In this paper we present some benefits of semantic minimalism. In particular, we stress how minimalism allows us to avoid cognitive overloading, in that it does not posit hidden indexicals or variables at the LF or representational level and it does not posit the operation of free enrichment processes when we produce or hear a sentence. We nonetheless argue that a fully adequate semantic minimalism should embrace a form of relativism—that is, the view that semantic content must be evaluated, pace (...) Cappelen and Lepore, vis-à-vis a given situation, the latter being a fragment of a possible world or a partial world. In so doing we shall show how Cappelen and Lepore damage the insight of semantic minimalism insofar as they insist that the semantic content should be evaluated with respect to a whole possible world. This move fails to capture the powerful contextualist intuition that it does not make much sense to evaluate the content of, say, Naomi is rich, or Jon is tall, with respect to, for instance, the actual world. (shrink)

Je présente le principe de compositionnalité et deux arguments classiques en sa faveur — un argument de Davidson et un autre attribuable aux sémanticiens vériconditionnalistes. Je soutiens ensuite que deux catégories d’expressions — les pronoms pluriels et les contextuels — constituent des contre-exemples pour l’argument vériconditionnaliste, mais pas pour l’argument de Davidson. La raison en est que les premiers ont de fortes exigences quant aux entités constituant la valeur sémantique des expressions linguistiques faisant partie du lexique d’une langue, alors que (...) l’argument de Davidson n’en a pratiquement aucune. Je propose finalement la notion de carte de contenu afin de prendre en compte l’idée que les énonciations n’ont pas toutes des conditions de vérité sémantiquement définies, mais que toutes déterminent tout de même sémantiquement, en tout ou en partie, une entité dotée de conditions de vérité.I introduce the Principle of Compositionality and two arguments usually invoked to motivate it. The first one comes from Davidson and the second one from truth conditional semanticists. I suggest that two types of terms — plural pronouns and contextuals — prove that the latter is flawed. However, Davidson’s argument remains plausible. The reason is that the truth conditional argument has very strong requirements with respect to the semantic value of lexical items, while Davidson’s is not very demanding. I finally offer the notion of a content map to fit the idea that even if all utterances do not have semantically defined truth conditions, they nonetheless determine, completely or in part, a truth valuable entity. (shrink)