A ‘multiple-proposition phenomenon’ is a putative counterexample to the widespread implicit assumption that a simple indicative sentence semantically expresses at most one proposition. Several philosophers and linguists have recently developed hypotheses concerning this notion. The guiding questions motivating this research are: Is there an interesting and homogenous semantic category of MP phenomena? If so, what is the import? Do MP theories have any relevance to important current questions in the study of language? I motivate an affirmative answer to, and then (...) argue that MP theorizing is quite relevant to debates at the semantics/ pragmatics interface. (shrink)

Peter Ludlow presents the first book on the philosophy of generative linguistics, including both Chomsky's government and binding theory and his minimalist ...

In several works, Frege argues that content is objective (i.e., thethoughts we entertain and communicate, and the senses of which theyare composed, are public, not private, property). There are, however,some remarks in the Fregean corpus that are in tension with this view.This paper is centered on an investigation of the most notorious andextreme such passage: the `Dr. Lauben example, from Frege (1918). Aprincipal aim is to attain more clarity on the evident tension withinFreges views on content, between this dominant objectivism (...) and someelements that seem to run counter to it, via developing an understandingof the `Dr. Lauben example. Then I will argue that this interpretation goes some way toward undermining some prevalent contemporary viewsabout language. Based on the advice of Dr. Lauben, I will argue againsta certain understanding of the causal-historical theory of reference –more specifically, of the phenomenon of deferential uses of linguisticexpressions – upon which these views are premised, and I will drawout some morals that pertain to individualism and competence. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall explore a determiner in natural language which is ambivalent as to whether it should be classified as quantificational or objectdenoting: the determiner both. Both in many ways appears to be a paradigmatic quantifier; and yet, I shall argue, it can be interpreted as having an individual—an object—as semantic value. To show the significance of this, I shall discuss two ways of thinking about quantifiers. We often think about quantifiers via intuitions about kinds of thoughts. Certain (...) terms are naturally used to express singular thoughts, and appear to do so by contributing objects to the thoughts expressed. Other terms are naturally used to express general thoughts, and appear to do so by contributing higher-order properties to the thoughts expressed. Viewed this way, the main condition on whether a term is a quantifier or not is whether its semantic value is an object or a higher-order property. At least, these provide necessary conditions. Both can be interpreted as contributing objects to thoughts, and in many cases appears to express genuine singular thoughts. Thinking about quantifiers this way, both can appear object-denoting and non-quantificational. We also often think about quantifiers in terms of a range linguistic features, including semantic value, presupposition, scope, binding, syntactic distribution, and many others. Viewed this way, I shall argue, both can appear quantificational. In particular, it displays scope behavior that is one of the hallmarks of quantification. But, I shall show, it can do so even if given a semantics on which it denotes an object. Thus, both appears quantificational by some linguistic standards, and yet appears object-denoting by standards based on intuitions about the kinds.. (shrink)

Complex demonstratives, expressions of the form 'That F', 'These Fs', etc., have traditionally been taken to be referring terms. Yet they exhibit many of the features of quantified noun phrases. This has led some philosophers to suggest that demonstrative determiners are a special kind of quantifier, which can be paraphrased using a context sensitive definite description. Both these views contain elements of the truth, though each is mistaken. We advance a novel account of the semantic form of complex demonstratives that (...) shows how to reconcile the view that they function like quantified noun phrases with the view that simple demonstratives function as context sensitive referring terms wherever they occur. If we are right, previous accounts of complex demonstratives have misconceived their semantic role; and philosophers relying on the majority view in employing complex demonstratives in analysis have proceeded on a false assumption. (shrink)

1. Complex demonstratives (noun phrases of the form ‘that F’) often behave in devious ways which do not fit well with their traditional understanding as devices of direct reference. Namely, there a...

