This is the first part of a two-part article on semantic compositionality, that is, the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its parts and the way they are put together. Here we provide a brief historical background, a formal framework for syntax and semantics, precise definitions, and a survey of variants of compositionality. Stronger and weaker forms are distinguished, as well as generalized forms that cover extra-linguistic context dependence as well as linguistic (...) context dependence. In the second article, we survey arguments for and arguments against the claim that natural languages are compositional, and consider some problem cases. It will be referred to as Part II. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Pickel and Rabern (2016) argue that a dynamic Tarskian semantics resolves Fine’s antinomy of the variable without the radical consequences for semantics proposed by Fine (2003, 2007). While Pickel and Rabern’s basic insight—a parameter of discourse context that tracks occurrences of variable-binding expressions—is important, I will argue that their own Tarskian theory faces a destructive dilemma: either their theory does not resolve Fine’s antinomy as they propose, or their theory does not reflect the intuitive motivation for (...) what they call structured meanings. I suggest that in response to this dilemma we should reject one of the principles that generates Pickel and Rabern’s version of the antinomy. Here Pickel and Rabern’s insight has surprising, but salutary, foundational consequences for semantics. (shrink)

A common framing has it that any adequate treatment of quotation has to abandon one of the following three principles: (i) The quoted expression is a syntactic constituent of the quote phrase; (ii) If two expressions are derived by applying the same syntactic rule to a sequence of synonymous expressions, then they are synonymous; (iii) The language contains synonymous but distinct expressions. In the following, a formal syntax and semantics will be provided for a quotational language which adheres to all (...) three principles. The point here is not merely to provide a “possibility proof”, but to reveal the hard constraints on the theory of quotation, and to highlight certain assumptions at the syntax/semantics/post-semantics interfaces. (shrink)

A central dispute in understanding Frege’s philosophy concerns how the sense of a complex expression relates to the senses of its component expressions. According to one reading, the sense of a complex expression is a whole built from the senses of the component expressions. On this interpretation, Frege is an early proponent of structured propositions. A rival reading says that senses compose by functional application: the sense of a complex expression is the value of the function denoted by its functional (...) component for the arguments denoted by its remaining components. I argue that two non-negotiable Fregean theses entail that senses compose by functional application. One thesis is that referents compose by functional application. The other thesis is that an expression in an indirect context refers to its customary sense. (shrink)

This paper starts from the observation that the standard arguments for compositionality are really arguments for the computability of semantics. Since computability does not entail compositionality, the question of what justifies compositionality recurs. The paper then elaborates on the idea of recursive semantics as corresponding to computable semantics. It is then shown by means of time complexity theory and with the use of term rewriting as systems of semantic computation, that syntactically unrestricted, noncompositional recursive semantics leads to computational explosion (factorial (...) complexity). Hence, with combinatorially unrestricted syntax, semantics with tractable time complexity is compositional. (shrink)

The principle of compositionality requires that the meaning of a complex expression remains the same after substitution of synonymous expressions. Alleged counterexamples to compositionality seem to force a theoretical choice: either apparent synonyms are not synonyms or synonyms do not syntactically occur where they appear to occur. Some theorists have instead looked to Frege’s doctrine of “reference shift” according to which the meaning of an expression is sensitive to its linguistic context. This doctrine is alleged to retain the relevant claims (...) about synonymy and substitution while respecting the compositionality principle. Thus, Salmon (Philos Rev 115(4):415, 2006) and Glanzberg and King (Philosophers’ Imprint 20(2):1–29, 2020) offer occurrence-based accounts of variable binding, and Pagin and Westerståhl (Linguist Philos 33(5):381–415, 2010c) argue that an occurrence-based semantics delivers a compositional account of quotation. Our thesis is this: the occurrence-based strategies resolve the apparent failures of substitutivity in the same general way as the standard expression-based semantics do. So it is a myth that a Frege-inspired occurrence-based semantics affords a genuine alternative strategy. (shrink)

The meaning that expressions take on particular occasions often depends on the context in ways which seem to transcend its direct effect on context-sensitive parameters. ‘Truth-conditional pragmatics’ is the project of trying to model such semantic flexibility within a compositional truth-conditional framework. Most proposals proceed by radically ‘freeing up’ the compositional operations of language. I argue, however, that the resulting theories are too unconstrained, and predict flexibility in cases where it is not observed. These accounts fall into this position because (...) they rarely, if ever, take advantage of the rich information made available by lexical items. I hold, instead, that lexical items encode both extension and non-extension determining information. Under certain conditions, the non-extension determining information of an expression e can enter into the compositional processes that determine the meaning of more complex expressions which contain e. This paper presents and motivates a set of type-driven compositional operations that can access non-extension determining information and introduce bits of it into the meaning of complex expressions. The resulting multidimensional semantics has the tools to deal with key cases of semantic flexibility in appropriately constrained ways, making it a promising framework to pursue the project of truth-conditional pragmatics. (shrink)

