This paper examines three commentaries on the Śabdapariccheda in Kumārila Bhaṭṭa’s Ślokavārttika, along with the the seventeenth century Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā work, the Mānameyodaya. The focus is the Mīmāṃsā principle that only sentences communicate qualified meanings and Kumārila’s discussion of a potential counter-example to this claim–single words which appear to communicate such content. I argue that there is some conflict among commentators over precisely what Kumārila describes with the phrase sāmarthyād anumeyetvād, although he is most likely describing ellipsis completion through arthāpatti. (...) The paper attempts both a cogent exegesis and philosophical evaluation of the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā view of ellipsis completion, arguing that there remain internal tensions in the account of ellipsis preferred by the Bhāṭṭa, tensions which are not entirely resolved even by the late date of the Mānameyodaya. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on a recently discussed phenomenon illustrated by sentences containing predicates of taste: the phenomenon of " perspectival plurality " , whereby sentences containing two or more predicates of taste have readings according to which each predicate pertains to a different perspective. This phenomenon has been shown to be problematic for (at least certain versions of) relativism. My main aim is to further the discussion by showing that the phenomenon extends to other perspectival expressions than predicates (...) of taste and by proposing a general solution to the problem raised by it on behalf of the relativist. The core claim of the solution (" multiple indexing ") is that utterances of sentences containing perspectival expressions should be evaluated with respect to (possibly infinite) sequences of perspective parameters. (shrink)

What distinguishes full-on stating a proposition from merely communicating it? For instance, what distinguishes claiming/asserting/saying that one has never smoked crack cocaine from merely implying/conveying/hinting this? The enormous literature on ‘assertion’ provides many approaches to distinguishing stating from, say, asking and commanding: only the former aims at truth; only the former expresses one's belief; etc. But this leaves my question unanswered, since in merely communicating a proposition one also aims at truth, expresses a belief, etc. My aim is not to (...) criticize extant accounts of the state-versus-merely-convey contrast, but rather to draw on clues from Dummett, functional linguistics and moral theory, to offer a novel one. The main idea is that full-on stating is distinctively conventionalized in a way that conversationally implicating, hinting, giving to understand, etc., are not. Specifically, full-on stating is constitutively tied to a particular conventional, linguistic, function-bearing device, the declarative sentence. To full-on state that p is to hit that ‘target speech act’ which owes its existence to that special-purpose device. It is therefore also to make one's action lie-prone. Nonetheless, once that sui generis target is there to be aimed for, a person may reach it without using the special-purpose tool—e.g. one may full-on state using a mere word or phrase, or coded hand signals, or semaphore. I end by considering several philosophical implications of this means of capturing the contrast. (shrink)

Consider the following sentence: “Mary meditated on the sentence ‘Bill is a good friend’ and concluded that he was a good friend.” It is standardly assumed that in sentences of this sort, containing so‐called “closed” quotations, the expressions occurring between quotation marks are mentioned and do not take their ordinary referents. The quoted NP “Bill” refers, if anything, to the name ‘Bill,’ not to the individual Bill. At the same time, the pronoun “he,” apparently anaphoric on quoted “Bill,” refers to (...) the individual Bill. The case seems thus to invalidate the intuitive principle that pronouns anaphoric on referential expressions inherit their reference from their antecedents. The paper formulates the argument, argues that sentences exhibiting the described pattern do not constitute evidence against the intuitive principle, and proposes an alternative account of the anaphoric relation involved. (shrink)

We revisit a debate initiated some 15 years ago by Ray Elugardo and Robert Stainton about the domain of arguments. Our main result is that arguments are not exclusively sets of linguistic expressions. Instead, as we put it, some non-linguistic items have ‘logical form’. The crucial examples are arguments, both deductive and inductive, made with unembedded words and phrases. … subsentential expressions such as singular terms and predicates… cannot serve as premises or conclusions in inferences.

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)

Potts et seq. presents an analysis of gap-containing supplements where the gap is modelled as a variable over the semantic type of the constituent that the as-clause adjoins to. This much allows the meaning of the gap to be resolved purely compositionally, by defining as as a function that allows the anchor to bind the gap variable. This article presents a class of as-clauses where Potts’s analysis seems to break down, in that the gap cannot be modelled as a variable (...) over the semantic type of the anchor. I propose that these cases can be unified with those in Potts’s work, as well as a larger class of ellipsis phenomena, by assuming that, under certain conditions, surface gaps are composite entities, containing a bound variable and a free variable that are resolved independently of each other. The bound variable is bound by the anchor, and the free variable is resolved by anaphora to a salient discourse object. (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)

I argue that the debate on the division of labor between grammar and pragmatics, at least as it pertains to pragmatic free enrichment, needs to be better grounded empirically. Often, only a reduced set of facts from English is used to substantiate claims regarding pragmatic free enrichment. But considering a reduced set of facts from a single language can only afford limited (and, sometimes, wrong) results, because we can merely see whatever this one language chooses to express. Two cases studies (...) are presented: adjectival fragments, and implicit indefinite objects. A grammatical analysis is defended for them. (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)