Is Semantics Still Possible

Is semantics still possible?

Jonathan Berg

Department of Philosophy, University of Haifa, Haifa 31-905 Israel

Abstract

The standard view of semanticsthat every disambiguated sentence has a determinate

semantic content, relative to an assignment of contents to its indexical expressions, and notnecessarily identical to what may be conveyed (pragmatically) by its utteranceis defendedagainst standard objections and is also argued for on independent grounds, which suggest that

resistance to the view comes from a failure to distinguish between strict semantics andloose semantics. # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Semantics; Pragmatics; Context; Meaning; What is said; Literal; Nonliteral

1. The question

In the last decade enormous progress seems to have been made in the syntactictheory of natural languages . . . Comparable progress seems not to have been madein the semantic theory of natural languages, and perhaps it is time to ask why thisshould be the case. Why is the theory of meaning so hard ? (Putnam, 1970: 139).When Hilary Putnam posed this question, over 30 years ago, he was concerned in

particular with the semantics of natural kind termswhich he showed to be notnearly as simple as previously supposed. Nevertheless, he eventually answered thequestion with guarded optimism:Why, then, is semantics so hard? In terms of the foregoing, I want to suggest that

semantics is a typical social science. The sloppiness, the lack of precise theories andlaws, the lack of mathematical rigor, are all characteristic of the social sciencestoday. A general and precise theory. . .is still a long way o. But the fact that Utopiais a long way o does not mean that daily life should come to a screeching halt.There is plenty for us to investigate, in our sloppy and impressionistic fashion, andthere are plenty of real results to be obtained. The rst step is to free ourselves from

Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 349359

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the oversimplications foisted upon us by the tradition, and to see where the realproblems lie. I hope this paper has been a contribution to that rst step (1970: 142).Despite this optimism, Putnam (1997) has more recently joined those (such as

Searle, 1978 and Travis, 1989, 1991, 1997) who point to a dierent source of di-culty in semantics: a sentence, simply as a sentence, Putnam (1997:167)declares, doesnt have a determinate content apart from particular speakings. So ifa semantic theory is supposed to determine for each sentence what its content is ingeneral, it would seem that semantics is not possible after all.I believe that, once again, doubts about the possibility of semantics (at least as

standardly construed) may be assuaged by taking the rst step of freeing ourselvesfrom some common oversimplicationsthis time not of the relation between nat-ural kind terms and stereotypical characteristics, but of the relation between thesemantic contents of words and our understandings of particular speakings. And so,following Putnams example, I hope to contribute to that rst step.

2. Clarifying the question

The question at hand is not simply whether or not semantic content is context-dependent.1 It is well-known that the semantic content of at least some sentencesdoes depend on the context in which the sentence is usedin the sense that the samesentence can be used to say dierent things in dierent contextsand the standardview of semantics allows for this.Consider, for instance, the sentence

(1) Noam likes ying bats.

In one context this sentence might be used to say something about a certain kind ofanimal, and in another context it might used to say something about a certain kindof sports equipment. The standard view of semantics accommodates this context-dependence by treating the word bat as lexically ambiguousthat is, by ascribingto the word dierent senses, so that the semantic content of the sentence varies inaccordance with the sense in which the word is being used.Even relative to a single sense of the word batthe animal, say sentence (1) can

be used in one context to say something about what kind of bats Noam likesthosethat are yingand in another context to say something about what Noam likes to dowith batsto y them. The standard view of semantics accommodates this kind ofcontext-dependence too, by treating sentences such as (1) as syntactically ambiguous

1 I take the semantic content of a sentence to be what Grice (1975) called what is said by uttering

the sentence, or what in the general tradition of Frege (1892) and Carnap (1956) has also been called the

proposition (or propositional component) expressed by the sentence. This is intended as nothing more

than a pre-theoretical gloss, without any serious commitment to theoretical claims associated with such

manners of speech. It follows that context-dependence is to be construed as including those cases where

contextual information is required for disambiguation.