This chapter argues that while quotation marks are polysemous, the thread that runs through all uses of quotation marks that involve reference to expressions is pure quotation, in which an expression formed by enclosing another expression in quotation marks refers to that enclosed expression. We defend a version of the so-called disquotational theory of pure quotation and show how this device is used in direct discourse and attitude attributions, in exposition in scholarly contexts, and in so-called mixed quotation in indirect (...) discourse and attitude attributions. We argue that uses of quotation marks that extend beyond pure quotation have two features in common. First, the expressions appearing in quotation marks are intended to be understood, and that they are intended to be understood is essential to the function that such quotations play in communication, though this does not always involve the expressions contributing their extensional properties to fixing truth conditions for the sentences in which they appear. Second, they appeal to a relation to the expression appearing in quotation marks that plays a role in determining the truth conditions of the sentences in which they appear. (shrink)

According to the quotational theory of meaning ascriptions, sentences like “‘Bruder means brother” are abbreviated synonymy claims, such as “‘Bruder means the same as ‘brother’”. After discussing a problem with Harman’s version of the quotational theory, I present an amended version defended by Field. Then, I address Field’s responses to two arguments against the theory that revolve around translation and the understanding of foreign expressions. Afterwards, I formulate two original arguments against both Harman’s and Field’s versions of the theory. One (...) of them targets the hyperintensionality of quotations and the other raises a problem pertaining to variant spellings of words. (shrink)

Understanding quotation is fundamental to understanding the nature of truth and meaning. Quotation, however, is a remarkably complicated phenomenon, and a vigorous literature on the topic has been growing at an increasing rate.§1 To give you a sense of this work, §1 enlarges upon the significance of studying quotation; §2 presents a rudimentary taxonomy of quotation; and §3 critically surveys theories of how quotation works.

In earlier work (Glüer, K. and P. Pagin. 2006. Proper names and relational modality. Linguistics & Philosophy 29: 507–35; Glüer, K. and P. Pagin. 2008. Relational modality. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 17: 307–22), we developed a semantics for (metaphysical) modal operators that accommodates Kripkean intuitions about proper names in modal contexts even if names are not rigid designators. Graeme Forbes (2011. The problem of factives for sense theories. Analysis 71: 654–62.) criticizes our proposal. He argues that our semantics (...) predicts readings for certain natural language sentences which these simply do not have. These sentences contain mixed contexts involving factive attitude verbs. We argue that the readings our semantics predicts do indeed exist, even if it might take a little work to bring them out. Moreover, denying their existence would have some rather unattractive consequences. (shrink)

This is the second part of a two-part article on compositionality, i.e. the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its parts and the way they are put together. In the first, Pagin and Westerståhl (2010), we provide a general historical background, a formal framework, definitions, and a survey of variants of compositionality. It will be referred to as Part I. Here we discuss arguments for and against the claim that natural languages have (...) a compositional semantics. We also discuss some problem cases, including belief reports, quotation, idioms, and ambiguity. (shrink)

Starting with Frege, the semantics (and pragmatics) of quotation has received a steady flow of attention over the last one hundred years. It has not, however, been subject to the same kind of intense debate and scrutiny as, for example, both the semantics of definite descriptions and propositional attitude verbs. Many philosophers probably share Davidson's experience: ‘When I was initiated into the mysteries of logic and semantics, quotation was usually introduced as a somewhat shady device, and the introduction was accompanied (...) by a stern sermon on the sin of confusing the use and mention of expressions’ (Davidson 1979, p. 79). Those who leave it at that, however, miss out on one of the most difficult and interesting topics in the philosophy of language. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend a traditional approach to semantics, that holds that the outputs of compositional semantics are propositional, i.e. truth conditions. Though traditional, this view has been challenged on a number of fronts over the years. Since classic work of Lewis, arguments have been offered which purport to show that semantic composition requires values that are relativized, e.g. to times, or other parameters that render them no longer propositional. Focusing in recent variants of these arguments involving quantification and (...) binding, we argue that a correct understanding of how composition works gives no reason to relativize semantic values, and that propositional semantic values are in fact the preferred option. We take our argument to be mainly empirical, but along the way, we defend some more general theses. Simple propositional semantic values are viable in composition, we maintain, because composition is itself a complex phenomenon, involving multiple modes of composition. Furthermore, some composition principles make adjustments to the meanings of constituents in the course of composition. These adjustments are by triggered syntactic environments. We argue such small contributions of meaning from syntactic structure are acceptable. (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)

