Chomskyan Arguments Against Truth-Conditional Semantics Based on Variability and Co-predication

Abstract

In this paper I try to show that semantics can explain word-to-world relations and that sentences can have meanings that determine truth-conditions. Critics like Chomsky typically maintain that only speakers denote, i.e., only speakers, by using words in one way or another, represent entities or events in the world. However, according to their view, individual acts of denotations are not explained just by virtue of speakers' semantic knowledge (since, according to them, semantic knowledge is very scarce: see Pietroski, 2018). Against this view, I will hold that, in the typical cases considered, semantic knowledge can account for the denotational uses of words of individual speakers.

Predicate order and coherence in copredication

“…Differing from the claim in Liebesman and Magidor (2017) concerning the non-ambiguity of copredication-licensing nominals, by focusing their attention on the nominal school and its range of sense combinations Ortega-Andrés and Vicente (2019) claim that school constitutes a 'multiply polysemous word'; i.e. a nominal with a large number of meanings.…”

“…In contrast to the above, Magidor (2017, 2019) argue that theorising about copredication requires no revisions to type systems or metaphysics (i.e. the abandoning of referential semantics, as in Chomsky 2000; see also Collins 2015Collins , 2017aCollins , 2019Murphy 2014, Vicente 2019) if it can be argued that book (PHYSICAL) and book (ABSTRACT) are separate lexical entries, hence with distinct referential scope. They claim that nominals like book are not ambiguous but encode a single sense (a form of univocity) simultaneously designating both physical and informational entities, and that it is via contextual restriction that multiple readings are permitted.…”

On the nature of the lexicon: The status of rich lexical meanings

“…Composition works only with concepts accessed in the interpretative process. As Del Pinal (2017) points out, the modulated meanings that Recanati speaks about may be aspects of bodies of knowledge that have a (enriched) qualia-like structure (see also Vicente 2019).…”

“…What gives coherence to the structure is that the denotations of the different senses are in some kind of realization relation (a school-building makes the institution real; a school-process makes the function of a school real, etc. ; see Ortega-Andrés & Vicente 2019, Vicente 2019, for development). So ‘conceptualists’ and ‘mereologists’ (see especially Arapinis & Vieu 2015) agree that the different denotations of co-predicational nominals are in very special (metaphysical) relations.…”

Realism and Lexical Flexibility

“…See Falkum and Vicente () for a review. But it is worth highlighting that even those proffering solutions to the co‐predication problem with respect to nouns admit that the case for verbs proves more vexing (Vicente, ).…”