In Groenendijk & Stokhof [1989] a system of dynamic predicate logic (DPL) was developed, as a compositional alternative for classical discourse representation theory (DRT ). DPL shares with DRT the restriction of being a first-order system. In the present paper, we are mainly concerned with overcoming this limitation. We shall define a dynamic semantics for a typed language with λ-abstraction which is compatible with the semantics DPL specifies for the language of first-order predicate logic. We shall propose to use this (...) new logical system as the semantic component of a Montague-style grammar (referred to as dynamic Montague grammar, DMG), which will enable us to extend the compositionality of DPL to the subsentential level. Furthermore, we shall extend this analysis also in this sense that we shall add new, dynamic interpretations for logical constants which in DPL were treated in a static fashion. This will substantially increase the descriptive coverage of DMG. (shrink)

It is a near truism of philosophy of language that sentences are prior to words--that they are the only things that fundamentally have meaning. Robert's Stainton's study interrogates this idea, drawing on a wide body of evidence to argue that speakers can and do use mere words, not sentences, to communicate complex thoughts.

Beliefs are concrete particulars containing ideas of properties and notions of things, which also are concrete. The claim made in a belief report is that the agent has a belief (i) whose content is a specific singular proposition, and (ii) which involves certain of the agent's notions and ideas in a certain way. No words in the report stand for the notions and ideas, so they are unarticulated constituents of the report's content (like the relevant place in "it's raining"). The (...) belief puzzles (Hesperus, Cicero, Pierre) involve reports about two different notions. So the analysis gets the puzzling truth values right. (shrink)

Talk about Beliefs presents a new account of beliefs and of practices of reporting them that yields solutions to foundational problems in the philosophies of...

No one nowadays would deny the importance of conceptual innovation in the growth of scientific knowledge. But how is it possible? And by this I do not mean: what kinds of social, economic, or mental develop- ments are causally responsible for promoting it? That is a question for historians, sociologists and psychologists of science to answer. Instead I shall concern myself with a more philosophical issue, namely: how can the possibility of conceptual innovation be compatible with the way in which (...) we reason about language, meaning and understanding - i.e., what adjustments in, or constraints on, the framework of such reasoning are forced on us by acceptance of this possibility? In particular does it fit in with the project of reconstructing scientific reasoning in artificial languages like Leibniz proposed in the 17th century or Carnap in the 20th? (shrink)

A new kind of defense of the Millian theory of names is given, which explains intuitive counter-examples as depending on pragmatic effects of the relevant sentences, by direct application of Grice’s and Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory and uncontroversial assumptions. I begin by arguing that synonyms are always intersubstitutable, despite Mates’ considerations, and then apply the method to names. Then, a fairly large sample of cases concerning names are dealt with in related ways. It is argued that the method, as (...) applied to the various cases, satisfies the criterion of success: that for every sentence in context, it is a counter-example to Millianism to the extent that it has pragmatic effects (matching speakers’ intuitions). (shrink)

This paper falls into two parts. In the first part, I argue that consideration of general indicative conditionals, e.g., sentences like If a donkey brays it is beaten, provides a powerful argument that a pure material implication analysis of indicative if p, q is correct. In the second part I argue, opposing writers like Jackson, that a Gricean style theory of pragmatics can explain the manifest assertability conditions of if p, q in terms of its conventional content – assumed to (...) be merely (p⊃q) – and the conversational implicature contents which utterance of if p, q may gain in certain contexts. I also defend the pragmatic approach against a recent objection by Edgington that appeal to pragmatics cannot explain what we are inclined to say about the believability conditions, as opposed to the assertability conditions, of indicative if p, q. (shrink)

It's an achievement of the last couple of decades that people who work in linguistic semantics and people who work in the philosophy of language have arrived at a friendly, de facto agreement as to their respective job descriptions. The terms of this agreement are that the semanticists do the work and the philosophers do the worrying. The semanticists try to construct actual theories of meaning (or truth theories, or model theories, or whatever) for one or another kind of expression (...) in one or another natural language; for example, they try to figure out how the temperature could be rising compatibly with the substitutivity of identicals. The philosophers, by contrast, keep an eye on the large, foundational issues, such as: what's the relation between sense and denotation; what's the relation between thought and language; whether translation is determinate; and whether life is like a fountain. Every now and then the philosophers and the semanticists are supposed to get together and compare notes on their respective progress. Or lack thereof. (shrink)

"This book is valuable as expounding in full a theory of meaning that has its roots in the work of Frege and has been of the widest influence.... The chief virtue of the book is its systematic character. From Frege to Quine most philosophical logicians have restricted themselves by piecemeal and local assaults on the problems involved. The book is marked by a genial tolerance. Carnap sees himself as proposing conventions rather than asserting truths. However he provides plenty of matter (...) for argument."-Anthony Quinton, Hibbert Journal. (shrink)

A study of how syntax relates to meaning by a leader of the new generation of philosopher-linguists.

