Original scientific paper

Heavy Hands, Magic, and Scene-Reading Traps

Stephen Neale

Abstract

This is one of a series of articles in which I examine errors that philosophers of language may be led to make if already prone to exaggerating the rôle compositional semantics can play in explaining how we communicate, whether by expressing propositions with our words or by
merely implying them. In the present article, I am concerned less with “pragmatic contributions” to the propositions we express—contributions
some philosophers seem rather desperate to deny the existence or ubiquity of—than I am with certain types of traps that those who exaggerate
the rôle of semantic convention and underestimate the rôle of pragmatic inference are apt to fall into.

Keywords

semantics; pragmatics; definite descriptions; demonstrative descriptions (deictic and descriptive uses of); singular terms; psychological verbs

Hrčak ID:

93214

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/93214

Publication date:

30.10.2007.

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