Syntax, More or Less

Abstract

Much of the best contemporary work in the philosophy of language and content makes appeal to the theories developed in generative syntax. In particular, there is a presumption that-at some level and in some way-the structures provided by syntactic theory mesh with or support our conception of content/linguistic meaning as grounded in our first-person understanding of our communicative speech acts. This paper will suggest that there is no such tight fit. Its claim will be that, if recent generative theories are on the right lines, syntactic structure provides both too much and too little to serve as the structural partner for content, at least as that notion is generally understood in philosophy. The paper will substantiate these claims by an assessment of the recent work of King, Stanley, and others.

Nothing is Hidden: Contextualism and the Grammar‐Meaning Interface

“…According to Marti (), too, a hidden variable is obligatorily present in ‘logical form’ as a syntactic argument, despite the fact that there is no syntactic way for this to be so (cf. Collins, , p. 832).…”

“…This is not so for the hidden constituents posited in the present debate, where constituents lack motivation in established general principles of linguistic computation . Stanley's () arguments from syntactic binding would therefore have been methodologically crucial, tipping the balance in favour of what I call the semantic view—were it not for the fact that, (i) from a syntactic viewpoint, they are weak and under‐articulated (Collins, , pp. 829–43), and (ii) the pragmatist can account for the exact same binding phenomena without detouring through a linguistic level of logical form (e.g.…”

Impossible interpretations, impossible demands

“…30 Though, I'm quite happy to acknowledge that the syntactic proposal and it's free enrichment rivals leave much to be desired. For problems with the former, see Blair (2005), Collins (2007), Neale (2007), Ostertag (2008), and Pupa and Troseth (2011). For problems with the latter, consult Cappelen and Lepore (2005), Martí (2006), Stanley (2007), and Sennet (2011).…”

Truth and Language, Natural and Formal

“…The proper way to state the objection, therefore, is to claim that there is a real level of linguistic structure that is fully transparent, and so, at that level, natural language is like a formal language. A range of complex issues arise with this objection (properly stated), which I have partly spoken about elsewhere, so let me be sparring (Collins 2007a).…”