This article is a continuation of a line of investigation I began in ‘Literal Meaning’. Its aim is to explore some of the relations between the meaning of words and sentences and the context of their utterance. The view I shall be challenging is sometimes put by saying that the meaning of a sentence is the meaning that it has independently of any context whatever — the meaning it has in the so-called „null context“. The view I shall be espousing (...) is that in general the meaning of a sentence only has application (it only, for example, determines a set of truth conditions) against a background of assumptions and practices that are not representable as a part of the meaning. (shrink)

In arithmetic, if only because many of its methods and concepts originated in India, it has been the tradition to reason less strictly than in geometry, ...

We prove a theorem stating that any semantics can be encoded as a compositional semanties, which means that, essentially, the standard definition of compositionality is formally vacuous. We then show that when compositional semantics is required to be systematic (that is, the meaning function cannot be arbitrary, but must belong to some class), it is possible to distinguish between compositional and noncompositional semantics. As a result, we believe that the paper clarifies the concept of compositionality and opens the possibility of (...) making systematic formal comparisons of different systems of grammar. (shrink)

The doctrine that meanings are entitieswith a determinate and independent reality is often believed tohave been undermined by Quine's thought experiment of radicaltranslation, which results in an argument for the indeterminacy oftranslation. This paper argues to the contrary. Starting fromQuine's assumption that the meanings of observation sentences arestimulus meanings, i.e., set-theoretical constructions of neuronalstates uniquely determined by inter-subjectively observable facts,the paper shows that this meaning assignment, up to isomorphism,is uniquely extendable to all expressions that occur inobservation sentences. To do so, (...) a theorem recently proven byHodges is used. To derive the conclusion, one only has to assumethat languages are compositional, abide by a generalized contextprinciple and by what I call the category principle. Theseassumptions originating in Frege and Husserl are coherent withQuine's overall position. It is concluded that Quine'snaturalistic approach does not justify scepticism with regard tomeaning, but should rather result in a view that affiliatessemantics with neuroscience. (shrink)

The compositional semantics of sentences like Only mammals give live birth and The flag flies only if the Queen is home is a tough problem. Evidence is presented to show that only here is modifying an underlying proposition (its ‘prejacent’). After discussing the semantics of only, the question of the proper interpretation of the prejacent is explored. It would be nice if the prejacent could be analyzed as having existential quantificational force. But that is difficult to maintain, since the prejacent (...) structures when encountered on their own are naturally read as having a lawlike flavor, which in many analyses is attributed to the semantics of implicit operators alleged to be present in them. In the end, an analysis is presented which attributes some very particular properties to these operators and thereby succeeds in providing the target sentences with intuitively adequate interpretations. These complex constructions can therefore be used as a probe into the nature of implicit quantification in natural language. (shrink)

What words mean plays a role in determining when they would be true; but not an exhaustive one. For that role leaves room for variation in truth conditions, with meanings fixed, from one speaking of words to another. What role meaning plays depends on what truth is; on what words, by virtue of meaning what they do are requied to have done (as spoken) in order to have said what is true. There is a deflationist position on what truth is: (...) the notion is exhausted by a given, specified, mass of 'platitudes', each to the effect that if words said (say) things to be thus, things must be that way. (The thought that thus-and-so is true iff thus-and-so.) These platitudes, and so deflationism, miss that aspect of truth that determines meaning's role. Truth requires words to have the uses which, given what they mean, they should have in the circumstances of their speaking. Through this link with use, when words would be true is a factor fixing what it is they said. (shrink)

Charles Travis; IX*—On Constraints of Generality, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 1994, Pages 165–188, https://doi.org/10.10.