It seems that the most common strategy to solve the liar paradox is to argue that liar sentences are meaningless and, consequently, truth-valueless. The other main option that has grown in recent years is the dialetheist view that treats liar sentences as meaningful, truth-apt and true. In this paper I will offer a new approach that does not belong in either camp. I hope to show that liar sentences can be interpreted as meaningful, truth-apt and false, but without engendering any (...) contradiction. This seemingly impossible task can be accomplished once the semantic structure of the liar sentence is unpacked by a quantified analysis. The paper will be divided in two sections. In the first section, I present the independent reasons that motivate the quantificational strategy and how it works in the liar sentence. In the second section, I explain how this quantificational analysis allows us to explain the truth teller sentence and a counter-example advanced against truthmaker maximalism, and deal with some potential objections. (shrink)

In ‘Reference and Definite Descriptions', Keith Donnellan claimed that Bertrand Russell and Peter Strawson ignored referential uses of definite descriptions. The intense debate that followed Donnellan's paper focused on the contrast between Donnellan and Russell, leaving Strawson aside. In this paper, I focus on the contrast between Donnellan and Strawson. By focusing on this contrast, my aim is, first, to clarify the nature of Donnellan's distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions and, second, to argue that a proper (...) understanding of referential uses holds the key to a proper understanding of direct reference. Contrary to the standard view, the crucial issue is not the nature of the proposition expressed (singular versus general) but how a speaker comes to talk about an object. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers have offered compelling reasons to think that demonstratives are best represented as variables, sensitive not to the context of utterance, but to a variable assignment. Variablists typically explain familiar intuitions about demonstratives—intuitions that suggest that what is said by way of a demonstrative sentence varies systematically over contexts—by claiming that contexts initialize a particular assignment of values to variables. I argue that we do not need to link context and the assignment parameter in this way, and that we (...) would do better not to. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 34 (summer 2014): 67–78 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036–01631; online 1913–8032 c:\users\kenneth\documents\type3401\rj 3401 193 red.docx 2014-05-14 8:54 PM aiscussion THE STRUCTURE, SEMANTICS, AND USE OF DESCRIPTIONS Jolen Galaugher Philosophy / McMaster U. Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4l6 [email protected] / [email protected] he division of designators into denoting expressions and referring expressions has become a familiar feature of the (...) Russellian orthodoxy in the philosophy of language. At a glance, expressions of the referring kind seem to be unstructured, lacking independently meaningful proper parts, while those of the denoting kind seem to be structured quantifiers, having molecular complexity. Most examples fit this pattern: proper names, indexicals, and demonstratives are unstructured, while definite descriptions and other quanti fier phrases are typically structured. On Russell’s 1903 theory of denoting, the semantic structure (independently meaningful proper parts) of denoting complexes had proved a source of difficulty for his logic of propositions. The early theory was not only incapable of explaining both how we are supposed to designate complex meanings and how complex meanings are supposed to denote, but was also at odds with the view that proposition and constituent are logically basic, introducing further functional complexes into the propositional complex. Russell’s 1905 theory of descriptions reconstrued these apparently structured referring expressions as quantified noun phrases. On the new theory, knowing the meaning of such expressions does not require acquaintance with a specific object, but rather a grasp of the truth-conditions of the sentences in which they occur.1 One might say that on the new theory, denoting is linked to object-independent truth-conditions, while referring is linked to object-dependent truth-conditions—a connection elaborated and extended by Kripke and Kaplan. This is the situation as Arthur Sullivan paints it in his new book, Reference and Structure in the Philosophy of Language: a Defense of the 1 Russell articulated the dichotomy in “Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description” (1911), ML, p. 226; Papers 6: 158. For Sullivan’s use of this passage, see his anthology, Logicism and the Philosophy of Language, pp. 79–80, and Reference and Structure in the Philosophy of Language, pp. 13–14, 137, 140 n.15. q= 68 Discussion c:\users\kenneth\documents\type3401\rj 3401 193 red.docx 2014-05-14 8:54 PM Russellian Orthodoxy (2013). In this work, Arthur Sullivan defends a stronger set of claims than the denoting /referring distinction might historically have entailed. Building on Neale’s sharp distinction between semantically unstructured rigid referring expressions and semantically structured restricted quantifiers,2 Sullivan takes it to be crucial that these categories are exhaustive and exclusive, so that all and only referring expressions are unstructured designators, and all and only denoting expressions are structured designators (p. 13). Adopting a distinction from Bach,3 Sullivan maintains that the semantic mechanism of referring designators is simply to conventionally relate the utterance of the designator to the designatum, and hence to express object-dependent propositions, while the semantic mechanism of denoting designators is satisfactional, expressing a compositional condition which may or may not be satisfied by any object and which thus expresses object-independent propositions (p. 11). In Part 1, Sullivan articulates the orthodox theory of reference in terms of these two exhaustive and exclusive categories of designator and the distinct, corresponding semantic mechanisms by which they designate. In Part 2, he provides arguments in favour of the orthodoxy. In Part 3, he deals with apparent counter -examples, reinterpreting complex demonstratives and referential uses of definite descriptions to bring them into conformity with the strict referringversus -denoting dichotomy. In Part 4, he offers a synopsis and some general conclusions. Importantly, in Part 2, Sullivan argues that semantic structure is a necessary but not sufficient condition of non-rigidity, that only denoting designnators are non-rigid, that all unstructured designators are rigid designators, and that the lack of semantic structure is necessary and sufficient for status as a referring expression. Contrary to the view which is now popular, Russell regarded ordinary proper names as... (shrink)

