Saying and Agreeing

Ernie Lepore, Adam Sennet

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

No semantic theory is complete without an account of context sensitivity. But there is little agreement over its scope and limits even though everyone invokes intuition about an expression's behavior in context to determine its context sensitivity. Minimalists like Cappelen and Lepore identify a range of tests which isolate clear cases of context sensitive expressions, such as 'I', 'here', and 'now', to the exclusion of all others. Contextualists try to discredit the tests and supplant them with ones friendlier to their positions. In this paper we will explore and evaluate Cappelen and Hawthorne's recent attempts to discredit Cappelen and Lepore's tests and replace them with others. We will argue they have failed to provide sufficient reason to abandon minimalism. If we are right, minimalism about context sensitivity is still viable.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)583-601
Number of pages19
JournalMind and Language
Volume25
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2010

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Philosophy
  • Linguistics and Language

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