I identify a notion of compositionality at the intersection of the different notions philosophers, linguists, and psychologists are concerned with. The notion is compositionality of expression content: the idea that the content of a complex expression in a context of its utterance is determined by its syntactic structure and the contents of its constituents in the contexts of their respective utterances. Traditional arguments from productivity and systematicity cannot establish that the contents of linguistic expressions are compositionally determined in this sense. (...) I present a novel argument for this thesis. (shrink)

Wayne Davis’s Meaning, Expression and Thought argues that linguistic meaning is conventional use to express ideas. An obvious problem with this proposal is that complex expressions that have never been used are nonetheless meaningful. In response to this concern, Davis associates conventions of use not only with linguistic expressions but also with the modes in which such expressions can combine into larger expressions. I argue that such constructive conventions are in conflict with the principle of compositionality (as it is usually (...) understood) and that (at least in the cases Davis considers) they are unnecessary for semantic explanations. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey of the space of possible analyses of the phenomenon of quantifier domain restriction, together with a set of considerations which militate against all but our own proposal. Among the many accounts we consider and reject are the ‘explicit’ approach to quantifier domain restric‐tion discussed, for example, by Stephen Neale, and the pragmatic approach to quantifier domain restriction proposed by Kent Bach. Our hope is that the exhaustive discussion of this special case of (...) context‐dependence will provide guidelines for how to decide, for an arbitrary case of context‐dependent discourse, whether it should be treated syntactically, semantically, or pragmatically. (shrink)

The topic of this paper is the semantic structure of belief reports of the form 'a believes that p'. it is argued that no existing theory of these sentences satisfactorily accounts for anaphoric relations linking expressions within the embedded complement sentence to expressions outside. a new account of belief reports is proposed which assigns to embedded expressions their normal semantic values but which also exploits frege's idea of using senses to explain the apparent failures of extensionality in the reports.

In the early part of the paper, I attempt to explain a dispute between two parties who endorse the compositionality of language but disagree about its implications: Paul Horwich, and Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore. In the remainder of the paper, I challenge the thesis on which they are agreed, that compositionality can be taken for granted. I suggest that it is not clear what compositionality involves nor whether it obtains. I consider some kinds of apparent counterexamples, and compositionalist responses (...) to them in terms of covert indexicality and unspecific meanings. I argue that the last option is the best for most of the cases I consider. I conclude by stressing, as against Horwich and Fodor and Lepore, that the appropriate question concerns the extent to which compositionality obtains in a natural language, rather than whether it obtains or not, so that the answer is essentially messy, requiring detailed consideration of a wide range of examples. (shrink)

Proponents of deflationism about meaning often claim that the principle of compositionality, when properly understood, places no constraint whatsoever on the nature of lexical meaning. This deflationary thesis admits of both strong and weak readings. On the strong reading, the principle does not rule out any theory of lexical meaning either alone or in conjunction with other independently plausible semantic assumptions. On the weak reading, the principle alone does not rule out any such theory. I argue that, though weak deflationism (...) about compositionality has better initial prospects than strong, neither version of the thesis is credible. In particular, weak deflationism cannot be maintained in conformity with the deflationist commitment to explaining facts about phrase meanings in compositional terms, that is, by appeal to facts about the lexicon. (shrink)

In the context of debates about what form a theory of meaning should take, it is sometimes claimed that one cannot understand an intersective modifier-head construction (e.g., ‘pet fish’) without understanding its lexical parts. Neo-Russellians like Fodor and Lepore contend that non-denotationalist theories of meaning, such as prototype theory and theory theory, cannot explain why this is so, because they cannot provide for the ‘reverse compositional’ character of meaning. I argue that reverse compositionality is a red herring in these debates. (...) I begin by setting out some positive arguments for reverse compositionality and showing that they fail. Then I show that the principle of reverse compositionality has two big strikes against it. First, it is incompatible with all theories of meaning on the market, including the denotationalism favored by neo-Russellians. Second, it explains nothing that is not already explained by its venerable predecessor, the principle of (forward) compositionality. (shrink)

It has often been observed that the meaning of a word may be affected by the other words which occur in the same sentence. How are we to account for this phenomenon of 'semantic flexibility'? It is argued that semantic flexibility reduces to context-sensitivity and does not raise unsurmountable problems for standard compositional accounts. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to assume too simple a view of context-sensitivity. Two basic forms of context-sensitivity are distinguished in the paper. (...) The second form — sense modulation — shows that, in a sense, there is more in the meaning of the whole than can be derived from the meanings of the parts. (shrink)