This paper offers a unified, quantificational treatment of incomplete descriptions like ‘the table’. An incomplete quantified expression like ‘every bottle’ (as in “Every bottle is empty”) can feature in true utterances despite the fact that the world contains nonempty bottles. Positing a contextual restriction on the bottles being talked about is a straightforward solution. It is argued that the same strategy can be extended to incomplete definite descriptions across the board. ncorporating the contextual restrictions into semantics involves meeting a complex (...) array of desiderata, yet the apparently simpler pragmatic alternative faces severe problems and is therefore a nonstarter. (shrink)

Using a version of situation semantics, this article argues that bare and complex demonstratives are interpreted as individual concepts.

This paper presents a semantic and pragmatic theory of complex demonstratives. According to this theory, the semantic content of a complex demonstrative, in a context, is simply an object, and the semantic content of a sentence that contains a complex demonstrative, in a context, is a singular proposition. This theory is defended from various objections to direct reference theories of complex demonstratives, including King's objection from quantification into complex demonstratives.

Abstract: A current debate in semantics and pragmatics is whether all contextual effects on truth-conditional content can be traced to logical form, or 'unarticulated constituents' can be supplied by the pragmatic process of free enrichment. In this paper, I defend the latter position. The main objection to this view is that free enrichment appears to overgenerate, not predicting where context cannot affect truth conditions, so that a systematic account is unlikely (Stanley, 2002a). I first examine the semantic alternative proposed by (...) Stanley and others, which assumes extensive hidden structure acting as a linguistic trigger for pragmatic processes, so that all truth-conditional effects of context turn out to be instances of saturation. I show that there are cases of optional pragmatic contributions to the proposition expressed that cannot plausibly be accounted for in this way, and that advocates of this approach will therefore also have to appeal to free enrichment. The final section starts to address the question of how free enrichment is constrained: I argue that it involves only local development or adjustment of parts of logical form, any global developments being excluded by the requirement for the proposition expressed to provide an inferential warrant for the intended implications of the utterance. (shrink)

I have two aims for the present paper, one narrow and one broad. The narrow aim is to show that a class of data originally described by Lynsey Wolter empirically undermine the leading treatments of complex demonstratives that have been described in the literature. The broader aim of the paper is to show that Wolter demonstratives, as I will call the constructions I focus on, are a threat not just to existing treatments, but to any possible theory that retains the (...) uncontroversial assumptions that relative clauses always form a constituent with the nouns they modify, and that semantic composition proceeds sequentially and locally, with the inputs to interpretation having the structure syntax tells us they do. (shrink)

