modality with a non-referential interpretation of indexicals. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present a theory of referential uses of definite descriptions that is alternative to Neale’s theory of Gödelian completions but nonetheless assumes two tenets of Neale’s view: the Russellian analysis of definite descriptions is basically correct, i.e. definite descriptions are quantified NPs and referential uses are not to be explained in terms of the Gricean distinction between what is said and what is meant. The proposition said is the intuitive content of an assertion as (...) opposed to contents that are conversational implicatures. The compositional system computes the proposition said taking into account the semantic information encoded in a sentence and all relevant contextual information. The proposition said is the input for processing the proposition meant as the result of Gricean conversational implicatures. The computation of the proposition said involves linguistic decoding as well as pragmatic inferences. Notice that Neale Philosophical Perspectives, 22, 375–442, uses ‘implied’ instead of ‘meant’). Neale’s Russellian approach to referential uses is assumed. I give no direct argument to prove that Neale’s approach is superior to a Gricean approach and no direct argument to prove that it is superior to an approach such as Devitt’s one that introduces a semantic ambiguity between referential and attributive definite descriptions. Contrary to Neale’s theory of Gödelian completions, the theory I present preserves the uniqueness condition of the orthodox quantificational meaning of definite descriptions as a contribution to what is said on referential uses. I argue that from the orthodox Russellian point of view this is a remarkable advantage over Neale’s theory of Gödelian completions. (shrink)

A defining assumption in the debate on contextual influences on truth-conditional content is that such content is often incompletely determined by what is specified in linguistic form. The debate then turns on whether this is evidence for positing a more richly articulated logical form or else a pragmatic process of free enrichment that posits truly unarticulated constituents that are unspecified in linguistic form. Questioning this focus on semantics and pragmatics, this article focuses on the independent grammatical dimensions of the problem. (...) Against the background of a principled account of the different ways in which the lexicon and the grammar, respectively, determine aspects of propositional meaning, and an uncontentious notion of content, nothing turns out to be ‘missing’ in grammatical expressions in order for them to encode complete propositional thoughts. As this predicts, when putatively hidden constituents are made overt or are otherwise added, propositions result that are systematically different from the thoughts originally expressed. Context, while potentially affecting lexically specified aspects of meaning, never affects grammar-determined ones, suggesting a specific role for grammar in the normal cognitive mode. (shrink)

Explicatures are not cancellable. Theoretical considerations.

In this paper my aim is to approach the referential¿attributive distinction in the interpretation of definite descriptions, originally discussed by Donnellan (1966), from a cognitive perspective grounded in Sperber and Wilson¿s Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986/95). In particular, I argue that definite descriptions encode a procedural semantics, in the sense of Blakemore (1987), which is neutral as between referential and attributive readings (among others). On this account, the distinction between referential and attributive readings arises as a result of the (...) differing links that exist between different types of mental representation and the world, rather than as a result of the differing links between language and mental representations. (shrink)