350 J. Berg / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 349359

that is, by ascribing to (1) dierent syntactic structures, so that the semantic contentof the sentence varies in accordance with how it is parsed.2

Another source of context-dependence in (1) is its present-tense verb, by virtue ofwhich the sentence can be used on dierent occasions with regard to dierent times.This is accommodated by the standard view of semantics by treating the word likesas indexical, referring to dierent times in accordance with when it is used.3

And of course, the name Noam can be used on dierent occasions to refer todierent people. On some accounts this is a matter of lexical ambiguity, on others amatter of indexicality. Either way, the standard view of semantics can handle thiskind of context-dependence as well.Moreover, apart from these ways in which the semantic content of a sentence

might be context-dependent, the standard view of semantics allows that what oneconveys by uttering a particular sentencean utterances pragmatic contentmaywell depend on the context in indenitely many other ways. Even relative to a par-ticular sense of bats, a particular parsing of (1), a particular time of utterance, anda particular individual named Noamthe sentence (1) could be used to conveypragmatically indenitely many messages. In one context, one might utter it sarcas-tically, to indicate that Noam dislikes ying bats. In another context, one might useit metaphorically, to convey the message that Noam likes watching athletes ght.And in yet another context, one might use it to imply that Noam would opposedisqualifying baseball players who let their bats y. All such context-dependence iscompatible with the standard view of semantics (which thereby incorporates a stan-dard view of pragmatics).So the real question is not whether semantic content is context-dependent, but

whether it is more context-dependent than the standard view allows for. The claimat issue may be formulated thus:

Standard View of Semantics (SV):Every disambiguated sentence has a determinate semantic content, relative to anassignment of contents to its indexical expressions, and not necessarily identical towhat may be conveyed (pragmatically) by its utterance.

A few caveats are in order. First, not every variation of content across contextscan properly be construed as a case of ambiguity or indexicality. Ascriptions ofambiguity or indexicality in any particular case must be compatible with our general

2 Arguably there are also cases of logical ambiguity, distinct from lexical or syntactic ambiguity, as in

the sentence Everybody loves somebody.3 The standard view of semantics need not restrict indexicality to only the more familiar parameters,

such as speaker, time, and place. Perhaps there are many more exotic parametersperhaps expressions

regarding the time of day are indexical with regard to time zone; perhaps expressions of temporal relations

such as simultaneity are indexical with regard to frames of reference. As Kaplan (1989: 591) explains, If

we think of the formal role played by context within the model-theoretic semantics, then we should say

that context provides whatever parameters are needed. From this point of view, context is a package of

whatever parameters are needed to determine the referent, and thus the content, of the directly referential

expressions of the language.

J. Berg / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 349359 351

theories of these notions. Secondly, not too much metaphysical weight should be puton the phrase has a determinate semantic content. This means only that the sen-tence expresses a unique proposition (or propositional part)that there is some-thing, and only one such thing, which is what is said by uttering the sentence.4 Inparticular, determinate is used here only in the sense of xednot in the sense ofexact or precise. Semantic contents may well be messy and vague; whether a par-ticular expression has a particular semantic content may be a matter of degree; thesemantics of natural language may be in a constant state of ux. It is, after all, only byvirtue of complex patterns of human behavior that expressions of natural languagemean what they mean. (Recall Putnams characterization of the social sciences.)Thirdly, a crucial (though somewhat neglected) part of the standard view of semanticsis that semantic theories are to be complemented by pragmatic theories addressing therelation between what is said in an utterance and what is thereby conveyed.

3. The standard argument against the standard view

The standard way to argue against the standard view of semantics is by appeal toproblem cases. The argument has this form:

Standard Argument against SV:(i) An utterance of sentence S is true in one context but not in another.5

(ii) The dierence noted in (i) is not due to ambiguity or indexicality.:: SV must be wrong.

For example, here is one of Traviss (1989: 18-19) examples:

(2) Theres milk in the refrigerator.

