In this paper I challenge the common wisdom (see Dummett and Davidson) that sentences are the minimal units with which one can perform a speech act or make a move in the language game. I thus sit with Perry and Stainton in arguing that subsentences can be used to perform full‐fledged speech acts. In my discussion I assume the traditional framework which distinguishes between the proposition expressed and the thought or mental state (possibly a sentence in Mentalese) one comes to grasp when using/understanding an utterance (or sentence‐in‐a‐context) expressing a proposition. Unlike Stainton, I will argue that the proposition expressed by a subsentential assertion and its corresponding thought are not the end product of a pragmatic process of free enrichment. I shall defend the view that a thought may concern something without the thinker having to represent that very thing. This should help us to resist the view that with the utterance of a subsentence enrichment is mandatory. I will further argue that subsentences and their corresponding thoughts are situated. Because of that we can successfully interact and engage in joint ventures using subsentences and be guided by thoughts without having to enrich them. The fact that the actors’ unenriched thoughts are co‐situated may suffice to explain the positive outcome of their joint project. Last but not least, I will also show how the picture I propose gains further support by taking on board Perry’s distinction between reflexive truth conditions and incremental truth conditions (or official content). Since competent speakers can grasp an utterance’s reflexive truth conditions without having to grasp its official content (roughly, the proposition expressed) they can successfully interact without their thoughts having to undergo a process of free enrichment. Moreover, if I’m right in arguing that an utterance’s reflexive truth conditions are the best tool to classify the semantic features of one’s mental state (or sentence in Mentalese), we can further explain mental causation and linguistic communication without appealing to free enrichment.

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A multiple-proposition theory is proposed, according to which a single utterance can express several distinct propositions. An utterance of “Jon, the idiot, missed the train” expresses the official proposition THAT JON MISSED THE TRAIN and the background proposition THAT JON IS AN IDIOT. It is argued that only the official proposition affects the truth-value of the utterance, while the background proposition(s) may be treated similarly to pragmatic presuppositions. The multiple-proposition theory helps us to defend the thesis that, in an utterance such as “Jon1 promised to come but the idiot1 missed the train”, the epithet the idiot must be understood as an attributive anaphor, for it inherits its value from Jon and attributes to Jon the property of being an idiot. It is argued that epithets in such constructions should be viewed in a way similar to quasi-indicators, insofar as the latter are also attributive anaphors. The quasi-indicator she herself in “Jane1 believes that she (herself)1 is rich” inherits its value from Jane and attributes an I-thought to Jane. In focusing on the similarities and differences between epithets and quasi-indicators, we can explain some alleged difficulties, difficulties which suggest that epithets cannot be anaphoric (e.g. “*Jon1 claimed/said/thinks/ … that the bastard1 was honest”). It is shown that the ungrammaticality of sentences like these rests on the fact that the epithet is embedded in what should be a de se attribution (e.g. “Jon1 claimed/said/thinks that he (himself)1 was honest”) while its nature is to contribute to the expression of a de re attribution. This helps us to understand the ungrammaticality of “*Jane1 said/thinks/promised/ … that the idiot1 will come” vs. the grammaticality of “Jane1 said/thinks/promised/ … that she (herself)1 will come” on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the ungrammaticality of “Jon1 ran over a man who was trying to give him (*himself)1 directions” vs. the grammaticality of “Jon1 ran over a man who was trying to give the idiot1 directions”.

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