Abstract
Stainton points out that speakers “can make assertions while speaking sub-sententially”. He argues for a “pragmatics-oriented approach” to these phenomena and against a “semantics-oriented approach”. In contrast, I argue for a largely semantics-oriented approach: typically, sub-sentential utterances assert a truth-conditional proposition in virtue of exploiting a semantic convention. Thus, there is an “implicit-demonstrative convention” in English of expressing a thought that a particular object in mind is F by saying simply ‘F’. I note also that some sub-sentential assertions include demonstrations and argue that these exploit another semantic convention for expressing a thought with a particular object in mind. I consider four objections that Stainton has to a semantics- oriented approach. The most interesting is the “syntactic ellipsis” objection, which rests on two planks: (A) the assumption that this approach must claim that what appears on the surface to be a sub-sentential is, at some deeper level of syntactic analysis, really a sentence; (B) the claim that there is no such syntactic ellipsis in these sub-sentential utterances. I argue that (A) is wrong and that (B) may well be. I also reject the other three objections: “too much ambiguity”; “no explanatory work”; and “fails a Kripkean test”. Nonetheless, occasionally, sub-sentential utterances semantically assert only a fragment of a truth-conditional proposition. This fragment needs to be pragmatically enriched to yield a propositional message. To this extent a pragmatics-oriented approach is correct.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
“Pragmatics” is also used for “the theory of interpretation”, the study of the processes of interpreting utterances. So the term is ambiguous (Devitt 2013a: 103–5).
- 3.
I say “largely” because I accept the Chomskian view that some syntax is innate. The qualification should be taken as read in future.
- 4.
I think that conventions should loom very large in our view of human language. In stark contrast, Chomsky thinks that the “regularities in usage” needed for linguistic conventions “are few and scattered” (1996: 47; see also 1980: 81–3). Furthermore, such conventions as there are do not have “any interesting bearing on the theory of meaning or knowledge of language” (1996: 48). I think these views are very mistaken (2006a: 178–89; 2006b: 581–2, 598–605; 2008a: 217–29).
- 5.
Linguists also get evidence from usage by testing reaction times, eye tracking, and electromagnetic brain potentials.
- 6.
Some prefer to say that the reference is determined by what the speaker “intends to refer to”. This can be just a harmless difference but it may not be. Having x in mind in using the term simply requires that the part of the thought that causes that use refers to x. In contrast, for a speaker literally to intend to refer to x, given that intentions are propositional attitudes, seems to require that she entertain a proposition containing the concept of reference. So she can’t refer without thinking about reference! This would be far too intellectualized a picture of referring. Uttering and referring are intentional actions, of course, but it seems better to avoid talking of intentions when describing them.
- 7.
Other gestures have a conventional meaning too. Thus one can assert that the Yankees will reach the play offs by responding to “Will the Yankees reach the play offs?” with a nod. The nod conveys that message by convention and there is nothing interestingly pragmatic about it.
- 8.
He now thinks that a demonstration “is an aid to communication, like speaking more slowly and loudly, but is of no semantic significance” (1989b: 582). Clearly I disagree.
- 9.
One can demonstrate an object by meaningfully moving one’s eyes, of course, but merely looking at an object is not demonstrating it.
- 10.
Of course, the gesture makes Agnew’s picture salient and hence the audience is likely to take that picture to be the referent of both the demonstrative and the gesture. This would be a misunderstanding arising from Kaplan’s failure to follow the convention for demonstrations. It is a matter for “the epistemology of interpretation”. What makes an object the referent is its causal relation to the thought expressed. This is a matter of “the metaphysics of meaning” and salience has nothing to do with it; or so I have argued (2013b: 294 n. 12); see also sec. 6.3 below.
- 11.
She also cites Frege 1977. Fodor 2001 is an effective criticism of the Isomorphic Principle: “If you read a sentence as though it were compositional, then the thought that it ought to be conventionally used to express often turns out not to be the one that it is conventionally used to express” (p. 13).
- 12.
- 13.
We might see these productive “meta-conventions” as examples of what are called “regular polysemy” (Ravin and Leacocke 2000: 10).
- 14.
Thanks to Richard Stillman for these suggestions.
- 15.
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Devitt, M. (2018). Sub-Sententials: Pragmatics or Semantics?. In: Capone, A., Carapezza, M., Lo Piparo, F. (eds) Further Advances in Pragmatics and Philosophy. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72173-6_3
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