Abstract
This article addresses the following problem: which is the format and scope of a formal semantic theory adequate to the description and explanation of semantic phenomena present in natural languages? The first section exposes the main principles for a semantics of natural languages, given the criticisms of Contextualism. The second section presents the main features of the research program proposed by P.M. Pietroski. Finally, it is presented a brief evaluation of this program in the light of the criteria presented in the previous sections. I argue that this program has considerable methodological virtues, because it adopts as explanandum substantial empirical generalizations, syntactic phenomena which must be explained. It is therefore a proposal that does not merely describe the intuitions of speakers and encode them in logical-mathematical notation.
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