Utterer’s Meaning, Sentence-Meaning, and Word-Meaning

Abstract

My aim in this paper is to throw light on the connection between (a) a notion of meaning which I want to regard as basic, viz. that notion which is involved in saying of someone that by (when) doing such-and-such he meant that so-and-so (in what I have called a non-natural sense of the word ‘meant’), and (b) the notions of meaning involved in saying (i) that a given sentence means ‘so-and-so’ (ii) that a given word or phrase means ‘so-and-so’. What I have to say on these topics should be looked upon as an attempt to provide a sketch of what might, I hope, prove to be a viable theory, rather than as an attempt to provide any part of a finally acceptable theory. The account which I shall offer of the (for me) basic notion of meaning is one which I shall not today seek to defend; I should like its approximate correctness to be assumed, so that attention may be focused on its utility, if correct, in the explication of other and (I hope) derivative notions of meaning. This enterprise forms part of a wider programme which I shall in a moment delineate, though its later stages lie beyond the limits which I have set for this paper.