Abstract
Atlas (2007) argues that semantic minimalism (as defended by Cappelen & Lepore 2005) fails because it cannot deal with semantic non-specificity. I argue that thereis a plausible version of minimalism-viz., situated minimalism-which doesn't succumb to the non-specificity charge insofar as non-specificity can be dealt with at a postsemantic level. Thus, pragmatics plays no rolewhen it comes to determining the (minimal) proposition expressed. Instead, pragmatic and other extra-semantic considerations enter the scene in characterizing the situation vis-a-vis which the proposition is evaluated. For this reason a plausible form of minimalism must embrace a form of truth-relativism: a proposition is not universally true/false, but true/false only relative to a situation. I show how the position defended is not only (i) more cognitively plausible than either (semantic) minimalism as proposed by Cappelen & Lepore or the positions appealing to pragmaticintrusion into the proposition expressed, but is also (ii) in accordance with ordinary people's intuitions.
Highlights
It is commonly held that a sentence of the form (1) The A is not B has two readings: narrow scope/predicate negation reading vs. wide scope/sentence negation reading
In the third type of case we lack the materials we need for a proposition expressed by a statement, even though we have identified the words and their meanings, and have consulted the contextual factors the indexical meanings direct us to
Instead, one assumes a form of situated minimalism where truth is relativized to situations, Atlas’ charge crumbles, for non-specificity—like other linguistic
Summary
Let’s assume along with Atlas that a sentence of the form “The A is not B” is non-specific. If one accepts the version of minimalism I’ve advocated, i.e. situated minimalism, we could classify John and Jane as being same-sayers for they both utter the same words and express the same nonspecific proposition.29In this case, the semantic content of both utterances can be captured by the truth-conditions in (13) where the relevant situation is quantified over. Under this version of minimalism, the ambiguity regarding the scope of the negation operator is not resolved at the presemantic level by use of context, but is instead resolved at the postsemantic one. At the semantic level we can quantify over these situations
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