La polysémie contre le fixisme

Abstract

F. Récanati : La polysémie contre le fixisme Semantic « fixism » is the view according to which non-indexical words and phrases possess Fregean senses conventionally, that is, in a fixed and context-independent manner. I show thai fixism cannol accounl for systematic polysemy in a satisfactory way. To account for systematic polysemy, we must acknowledge that the sense of an expres sion (its condition of satisfaction) is generated rather than merely selected. In the third part of the paper I discuss two models of sense generation. According to « segregalio nism », the sense of a word is generated through the interaction of its context- independent meaning with the context-independent meanings of the other words in the sentence. According to « contextualism », the sense of an expression is generated through the interaction of that expression's meaning with the context, both linguistic and extralinguistic. Semantic « fixism » is the view according to which non-indexical words and phrases possess Fregean senses conventionally, that is, in a fixed and context-independent manner. I show that fixism cannot account for systematic polysemy in a satisfactory way. To account for systematic polysemy, we must acknowledge that the sense of an expression (its condition of satisfaction) is generated rather than merely selected. In the third part of the paper I discuss two models of sense generation. According to « segregationism », the sense of a word is generated through the interaction of its context- independent meaning with the context-independent meanings of the other words in the sentence. According to « contextualism », the sense of an expression is generated through the interaction of that expression's meaning with the context, both linguistic and extralinguistic.