A remarkable thing about natural language is that we can use it to share our beliefs and thoughts about the world with other speakers of our language. In cases of successful communication, beliefs seem to be transferred from speakers to hearers by means of the hearer recovering the contents of the speaker’s utterances. This is so natural to us that we take it for granted in our everyday life, and rarely stop to think about how it's is possible. Nevertheless, it's (...) a phenomenon that calls for explanation. It is natural to expect that natural language semantics has a key explanatory role to play here. In order to understand this role, we must relate the semantic values assigned to sentences by semantic theory with the content of our speech acts. The simplest possible relation would be identity; the meaning of a sentence is simply the belief expressed by an assertion of the sentence in a given context of utterance. However, a number of problem cases in the literature suggest that this cannot be the case. This dissertation offers a critical assessment of the arguments for distinguishing the semantic value of a sentence from it's so called assertoric content, focusing on problems arising from the analysis of tense and temporal expressions. I conclude that they are indeed distinct, and offer a constructive account of how they must be related in order to allow for an explanation of communicative success. (shrink)

Inspired by Schlenker's (2003) seminal 'Plea for Monsters', linguists have been analyzing every occurrence of a shifted indexical by postulating a monstrous operator. My aim in this paper is to show that Kaplan's (1989) original strategy of explaining apparent shifting in terms of a quotational use/mention distinction offers a much more intuitive, parsimonious and empirically superior analysis of many of these phenomena, including direct--indirect switches in Ancient Greek, role shift in signed languages, free indirect discourse in literary narratives, and mixed (...) quotation. Format: . (shrink)

This paper formulates a new argument against the received view in the philosophy of poetry. The received view consists of three tenets: the unity of poetic form and poetic content; the impossibility of paraphrasing and translating poetry; and the hyperintensionality of poetry. We will explore the same detour via direct quotation that has been used by proponents of the received view. We will argue that the hyperintensionality and unity of quotation do not guarantee its untranslatability, and thus that the inference (...) of untranslatability from hyperintensionality and unity is not universally valid. As a consequence, the claim that poetry cannot be translated is left without much support, since it relies on the same kind of inference. However, this does not mean that poetry is translatable; it means only that if it is not translatable, this is due to something other than the combination of hyperintensionality and unity. (shrink)

The standard argument against ordered tuples as propositions is that it is arbitrary what truth-conditions they should have. In this paper we generalize that argument. Firstly, we require that propositions have truth-conditions intrinsically. Secondly, we require strongly equivalent truth-conditions to be identical. Thirdly, we provide a formal framework, taken from Graph Theory, to characterize structure and structured objects in general. The argument in a nutshell is this: structured objects are too fine-grained to be identical to truth-conditions. Without identity, there is (...) no privileged mapping from structured objects to truth-conditions, and hence structured objects do not have truth-conditions intrinsically. Therefore, propositions are not structured objects. (shrink)

Every theory of pure quotation embraces in some form or another the intuitively obvious thesis that pure quotations refer to their quoted expressions. However, they all remain vague about the nature of these latter. This paper proposes to take seriously the fact that quoted items are semantic, not syntactic objects, and to develop therefrom a semantics for pure quotation that retains the basic intuitions and at the same time circumvents standard problems.

In natural language, looks-talk is used in a variety of ways. I investigate three uses of ‘looks’ that have traditionally been distinguished – epistemic, comparative, and phenomenal ‘looks’ – and endorse and develop considerations in support of the view that these amount to polysemy. Focusing on the phenomenal use of ‘looks’, I then investigate connections between its semantics, the content of visual experience, and the metaphysics of looks. I argue that phenomenal ‘looks’ is not a propositional attitude operator: We do (...) not use it to ascribe propositional attitudes to subjects, but to directly ascribe looks to objects, where looks are relational properties. However, I go on to argue that, given the way we use phenomenal ‘looks’, these relational properties are ultimately best understood as phenomenal relational properties, i.e. in terms of relations involving experiences. Along the way, I endorse Byrne’s argument against Jackson’s claim that phenomenal ‘looks F’ only takes predicates for colour, shape, and distance, and raise the issue of compositionality for the resulting view according to which phenomenal ‘looks F’ is context-dependent in a way that allows it to take a vast range of predicates. I conclude by arguing that these considerations concerning the natural language use of ‘looks’, and in particular its phenomenal use, are water on the mills of phenomenal intentionalism, a position in the philosophy of perception according to which experiences are propositional attitudes with phenomenal looks-contents. (shrink)

Quotation has been much studied in philosophy. Given that quotation allows one to diagonalize out of any grammar, there have been comparatively few attempts within the linguistic literature to develop an account within a formal linguistic theory. Nonetheless, given the ubiquity of quotation in natural language, linguists need to explicate the formal mechanisms it employs. The central claim of this paper is that once one assumes a dialogical perspective on language such as provided by the KoS (KoS is not an (...) acronym, despite emphasizing a Konversationally Oriented Semantics) framework, formalized in a rich type theory like Type Theory with Records, much of the mystery evaporates. In particular, one can utilize as denotations for quotative constructions entities that are independently motivated for dialogue processing—utterance types and locutionary propositions, Austinian propositions about speech events. (shrink)