Schoubye.org

Descriptions, Truth Value Intuitions, and Questions (.pdf)

Since the famous debate between Russell (1905, 1957) and Strawson (1950, 1964) linguistic intuitions about truth values have been considered notoriously unreliable as a guide to the semantics of definite descriptions. As a result, most existing semantic analyses of definites leave a large number of intuitions unexplained. In this paper, I explore the nature of the relationship between truth value intuitions and non-referring definites. Inspired by comments in Strawson (1964), I argue that given certain systematic considerations, one can provide a structured explanation of conflicting intuitions. I show that the intuitions of falsity, which proponents of a Russellian analysis often appeal to, result from evaluating sentences in relation to specific questions in context. This is shown by developing a method for predicting when sentences containing non-referring definites elicit intuitions of falsity. My proposed analysis draws importantly on Roberts (1996, 2004) and recent research in the semantics and pragmatics of focus.

Existence Commitments and Presuppositions (.pdf)

Russell's (1905) celebrated analysis of definite descriptions is often said to provide a straightforward way of assigning adequate truth conditions to non-denoting descriptions in attitude contexts. This assumption has however been seriously questioned by Heim (1991), Elbourne (2005, 2008), and Kripke (2005) who argue that Russell's existential analysis yields incorrect predictions in e.g. non-doxastic contexts. Heim and Elbourne both contend that the unfortunate predictions are avoided by a presuppositional analysis. In this paper, I argue that Heim and Elbourne's solution is inadequate and I present an alternative. I contend that the presuppositional analysis is the correct way to solve the problem, but that such a solution requires much more radical semantic changes than Heim and Elbourne assume. I begin by demonstrating that the problem arises for weak determiners, e.g. indefinites, and I argue that these must be analyzed as triggers of existence presuppositions. Second, I show that if existence presuppositions are captured in terms of partial functions, as is standard, the problem cannot be solved. I then argue that if the puzzle presented is to be solved, we need a semantic framework that is dynamic — i.e. a framework that permits presuppositions to bind into asserted contents.

Pronominal Ambiguity (.pdf)

The problem of pronominal ambiguity has divided philosophers of language and linguists alike into roughly two groups; those who regard pronouns as genuinely ambiguous between referential and bound uses, and those who argue that the ambiguity is systematic and that pronouns should be given a uniform treatment. In this paper, I discuss the problem of pronominal ambiguity by considering a recent proposal for a pragmatically unified account of pronouns, namely the proposal in Recanati (2005). Looking at this particular case, I argue that it's unclear what precisely the problem of pronominal ambiguity amounts to, and that because of this, it's unclear what it would take to solve it. Secondly, I argue that given a specific, but fairly intuitive, way of construing the problem, Recanati's pragmatic proposal fails. I conclude by demonstrating that the semantic revisions enforced by Recanati's proposal leads to severe over-generation problems.