Most philosophers recognize that applying the standard semantics for complex demonstratives to non-deictic instances results in truth conditions that are anomalous, at best. This fact has generated little concern, however, since most philosophers treat non-deictic demonstratives as marginal cases, and believe that they should be analyzed using a distinct semantic mechanism. In this paper, I argue that non-deictic demonstratives cannot be written off; they are widespread in English and foreign languages, and must be treated using the same semantic machinery that (...) is applied to deictic instances. (shrink)

Following Neale, I call the notion that there can be no such thing as a structured referring expression ‘structure skepticism’. The specific aim of this paper is to defuse some putative counterexamples to structure skepticism. The general aim is to bolster the case in favor of the thesis that lack of structure—in a sense to be made precise—is essential to reference.

Complex demonstrative phrases, in English, are phrases such as ‘that woman in the department’ and ‘that car on the corner’. They are of particular interest to philosophers for two related reasons. The first involves the problem of intentionality. If there are phrases that are candidates for “latching directly onto the world,” they are such phrases, and their “simple” counterparts, as in the occurrences of ‘that’ in ‘that is nice’. As a result, philosophers interested in intentionality, from the sense-data theorists to (...) contemporary philosophers of mind, have devoted considerable attention to the question of how a demonstrative thought links to its object. The second reason involves issues in semantics and the philosophy of language. In the course of investigations into the model theory for modal logic in the 1950s and 1960s, philosophers recognized that the simplest way to treat terms was as modally rigid, namely as designating their actual designations relative to any possible world in which they existed, and nothing else in other worlds. It was soon recognized that this semantic property could be elegantly explained by the assumption that the semantics of singular terms reflects the role of singular terms in linking representations directly to the world. If the semantic contribution of a singular term to a thought is simply the object it denotes, and the thought is the object of modal evaluation, then the modal rigidity of the class of terms falls out as a consequence. Demonstrative phrases, both simple and complex, have always been taken to be among the paradigms for this picture of reference, which has come to be known as “the direct reference” model. (shrink)

In the first section of this paper I present a view of linguistic meaning that I label 'Sentence Priority’: the position that semantically primitive language‐world contact is made at the level of complete sentences . Then, in the main part of the paper, I consider and reject an objection against Sentence Priority raised by John Perry, an objection that appeals to Wittgenstein's builders parable. Perry argues that the builder's utterances are utterances of self‐standing nouns, and that therefore they constitute a (...) counter‐example to SP. A sound assessment of Perry's argument, however, depends on a clear distinction between two cases: one in which the four expressions mentioned in Wittgenstein's example exhaust the builders’expressive powers, and one in which they do not. Once these cases are distinguished it can be seen that in neither does Perry's argument go through. (shrink)

According to a straightforward, conservative account of English demonstratives, simple and complex demonstratives are referring expressions belonging to the same semantic category (but they could be understood as either terms or quantifiers); the denotation of a complex demonstrative “dF” (if it has one) must satisfy the nominal “F” in “dF”; and both simple and complex demonstratives function as rigid designators. According to a recent alternative advanced by Lepore and Ludgwig, simple and complex demonstratives belong to different semantic categories (the former (...) being terms while the latter are restricted quantifier phrases); the denotation of a complex demonstrative “dF”(if it has one) need not satisfy the nominal “F”; and complex demonstratives can have narrow scope, which implies that they do not always function as rigid designators. This paper provides evidence that supports the conservative account against the claims of Lepore and Ludwig’s alternative. (shrink)

There is a core to the referential/attributive distinction that reveals a propositional ambiguity that is scope-related and rooted in syntax.

In this paper, we offer a theory of the role of the nominal in complex demonstrative expressions, such as 'this dog' or 'that glove with a hole in it'.

