Abstract
In this paper I propose a partition semantics (Groenendijk and Stokhof in Studies on the semantics of questions and the pragmatics of answers, Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam, 1984) for sentences containing objective predicates that takes into account the phenomenon of occasion-sensitivity associated with so-called Travis cases (Travis in Occasion-sensitivity: Selected essays, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008). The key idea is that the set of worlds in which a sentence is true has a more complex structure as a result of different ways in which it is made true. Different ways may have different capacities to support the attainment of a contextually salient domain goal. I suggest that goal-conduciveness decides whether some utterance of a sentence is accepted as true on a particular occasion at a given world. The utterance will not be accepted as true at a world which belongs to a truth-maker which is less conducive to a contextually salient goal than other truth-makers. Finally, the proposed occasion-sensitive semantics is applied to some cases of disagreement and cancellability.
Highlights
1.1 Objective and discretionary predicatesThis paper presents a novel approach aimed at explaining the occasion-sensitivity of objective predicates
In this paper I proposed an occasion-sensitive semantics for declarative sentences containing objective predicates as a way to account for the phenomenon observed in Travis cases
The suggested explanation for occasion-sensitivity exploits the idea that the set of worlds in which a sentence is true has a more complex structure as a result of different ways in which the sentence is made true
Summary
This paper presents a novel approach aimed at explaining the occasion-sensitivity of objective predicates. I refer to a broad range of predicates such. I would like to thank Maria Aloni, Alun Davies, Alex Davies, Floris Roelofsen, Martin Stokhof, Robert van Rooij, two anonymous reviewers and the editors of this journal for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper
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