Suppose there is only a puddle of milk at the bottom of the refrigerator. (To avoidquestions about improper denite descriptions we may suppose as well that there isonly one refrigerator.) Now consider an utterance of (2) in the course of a discussionof how well someone cleaned the refrigerator. In this context, says Travis, thespeaker would be saying something true. On the other hand, consider an utteranceof the same sentence in the same state of aairs, but in a context where the hearerhas indicated that he would like some milk for his coee. In this context, says Travis,

4 See note 1. I am assuming that a proposition has a unique truth value with respect to any given state

of aairs, but I am not assuming anything about what truth values there aremaybe there are three,

maybe there are a whole range, maybe they consist of intervals on a range. What is important for this

formulation of SV is that the truth value of a proposition depends only on the state of aairs, not on

context.5 Although in keeping with Travis (1989) I have formulated the claim in terms of utterances as bearers

of truth, the discussion could just as well be formulated in terms of sentences, propositions, or whatever

else one might prefer as the fundamental bearers of truth.


the speaker would be saying something false.6 Assuming that this context-dependenceof (2) is not due to ambiguity or indexicality and is not to be accounted for prag-matically, one may conclude that SV is wrong.The standard response to such an argument is to reject one of the premises. In the

case at hand, for instance, I would say that the sentence is true in both of the givencontexts. Although (2) might seem false in the context where the hearer is interestedin getting milk for his coee, that is only because uttering the sentence in thatcontext is likely to be misleading, given the speakers presumed knowledge ofthe hearers interests. That is, the hearer is likely to infer from the speakers trueutterance something false, viz., that the speaker believes the refrigerator containsmilk that would be suitable for use in the hearers coee (since that, after all, is whatthe conversation is presumably about).7

This is the point where the discussion typically evolves into a slugfest of intuitions.Where the advocate of SV thinks it is more natural to treat an alleged counter-example to SV as a matter of ambiguity, indexicality, or pragmatics, the opponentof SV insists that it is not. Though each side may nd reassurance in its own intui-tions, neither side convinces the other (Searle, 1978; Travis, 1989, 1991, 1997; Berg,1993). And so, rather than pursue that discussion here, I wish merely to note thatthe Standard Argument against SV relies on intuitions which are, at best, highlycontroversial and, hence, ill suited to support controversial conclusions.One might put the Standard Argument against SV on rmer ground by for-

mulating the premises more charitably, with suitable hedges:

Revised Standard Argument against SV:(i) An utterance of sentence S seems true in one context but not in another.(ii) The dierence noted in (i) does not seem to be due to ambiguity, indexicality,or pragmatic phenomena.:: SV must be wrong.

Although the argument is not generally put this way, these formulations of thepremises are better supported by the relevant data and might be closer to what theopponent of SV is actually relying on. However, this version of the Standard Argumentagainst SV is not valid. For even if SV seems incompatible with a particular case,it does not follow that it actually is; the semantic facts might be other than theyseem.8

6 Note that Travis is talking about the truth of what is said, not about the felicity of the saying of it. In

terms of propositions (although he does not put it this way) his position is that utterances of the sentence

in each of the two contexts express dierent propositions, one true and one false.7 Cf. Grices (1975/1989:32) classic example of conversational implicature: A is standing by an

obviously immobilized car and is approached by B; the following exchange takes place: (1)A: I am out of

petrol. B: There is a garage around the corner. (Gloss: B would be infringing the maxim Be relevant

unless he thinks, or thinks it possible, that the garage is open, and has petrol to sell; so he implicates that

the garage is, or at least may be open, etc.)8 Recognizing its patent invalidity, Travis explicitly rejects the revised formulation (personal commu-

nication).