It is argued that the pronouns `she' and `he' are disguised complexdemonstratives of the form `that female/male'. Three theories ofcomplex demonstratives are examined and shown to be committed to theview that `s/he' turns out to be an empty term when used to refer toa hermaphrodite. A fourth theory of complex demonstratives, one thatis hermaphrodite friendly, is proposed. It maintains that complexdemonstratives such as `that female/male' and the pronoun `s/he' can succeed in referring to someone independently of his or her gender.This (...) theory incorporates: (i) a multiple proposition view, i.e., theview that an utterance of a sentence containing a complex demonstrativeexpresses two (or more) propositions, namely the background proposition(s)and the official one; (ii) that the referent of a complex demonstrativeis a component of the official proposition expressed whether it satisfiesthe nominal part of the demonstrative expression or not; (iii) that thenominal part of a complex demonstrative only affect the background proposition(s) and (iv) that the utterance inherits its truth-value onlyfrom the official proposition. (shrink)

In a recent book, Jeffrey King (King 2001) argues that complexdemonstratives, i.e., noun phrases of the form `this/that F, are not singular terms. As such,they are not devices of direct reference contributing the referent to the proposition expressed.In this essay I challenge King's position and show how a direct reference view can handle the datahe proposes in favor of the quantificational account. I argue that when a complex demonstrativecannot be interpreted as a singular term, it is best understood as a (...) case of deferredreference – in which case it should be viewed as an anaphora inheriting its value from a quantifiedterm – or as an emphatic description. (shrink)

This paper presents a number of objections to Jeffrey King's quantificational theory of complex demonstratives. Some of these objections have to do with modality, whereas others concern attitude ascriptions. Various possible replies are considered. The debate between quantificational theorists and direct reference theorists over complex demonstratives is compared with recent debates concerning definite descriptions.

The grammatical constraints on anaphoric binding, known as binding principles, are observed to form a classical square of oppositions. These constraints are then analysed as the effect of phase quantifiers over reference markers in grammatical obliqueness hierarchies, and the resulting phase quantifiers are shown to be organised in a square of logical duality. The impact of this result on the distinction between quantificational and referential nominals as well as on the logical foundations of the semantics of nominals in general is (...) discussed. (shrink)

This is one of a series of articles in which I examine errors that philosophers of language may be led to make if already prone to exaggerating the rôle compositional semantics can play in explaining how we communicate, whether by expressing propositions with our words or by merely implying them. In the present article, I am concerned less with “pragmatic contributions” to the propositions we express—contributions some philosophers seem rather desperate to deny the existence or ubiquity of—than I am with (...) certain types of traps that those who exaggerate the rôle of semantic convention and underestimate the rôle of pragmatic inference are apt to fall into. (shrink)

There is a considerable sub-literature, stretching back over 35 years, addressed to the question: Precisely which general terms ought to be classified as rigid designators? More fundamentally: What should we take the criterion for rigidity to be, for general terms? The aim of this paper is to give new grounds for the old view that if a general term designates the same kind in all possible worlds, then it should be classified as a rigid designator. The new grounds in question (...) have to do with excavating the connection between rigid designation and semantic structure. Other original contributions of the present work consist in developing responses to some objections to this approach to rigid designation. (shrink)

The semantics of noun phrases (NPs) is of crucial importance for both philosophy and linguistics. Throughout much of the history of the debate about the semantics of noun phrases there has been an implicit assumption about how they are to be understood. Basically, it is the assumption that NPs come only in two kinds. In this paper we would like to make that assumption explicit and discuss it and its status in the semantics of natural language. We will have a (...) look at how the assumption is to be understood more precisely, what its methodological status should be, whether it has been abandoned in recent work in semantics, and whether it should be abandoned in future work. To do all this, it’s best to start with some historical context. (shrink)

Average-NPs, such as the one in the title of this paper, have been claimed to be ‘linguistically identical’ to any other definite-NPs but at the same time to be ‘semantically inconsistent’ with these other definite-NPs. To some this is an ironclad proof of the irrelevance of semantics to linguistics. We argue that both of the initial claims are wrong: average-NPs are not ‘linguistically identical’ to other definite-NPs but instead show a number of interesting divergences, and we provide a plausible semantic (...) account for them that is not ‘semantically inconsistent’ with the account afforded other definite-NPs but in fact blends quite nicely with one standard account of the semantics for NPs. (shrink)