Overlooking Conventions: The Trouble With Linguistic Pragmatism (Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 29)

This book criticizes the methodology of the recent semantics-pragmatics debate in the theory of language and proposes an alternative. It applies this methodology to argue for a traditional view against a group of “contextualists” and “pragmatists”, including Sperber and Wilson, Bach, Carston, Recanati, Neale, and many others. The author disagrees with these theorists who hold that the meaning of the sentence in an utterance never, or hardly ever, yields its literal truth-conditional content, even after disambiguation and reference fixing; it needs to be pragmatically supplemented in context. The standard methodology of this debate is to consult intuitions. The book argues that theories should be tested against linguistic usage. Theoretical distinctions, however intuitive, need to be scientifically motivated. Also we should not be guided by Grice’s “Modified Occam’s Razor”, Ruhl’s “Monosemantic Bias”, or other such strategies for “meaning denialism”. From this novel perspective, the striking examples of context relativity that motivate contextualists and pragmatists typically exemplify semantic rather than pragmatic properties. In particular, polysemous phenomena should typically be treated as semantic ambiguity. The author argues that conventions have been overlooked, that there’s no extensive “semantic underdetermination” and that the new theoretical framework of “truth-conditional pragmatics” is a mistake. Preface 6 Contents 10 Chapter 1: Introduction 15 1.1 Background 15 1.2 Summary of Chapters 19 1.2.1 Chapter 2: Reliance on Intuitions 19 1.2.2 Chapter 3: The Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction 19 1.2.3 Chapter 4: Speaker Meanings and Intentions 20 1.2.4 Chapter 5: Linguistic Conventions and Language 21 1.2.5 Chapter 6: Bach and Neale on “What Is Said” 22 1.2.6 Chapter 7: Confusion of the Metaphysics of Meaning with the Epistemology of Interpretation 23 1.2.7 Chapter 8: Modified Occam’s Razor and Meaning Denialism 23 1.2.8 Chapter 9: Referential Descriptions: A Case Study 25 1.2.9 Chapter 10: Saturation and Pragmatism’s Challenge 26 1.2.10 Chapter 11: Polysemy and Pragmatism’s Challenge 26 1.2.11 Chapter 12: Sub-Sententials: Pragmatics or Semantics? 27 References 28 Chapter 2: Reliance on Intuitions 29 2.1 The Received View 29 2.2 The Task? 30 2.3 Experimental Semantics 31 2.4 “Cartesianism” 31 2.5 A Priori Knowledge? 32 2.6 Embodied Theory? 33 2.7 Competence as a Skill 35 2.8 Intuitions as Empirical Judgments 36 2.9 Rejecting “Voice of Competence” 39 2.10 Conclusion 41 References 41 Chapter 3: The Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction 45 3.1 Introduction 45 3.2 The Theoretical Motivation 46 3.2.1 Human Thoughts 46 3.2.2 Animal Communication 47 3.2.3 Human Language 48 3.2.4 Our Theoretical Interest in a Language 50 3.3 “Semantic(s)” and “Pragmatic(s)” 54 3.4 Communication 57 3.5 The Semantics-Pragmatics Dispute 58 3.6 The Evidence 62 3.7 Conclusion 65 References 66 Chapter 4: Speaker Meanings and Intentions 70 4.1 Intending to Refer 70 4.1.1 Objection 1: Implausible Starting Point 71 4.1.2 Objection 2: Incomplete 72 4.1.3 Objection 3: Redundant 73 4.1.4 Objection 4: Misleading 73 4.2 Speaker Meanings and Intentions to Communicate 75 4.2.1 Intending to Communicate or Expressing Thoughts? 