Abstract
Some years ago, Strawson argued that the presence of ambiguous terms in a language made some of Quine's claims about the adequacy of the theory of reference quite untenable ([8]). In this paper, I would like to argue that the presence of ambiguous terms does raise a question about Quine's claims that a Tarski definition can be given for a regimented language adequate for serious purposes, and about his claim that the Tarski paradigm adequately clarifies the notion of truth in ordinary language. I shall also argue that the presence of ambiguous terms raises a difficulty for Davidson's program of using a Tarski-like analysis to give a theory of meaning for natural languages. In the end, their presence raises a question about the Tarski material adequacy itself, the condition which straightforwardly and intuitively is said to guarantee that the notion of truth being defined is a notion of truth.
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