The copredication argument

Abstract

The standard view of truth-conditional semantics is that it is world-involving in the sense that a theory that specifies truth conditions eo ipso is a theory that specifies the way the world must be if the target sentences are to be true. It would appear to follow that the semantic properties of expressions, such as nominals, specify the very worldly objects that make true or false the sentences that host the nominals. Chomsky and others have raised a fundamental complaint against this thought: perfectly quotidian nominals, such as London or book, may occur copredicatively as a single argument of categorically mismatched predicates, which prima facie preclude a coherent uniform construal of the nominal argument. The argument has hitherto been presented via examples that challenge the standard view. My aim here is to present the argument explicitly, defend it against some likely counterclaims, and resolve what might appear to be a decisive consideration against the conclusion of the argument, viz., if nominals as copredicatively occurring do not contribute uniform worldly entities, then how can the copredicative constructions be counted as true

The Diversity of Fiction and Copredication: An Accommodation Problem

“…To think so is effectively to fall victim to a pun, as if one thought that a meal that is delicious and a meal that lasts all afternoon is the very same thing. That is to say, the lesson of copredication is not that there are different modes of predication, but that there is not the one external semantic value or referent that may support the various predicates (see Collins 2017). Take Bolkonsky.…”

“…A natural response to such accommodation worries, entertained by Kripke (2013) and in a different fashion by latter-day so-called Meinongians, is to forgo a univocal account of fiction and settle for distinct accounts of in-and out-fiction. As intimated, though, in-and out-predications can be readily mixed up, a species of the general phenomenon of copredication, where a single unambiguous nominal receives simultaneous distinct interpretations relative to distinct predicates (Bond is a killer but remains as popular as ever) (cp., Chomsky 2000;Pietroski 2003;Asher 2011;Collins 2017). Copredication appears to render all extant accounts of fiction either (1) essentially partial, in accommodating one basic kind of fiction but not another, or (2) merely inadequate due to their endorsing the erroneous idea that fiction comes in categorically exclusive forms.…”

Genericitysans Gen

“…Copredication covers a range of complex phenomena (see Schubert & Pelletier, , for an early discussion pertaining to genericity; cf., Collins, , ). Presently, the problem is that if the difference between kind‐selecting and generic predication is structurally encoded to cater for the difference between (50a) and (50b), then (50c) should be gibberish, its subject being both kind‐referring, thanks to the predicate widespread , and generically quantified over (a restrictor for Gen ), thanks to the predicate irritating .…”

“…Copredication poses a profound problem, of course, to any and every view that takes a single argument to have a uniform significance across varied lexical predicates. In effect, copredication just is the prima facie refutation of such a uniformity doctrine (cf., Collins, ). A coercive account is one that essentially ties the construal of an argument with its predicate or modifier; thus, coercion predicts copredicational structures.…”

“…Asher () presents a highly developed account, but the bottom line for present purposes is that an argument‐taking item may coerce a reading of an argument independently of what other coercion is operating on the argument. This is an odd state of affairs from the perspective of a traditional semantic account that insists upon ontologically weighty truth conditions, but copredication is a standing refutation of such accounts, anyway, in the sense that no thing can be the uniform value of the subject of copredication (cf., Collins, , ). The moral for our thinking about generics is that genericity can be localised as the effect of a general linguistic mechanism in co‐operation with wider cognitive representations.…”