The invalidity of the Revised Standard Argument against SV reects two relatedproblems with the argument. First, putting the argument this way amounts toshifting the burden of proof; the arguer raises hard cases, and then in the absence ofa ready, convincing account in accordance with SV, it is concluded that SV has beenrefuted.9 However, the advocate of SV need not accept thishard cases might justbe hard cases, not counterexamples. This is not to say, of course, that hard casesnever warrant discarding a theory; but for that there must be too many cases that aretoo hard. In this regard, theories must be assessed holistically, relative to alter-natives.10 And despite the many hard cases facing SV, there is no alternative(including Traviss (1991) speaking-sensitive semantics) facing fewer hard cases.Secondly, the invalidity of the Revised Standard Argument suggests that the case

against SV relies on an implicit premise to the eect that semantics must be obvious,in the sense that competent speakers of a natural language always know what theyare saying. Travis (1997), for instance, reasons that if the rst premise of the Stan-dard Argument against SV is false, then either the sentence in question is true inboth contexts or it is false in both contexts. Which disjunct is right? he asks. Onemust choose in a principled way. What the words mean must make one or the otherdisjunct plainly, or at least demonstrably, true (1997: 90, emphasis added). If so,then whatever merely seems to competent speakers to be a counterexample to SVwould indeed be a counterexample.The problem here is that semantics is not so simple. Competent speakers do not

always know what they are saying. What competent speakers do know by virtue oftheir competence is how to use expressions of the language; they know the eectsthat various utterances are likely to have in various circumstances. But it does notfollow that they always know what isstrictly speakingsaid. Startling as thisclaim might seem, its proof lies in the well-known fact that competent speakerssometimes disagree about semantic content. Russell (1905) and Strawson (1950), forinstance, were preeminently competent speakers of English, yet they disagreed aboutthe semantic content of sentences such as The present king of France is bald. Sincethey could not both be right, at least one of them was wrong. Hence, competence ina language does not guarantee explicit knowledge of its semantics.11

Another way to assess the Standard Argument against SV is by a method madefamous by Kripke (1977: 16):

9 The point here is based on the dierence between the two formulations of the rst premise. To

establish the rst premise of the Standard Argument, one must show that an utterance of S is indeed true

in one context but not in another; whereas to establish the rst premise of the Revised Standard Argu-

ment, one merely needs to show that this seems to be the case, at least prima facie.10 Cf. Quine (1951/1961:41): our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense

experience not individually but only as a corporate body11 This is not to say that there is no sense at all in which linguistic competence requires, or is a sign of,

semantic knowledge. It is only explicitarticulablesemantic knowledge that I am claiming competent

speakers may lack. Linguistic competence is surely no less a sign of semantic knowledge than it is of

syntactic knowledge. But just as we do not expect competent speakers to be able to articulate their syn-

tactic knowledge, so too it should not be surprising that they cannot always correctly articulate their

semantic knowledge.


If someone alleges that a certain phenomenon in English is a counterexample toa given analysis, consider a hypothetical language which (as much as possible) is likeEnglish except that the analysis is stipulated to be correct. Imagine such a hypothe-tical language introduced into a community and spoken by it. If the phenomenon inquestion would still arise in a community that spoke such a hypothetical language(which may not be English), then the fact that it arises in English cannot disprove thehypothesis that the analysis is correct for English.12

The phenomenon alleged to be a counterexample to SV is the inclination amongEnglish speakers to use (for example) the sentence

(2) Theres milk in the refrigerator.

sometimes to convey the message that the refrigerator contains milk that shouldhave been cleaned up, and sometimes to convey the message that the refrigeratorcontains milk suitable for putting in ones coee. Now consider a hypothetical lan-guage, Shmenglish, for which SV is stipulated to be correct, and which is (otherwise)like English as much as possible. For SV to be true of Shmenglish, (2) must have thesame semantic content, and hence the same truth value, in both of the imaginedcontexts (both in a discussion of how well the refrigerator has been cleaned and alsoin an exchange where the hearer has a salient interest in obtaining milk for his or hercoee). To satisfy this condition, suppose that the semantic content of (2) inShmenglish is simply that the refrigerator contains some milk, no matter how littleor in what formso that (2) is true in both contexts. Then the question is whetherShmenglish speakers would be inclined to use (2) sometimes to convey the messagethat the refrigerator contains milk that should have been cleaned up, and sometimesto convey the message that the refrigerator contains milk suitable for putting inones coee. And the answer is yes.One way to see why Shmenglish speakers would use (2) the same as English

speakers do is in light of the empirical fact that speakers of any language tend not tobother articulating information that they believe is already apparent to their audi-ence (Greeneld and Dents, 1979). This is especially familiar in our use of improperdenite descriptions (denite descriptions not uniquely satised). In the course ofgiving a recipe, for instance, I would say