75 4.2.2 The Expression of Thought 77 4.2.3 Parikh’s Game-Theoretic Objection 79 4.3 Constraints on Intentions 81 4.4 Conclusion 83 References 84 Chapter 5: Linguistic Conventions and Language 87 5.1 Conventions and Linguistic Meanings 87 5.2 Linguistic Conventions 91 5.3 Collins Against Conventions 93 5.4 Chomsky Against Linguistic Conventions 95 5.5 Chomsky Against Common Languages 97 5.6 Davidson, Malapropisms, Spoonerisms, and Slips 99 5.7 Conclusion 103 References 104 Chapter 6: Bach and Neale on “What Is Said” 106 6.1 Bach’s Notion 106 6.2 Criticisms of Bach 110 6.3 Bach’s Response 113 6.4 Neale’s Notion 115 6.5 Criticisms of Neale 118 6.5.1 The Metaphysics of Semantics 118 6.5.2 The Explanatory Role of Expression Meanings 124 6.6 Languages and Media 128 6.7 Conclusion 129 References 130 Chapter 7: Confusion of the Metaphysics of Meaning with the Epistemology of Interpretation 133 7.1 The Meaning/Interpretation Distinction 133 7.2 Confusing Meaning and Interpretation 135 7.3 Examples of the Confusion 137 7.3.1 Jason Stanley and Zoltan Szabó 137 7.3.2 Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson 137 7.3.3 François Recanati 138 7.3.4 Anne Bezuidenhout 139 7.3.5 Robert Stainton 139 7.3.6 Kepa Korta and John Perry 140 7.4 A Principled Position? 143 7.5 Elugardo and Stainton’s Defense 144 7.5.1 Introduction 144 7.5.2 Clarifying the Defense 145 7.5.3 The Failure of the Defense 146 7.6 Conclusion 149 References 150 Chapter 8: Modified Occam’s Razor and Meaning Denialism 152 8.1 Embracing the Razor 152 8.2 The Falsity of the Razor (as Commonly Construed) 154 8.3 Polysemy, Homonymy, Monosemy 157 8.4 The Onus on Pragmatic Polysemy (1) 159 8.5 Bach on the Razor 166 8.6 Bach’s “Standardization” 168 8.7 Conclusion 175 References 176 Chapter 9: Referential Descriptions: A Case Study 179 9.1 Introduction 179 9.2 Referentially Used Definites 180 9.3 The Argument from Convention 183 9.4 The Onus on a Pragmatic Explanation 186 9.5 The Incompleteness Argument Against Gricean Pragmatic Explanations 189 9.6 Bach’s Pragmatic Defense of Russell 191 9.7 Bach’s Response 195 9.8 Three Further Arguments 198 9.9 Neale’s Illusion 200 9.10 Conclusion 204 References 205 Chapter 10: Saturation and Pragmatism’s Challenge 208 10.1 Pragmatism’s Challenge 208 10.2 Meaning Eliminativism 212 10.3 Semantic Saturation 213 10.4 The Onus on Pragmatic Saturation 220 10.5 The Tyranny of Syntax 223 10.6 Perry’s “Unarticulated Constituents” 225 10.7 Conclusion 227 References 228 Chapter 11: Polysemy and Pragmatism’s Challenge 231 11.1 Polysemy 231 11.2 Semantic Polysemy 233 11.2.1 Metaphor-Based 233 11.2.2 Metonymy-Based 233 11.2.3 Regular Polysemy 234 11.2.4 Mistaken Polysemy Classifications 237 11.2.5 Polysemy vs “Underspecified” Monosemy 244 11.2.6 Polysemy vs Generalized Conversational Implicature 247 11.3 Polysemy in Psycholinguistics 249 11.3.1 Introduction 249 11.3.2 “Represented and Stored” 250 11.3.3 Stored “Under a Single Entry” 252 11.3.4 An “Information-Rich” Lexicon? 255 11.4 Objections to Semantic Polysemy 260 11.4.1 Not Arbitrary 260 11.4.2 Too Psychologically Demanding 262 11.4.3 Overgeneration 263 11.4.4 Proliferation 264 11.4.5 Eternal Sentences 265 11.4.6 Copredication 265 11.5 The Onus on Pragmatic Polysemy (2) 268 11.6 Psycholinguistics and the Experimental Evidence 274 11.6.1 Introduction 274 11.6.2 Klein and Murphy (2001) 275 11.6.3 MacGregor et al. (2015) 278 11.6.4 Frisson (2015) 279 11.6.5 Li and Slevc (2016) 280 11.7 Conclusion 282 References 283 Chapter 12: Sub-Sententials: Pragmatics or Semantics? 287 12.1 Introduction 287 12.2 Implicit Demonstratives 289 12.3 Demonstratives and Demonstrations 291 12.4 Other Examples 293 12.5 The Syntactic Ellipsis Objection 295 12.6 Stainton’s Other Objections 297 12.6.1 Too Much Ambiguity 297 12.6.2 No Explanatory Work 299 12.6.3 Fails a Kripkean Test 300 12.7 The Pragmatic Explanation of Novel Uses 301 12.8 Conclusion 302 References 303 References 304 Author Index 317 Subject Index 322