This essay argues that cases of apparently sub-sentential speech, such as Charles’ utterance of ‘a world famous topologist’ in the presence of a suitably salient woman, are unproblematic from the viewpoint of the Traditional View of meaning and truth-conditions. My argument is grounded on the distinction between different senses of ‘truth-conditions’ in double-index semantics, and on an understanding of semantic inputs as constraints on logical forms. Given these conceptual resources, I argue that an utterly traditional understanding of the relationships between (...) meaning and truth yields the intuitively desired results. (shrink)

Niezdaniowe akty mowy to przynajmniej pozornie niezdaniowe wypowiedzi, za których pomocą mówiący dokonują pewnych aktów illokucyjnych: stwierdzają, pytają, proszą itp. Wśród teoretyków zajmujących się takimi wypowiedziami można wskazać zwolenników podejścia, które głosi, że większość takich wypowiedzi tojednak — wbrew pozorom — wypowiedzi zdaniowe (elipsy), oraz zwolenników stanowiska, zgodnie z którym treść takich wypowiedzi musi być bezpośrednio wzbogacona z kontekstu za pomocą procesów pragmatycznych niekontrolowanych semantycznie. W pierwszej części tej pracy przyglądam się bliżej stanowisku traktującemu wypowiedzi niezdaniowe jako elipsy i zastanowiam (...) się, czy można uznać, że kontekst pozajęzy- kowy może wyznaczać sposób uzupełnienia wyrażenia do pełnego zdania w taki sposób, że pierwotna wypowiedź niezdaniowa może być uznana za elipsę. Następnie przedstawiam stanowisko, zgodnie z którym wypowiedzi niezdaniowe to udane akty illokucyjne niewymagające wzbogacenia pragmatycznego. Argumentuję, że taki pogląd nie jest adekwatny, ponieważ na jego gruncie wypowiedzi niezdaniowych nie można uznać za pełnoprawne akty mowy. W dalszej części pracy proponuję wersję stanowiska pragmatycznego, opartą na relatywizmie umiarkowanym Franęois Recanatiego. Proponowana przeze mnie koncepcja pozwala uznać, że mimo iż wypowiedzi niezdaniowe semantycznie nie wyrażają sądów i nie mają wartości logicznej, to po odpowiednim wzbogaceniu z kontekstu pozajęzykowego mają na tyle określoną treść (i moc), że mogą być uznane za udane akty illokucyjne. Koncepcja ta pozwala również odpowiedzieć na zarzut ze zgodności gramatycznej, który jest jednym z najpoważniejszych zarzutów, z jakimi muszą się zmierzyć wszystkie koncepcje pragmatyczne. (shrink)

In the first part of my paper I briefly present Jerzy Pelc’s functional approach to logical semiotics of natural language. This approach focuses on the use of natural language expressions and on its dependence on context and conversational situation. One of the important goals of this analysis is to appreciate the role of sentences in natural language and stress that it is by means of sentences that language fulfills its main roles. However, for Pelc almost any expression can be used (...) as a sentence, despite not being a grammatical sentence. In the second part I try to place Pelc’s standpoint within the framework of contemporary semantic minimalism – contextualism debate. I pay special attention to his treatment of subsentential expressions used to express propositions and argue that his view belongs to pragmatics-oriented approaches to subsentential speech acts. (shrink)

Bare plural generic sentences pervade ordinary talk. And yet it is extremely controversial what semantics to assign to such sentences. In this paper, I achieve two tasks. First, I develop a novel classification of the various standard uses to which bare plurals may be put. This “variety data” is important—it gives rise to much of the difficulty in systematically theorizing about bare plurals. Second, I develop a novel account of bare plurals, the radical account. On this account, all bare plurals (...) fail to express propositions. The content of a bare plural has to be pragmatically “completed” by a speaker in order for her to make an assertion. At least the content of a quantifier expression has to be supplied. But sometimes, the content of a sentential operator or modal verb is also supplied. The radical account straightforwardly explains the variety data: Speakers’ communicative intentions vary wildly across different contexts. (shrink)