(3a) Knead the dough for ve minutes, rather than

(3b) Knead the dough that you just made for ve minutes,

12 The reasoning behind this test may be put as follows: if someone points to phenomenon P in lan-

guage L as a counterexample to analysis A of L, he is apparently relying on the implicit premise that P

would not occur in any language satisfying A. His argument can be put thus:

P occurs in L.

[In any language of which A is true, P would not occur.]

Therefore, A is not true of L.

So if we can imagine a language satisfying A (ex hypothesis) in which P does occur, we have thereby

arrived at a counterexample to the arguments implicit premise.


as long as I thought it would be clear which dough I was talking about. Likewise,instead of saying

(2a) Theres milk in the refrigerator that should have been cleaned up,

Shmenglish speakers would be inclined to use (2), as long as they thought it wasclear that they were talking about milk that should have been cleaned up; andinstead of

(2b) Theres milk in the refrigerator that would be suitable for putting in your coee,

they would again be inclined to use (2), as long as they thought it was clear that theywere talking about milk that would be suitable for putting in ones coee.Another way to see why Shmenglish speakers would use (2) the same as English

speakers do is by considering how Shmenglish speakers are likely to expect theirutterances to be interpreted. If a Shmenglish speaker uttered (2) in the context of adiscussion of how well the refrigerator has been cleaned, it would be most reason-able for her to expect to be understood as having meant what is said in (2a) rather thanwhat is said in (2b); whereas if she uttered (2) in the context of an exchange where thehearer has a salient interest in obtaining milk for coee, it would be most reasonablefor her to expect to be understood as having meant what is said in (2b) rather thanwhat is said in (2a). And so, she would most likely use (2) the same as we do.

4. A transcendental argument for the standard view

Having shown why the Standard Argument against SV is not sound, I would nowlike to oer a transcendental argument for SV.Even the opponents of SV agree that there must at least be constraints on the

semantic content of a given expression (e.g., Putnam, 1997:17). That is, words havecontext-independent properties which limit what can be said with them (literally) inparticular contexts. Adapting an example of Wittgensteins, one cannot say literally,in English, that it is hot, by uttering the words Its cold. Of course, one could say thatit is hot by uttering the words Its cold, if one were speaking some other language possibly even a future variant of English. Or, one could do so by speaking nonliterally,perhaps ironically. But in a given language, as it is spoken at a given time, what can besaid literally with a given expression is bounded by context-independent constraints.This is not to say that such constraints are easy to specify; they may be vague, hard toformulate, not expressible in terms of necessary and sucient conditions; moreover,they may be in a constant state of ux, gradually evolving over time. (Recall Put-nams, 1970:142 conclusion that semantics is a typical social sciencesloppy,imprecise, unrigorous.) Nevertheless, for a given language (at a given time), somesuch constraints must exist.Now, for a given sentence, fully disambiguated, with an assignment of referents to

all its indexical expressions, let the general content of that sentence (relative to the


given disambiguation and assignment of indexical referents) be the proposition that theconstraints on its semantic content are satised.13 The general content of a sentence isthus to be contrasted with any of its contextually enriched contentsthe particularcontext-dependent content it might acquire in a particular context (and which oppo-nents of SV take as its semantic content).14 Thus, although SV is clearly false of con-textually enriched content, it is just as clearly true of general content. Then the questionis, which is semantics aboutgeneral content or contextually enriched content?If semantics is about what is said, then the question becomes this: which is,

what is saidgeneral content or contextually enriched content? Here are threeanswers:

(i) what is said is general content;(ii) what is said is contextually enriched content;(iii) the expression what is said is ambiguouswhat is said is general contentin one sense and contextually enriched content in another sense.