Many concepts, which can be constituents of thoughts, are somehow indicated with words that can be constituents of sentences. But this assumption is compatible with many hypotheses about the concepts lexicalized, linguistic meanings, and the relevant forms of composition. The lexical items simply label the concepts they lexicalize, and that composition of lexical meanings mirrors composition of the labeled concepts, which exhibit diverse adicities. If a phrase must be understood as an instruction to conjoin monadic concepts that correspond to the (...) constituents, lexicalization must be a process in which non-monadic concepts are used to introduce monadic analogues. But given such analogues, along with some thematic concepts, conjunctions can mimic the effect of saturating polyadic concepts. The lexical items efface conceptual adicity distinctions, making it possible to treat a recursive combination of expressions as a sign of monadic predicate conjunction. (shrink)

The Principle of Semantic Compositionality (sometimes called Frege''s Principle) is the principle that the meaning of a (syntactically complex) whole is a function only of the meanings of its (syntactic) parts together with the manner in which these parts were combined. This principle has been extremely influential throughout the history of formal semantics; it has had a tremendous impact upon modern linguistics ever since Montague Grammars became known; and it has more recently shown up as a guiding principle for a (...) certain direction in cognitive science.Despite the fact that The Principle is vague or underspecified at a number of points — such as what meaning is, what counts as a part, what counts as a syntactic complex, what counts as combination — this has not stopped some people from viewing The Principle as obviously true, true almost by definition. And it has not stopped other people from viewing The Principle as false, almost pernicious in its effect. And some of these latter theorists think that it is an empirically false principle while others think of it as a methodologically wrong-headed way to proceed. (shrink)

In this essay I will consider two theses that are associated with Frege,and will investigate the extent to which Frege really believed them.Much of what I have to say will come as no surprise to scholars of thehistorical Frege. But Frege is not only a historical figure; he alsooccupies a site on the philosophical landscape that has allowed hisdoctrines to seep into the subconscious water table. And scholars in a widevariety of different scholarly establishments then sip from thesedoctrines. I believe (...) that some Frege-interested philosophers at various ofthese establishments might find my conclusions surprising.Some of these philosophical establishments have arisen from an educationalmilieu in which Frege is associated with some specific doctrine at theexpense of not even being aware of other milieux where other specificdoctrines are given sole prominence. The two theses which I will discussillustrate this point. Each of them is called Frege''s Principle, but byphilosophers from different milieux. By calling them milieux I do not want to convey the idea that they are each located at some specificsocio-politico-geographico-temporal location. Rather, it is a matter oftheir each being located at different places on the intellectuallandscape. For this reason one might (and I sometimes will) call them(interpretative) traditions. (shrink)

In recent articles Fodor and Lepore have argued that not only do considerations of learnability dictate that meaning must be compositional in the wellknown sense that the meanings of all sentences are determined by the meanings of a finite number of primitive expressions and a finite number of operations on them, but also that meaning must be 'reverse compositional' as well, in the sense that the meanings of the primitive expressions of which a complex expression is composed must be determined (...) by the meaning of that complex expression plus the manner of its composition. I argue against the requirement of reverse compositionality and against the claim that learnability requires it. I consider some objections and close the paper by arguing against the related claim that concepts are reverse compositional. (shrink)

Ordinary semantic compositionality (meaning of whole determined from meanings of parts plus composition) can serve to explain how a hearer manages to assign an appropriate meaning to a new sentence. But it does not serve to explain how the speaker manages to find an appropriate sentence for expressing a new thought. For this we would need a principle of inverse compositionality, by which the expression of a complex content is determined by the expressions of it parts and the mode of (...) composition. But this presupposes that contents have constituent structure, and this cannot be taken for granted. However, it can be proved that if a certain principle of substitutivity is valid for a particular language, then the meanings expressed by its sentences can justifiably be treated as structured. In its simplest form, this principle says that if in a complex expression a constituent is replaced by another constituent with a different meaning, the new complex has a meaning different from the original. This principle is again inversely related to the normal compositional principle of substitutivity. The combination of ordinary and inverse compositionality is here called 'strong compositionality'. The proof is carried out in the algebraic framework developed by Wilfrid Hodges and Dag Westerståhl. (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)

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)