Wittgenstein discusses speakers exploiting context to inject meaning into the sentences that they use. One facet of situation comedy is context-injected ambiguity, where scriptwriters artfully construct situations such that, because of conflicting contextual clues, a character, though uttering a sentence that contains neither ambiguous words nor amphibolous contruction may plausibly be interpreted in at least two distinct ways. This highlights an important distinction between the (concise) sentence that a speaker uses and what the speaker means, the disclosure of which may (...) require considerable spelling out. Understanding this phenomenon of nonindexical contextualism is the key to solving, inter alia , problems where, puzzlingly, exchanging a singular term in a statement with a co-referential one fails to preserve truth-value. This is a rare case where there is a huge debate in the recent literature that is decisively settled by Wittgenstein’s approach. (shrink)

Much of the best contemporary work in the philosophy of language and content makes appeal to the theories developed in generative syntax. In particular, there is a presumption that—at some level and in some way—the structures provided by syntactic theory mesh with or support our conception of content/linguistic meaning as grounded in our first-person understanding of our communicative speech acts. This paper will suggest that there is no such tight fit. Its claim will be that, if recent generative theories are (...) on the right lines, syntactic structure provides both too much and too little to serve as the structural partner for content, at least as that notion is generally understood in philosophy. The paper will substantiate these claims by an assessment of the recent work of King, Stanley, and others. (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)

In this paper, I critically examine the major philosophical standpoints regarding subsentential speech acts such as “Nice dress”, “Under the table”, or “Where?”. The opponents of this category argue either that apparent subsentential speech acts are ellipses or that they are not full-fledged speech acts. The defenders of subsentential speech acts argue that even though they are not sentences in the syntactic or the semantic sense, they can be used to perform a speech act. I argue in defence of subsentential (...) speech acts and propose to analyze them using Recanati’s moderate relativism. (shrink)

Metaphysics has had a long history of debate over its viability, and substantivity. This thesis explores issues connected to the realism question within the domain of metaphysics, ultimately aiming to defend a realist, substantive metaphysics by responding to so-called deflationary approaches, which have become prominent, and well supported within the recent metametaphysical and metaontological literature. To this end, I begin by examining the changing nature of the realism question. I argue that characterising realism and anti-realism through theories of truth unduly (...) places epistemology prior to ontology, and is unwarranted in assuming a non-neutrality between theories of truth and positions within the realism debate. I therefore propose a characterisation of realism and anti-realism understood through truthmaking. This produces a suitable working characterisation of realism that will be used within the remainder of this project. In the second section, I trace the historical influences upon current deflationary approaches to metaphysics, most prominently those of Carnap, and Putnam. I argue that Quine’s supposed attack on Carnap’s anti-metaphysical thought fails, and show how current deflationary thought, most prominently exhibited by Hirsch, came to focus on linguistically derived concerns over the substantivity of metaphysics. In the third section, I outline a number of issues for the deflationist, and defend the coherency and legitimacy of the unrestricted existential quantifier. Focusing on the linguistic aspect of deflationism, I argue that the conception of language that the deflationist relies upon lacks suitable empirical and theoretical support within linguistics and other related domains. Furthermore, I suggest that linguistic analysis in fact supports the claim that the quantifier carries no inherent restrictions. This restores our ability to suitably posit the unrestricted existential quantifier, as a quantifier wherein the domain is only restricted by metaphysically substantive restrictions. Through this, I argue that metaphysics is a substantive domain of discourse. Lastly, I sketch a positive account of how, under an empirically and theoretically justified conception of language, metaphysics can be coherently held to be a realist, substantive enterprise, contra claims that hold that the nature of language inherently prevents metaphysics being considered to be a substantive domain of discourse. (shrink)