The rst answer supports SV, the second answer supports the rejection of SV, and thethird (suggested by Francois Recanati, in conversation) oers a compromise. AlthoughI think that considerations of the dierence between, say, what was really said andwhat was conveyed without explicitly being said show that the rst answer is themost plausible, I will not argue the point here. For now it is enough to note that as longas we can identify these two kinds or layers of content, it is somewhat arbitrary how welabel them. We can, in any case, distinguish between two theoretical enterprises, oneconcerning the relation between expressions and their general contents, the other con-cerning the relation between expressions and their contextually enriched contents. Wemay call these strict semantics and loose semantics, respectively. (I prefer callingthem semantics and pragmatics, respectivelybut I will not use this terminologyhere, so as not to appear to be begging the question.) Although the Standard View ofsemantics is not true of loose semantics, it is clearly true of strict semantics.15

13 Or, the general content could be characterized as the innite disjunction of the sentences semantic

contents (relative to the given disambiguation and assignment of indexical referents) in every possible

context. One might object that this characterization is not coherent, on the grounds that even in particular

contexts there is no determinate content, nothing in particular that is to be taken as what is said (what

may be a consequence of some of the metaphysical positions that Travis (1989, 1997) considers); but such

a view is so radically counterintuitive that I take it to be a nonstarter.14 This is not to say, of course, that context has no role at all in determining general content, as the

latter is explicitly dened as relative to a given disambiguation and a given assignment of indexical refer-

ents. Contextually enriched contents are contextually enriched in that they depend on context for more

than just disambiguation and assignment of indexical referents.15 One might object that even if there is such a notion of strict semantic content, for which SV holds, no

such notion plays a signicant role in how utterances actually get interpreted. This amounts to changing

the subject, shifting from the current question of whether semantics is possible to the separate question of

whether it is useful. Although the latter question is beyond the scope of this paper, I believe that an ar-

mative answer is born out by considerations of (a) our ability to learn new words, (b) our ability to pro-

duce and comprehend new sentences, and (c) our success in communicating our beliefs about the world

(this last point brought to my attention by Michael Devitt, in conversation).


5. Oversimplications and where the real problems lie

So, is semantics still possible? Recall Putnams (1970:142) cautious optimism:

There is plenty for us to investigate, in our sloppy and impressionistic fashion,and there are plenty of real results to be obtained. The rst step is to free ourselvesfrom ... oversimplications ... and to see where the real problems lie.

What are the oversimplications from which we must free ourselves? The mainoversimplication regarding the role of context in semantics is the assumption thatthe semantic content of a sentence is simply what is correctly understood from anutterance of the sentence. Though this may be true of loose semantics (depending onjust how loose it is), it is not true of strict semantics. A related oversimplication isthat what really counts in an utterance is semantic content. In fact, usually whatreally counts is loose semantic content, not strict semantic content. This is why theintuitions of competent speakers with regard to what is said are primarily indicativeof loose semantic content, rather than strict semantic content; and so, it would be anoversimplication to identify semantic content with what competent speakers wouldtypically say has been said.16

Where, then, do the real problems lie? The real problem lies in simultaneouslyworking out both a theory of what words meanindependent of any particular con-textas well as a theory of what we can thereby convey by them in a particularcontext.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for helpful comments from Mira Ariel, Steven Davis, Paul Horwich,Peter Pagin, Charles Travis, and others who heard earlier versions of this paper atthe Karlovy Vary Symposium, Swimming in XYZ, September 1998; the Uni-versity of Bristol, March 1999; and PRAGMA99, Tel-Aviv University, June 1999.

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Jonathan Berg is in the philosophy department of the University of Haifa. He is the author of Applied

Logic: Principles of Argument (in Hebrew) and numerous articles on topics in the philosophy of language,

philosophical logic, and the philosophy of mind.


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