Superman and Clark Walk into a Phone Booth

1. Substitutivity is the principle that from sentences of the forms

s is such and sos is identical with t

the sentence

t is such and so

follows. The principle seems correct, but only if it's restricted to sentences which don't contain words substitution-blocking expressions like 'believes'. After all, intuitively, this is not a valid inference

(I) Lois believes that Superman is SupermanSuperman is identical with Clark KentSo, Lois believes that Clark Kent is Superman.

Jennifer Saul has pointed out that there are cases where Substitutivity seems to fail, but which don't seem to involve opacity-inducing expressions like 'believes'.1 Here's one: we see Clark Kent, dressed as a mild mannered reporter, step into a phone booth only to emerge as the man in tights. If asked we will say that (1) is true, (2) false:

(1) Clark Kent entered the phone booth and Superman came out.

1 Saul (1997). As is usual, I pretend that 'Superman' and 'Clark Kent' actually refer and that the Superman story relates truths about the man in tights. Those unfamiliar with the Superman story may want to consult the following tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHtYBif7Ric .

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(2) Clark Kent entered the phone booth and Clark Kent came out.

Having pointed this out, Saul then argued more or less as follows: It's implausible to think that (2) doesn't follow from (1) and

(3) Clark Kent is Superman.

But since (3) is true, it can't be that (1) is true and (2) is false. So our intuitions about (1) and (2) look to be unreliable. But if those intuitions are messed up, it's plausible to think that our intuitions about the inference (I) are unreliable as well. So speaker intuitions about Substitutivity in such inferences should carry much less weight than they usually do in semantic theory.

My topic in what follows is the question

(Q) Why do speakers have the intuitions they have about sentences like (1)?

One answer –the semantic answer –has it that (1) and (2) have uses which say different things as a matter of their meanings, things which diverge in truth value in the example. Our intuitions about the example are thus due to our competently deploying our semantic competence. Graeme Forbes responded to Saul in roughly this way, suggesting that there is something which blocks the validity of Substitutivity applied to some uses of sentences like (1).2 After all, (4) and (5) do not imply (6):

(4) Giorgione was so-called because of his size.(5) Giorgione is Barbarelli(6) Barbarelli was so-called because of his size

2 Forbes (1997) and (2010).

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But this is because 'so-called' is clearly sensitive to its linguistic context, with 'so' in normal uses of (4) referring to the name 'Giorgione' and to the name 'Barbarelli' in normal uses of (6). So substitution here does more than just exchange co-referential names in subject position; it changes the property expressed by the sentence's predicate.

Forbes suggested that something like this occurs with (1) and (2). Clark / Superman has two personae; the name 'Clark Kent' makes one of them salient, the name 'Superman' makes the other salient. It is reasonable to think that at least sometimes when we use the name 'Clark Kent' we are trying to convey something about what Clark does while manifesting the persona that name makes salient; likewise for the name 'Superman'. Forbes proposed that we achieve this via "an implicit 'as such' "3 which introduces reference to a persona, a guise, or something of the sort associated with a name, so that (1) and (2) come to

(1') Clark Kent, as such, entered the phone booth and Superman, as such, came out.

(2') Clark Kent, as such, entered the phone booth and Clark Kent, as such, came out.

If so, Saul's examples are to be understood as the Giorgione example is; they do not cast doubt on the soundness of our intuitions about (I).

A second answer to (Q) –the pragmatic answer –appeals to one or another Gricean mechanism for making inferences about what a speaker intends to convey beyond the literal content of her utterance. One might, for example, say that Forbes is right that the sort of information expressed by (1') and (2') would normally be conveyed by uses of (1) and (2). But this is 3 Op. cit.

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not a matter of the semantics of (1) and (2); instead the information is conveyed by something like a conversational implicature. Saul herself endorsed such a view when she originally presented the examples.

Eventually Saul rejected the pragmatic answer to (Q). She and David Braun argued instead that the most likely explanation of why we have these intuitions is that while we apprehend perfectly well the claims (1) and (2) literally make –what they say in virtue of the semantics of the language we speak –we make mistakes while working out what are, given the facts, the truth values of those claims. They point to a couple of ways that this might happen. An example:

When you considered whether (1) could be true while (2) is false, you tried to form an image of an event that is accurately described by (1) and also an image of an event accurately described by (2). Considering (1), you formed an image of a bespectacled man going into a phone booth and a caped man emerging. Considering (2), you formed an image of a bespectacled man going into a phone booth and a bespectacled man emerging. Clearly, there can be a sequence of events that is accurately represented by the first image, but not accurately represented by the second. Thus you might have concluded that it’s possible for (1) to be true and (2) to be false.4

I will call this sort of answer an associationist answer, as it answers (Q) by suggesting that representations or information which we associate with an utterance of a sentence like (1) or (2) push us to make the judgments we make about those sentences. 4 Braun and Saul (2002), xyz. I have altered their numbering of sentences so that it accords with the numbering here. As mentioned, Braun and Saul offer a number of candidates for explaining why we err in our judgments about (1) and (2); I'm not altogether sure whether they would appreciate my in effect labeling all of them 'associationist'.

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In what follows I sketch a view of semantics on which the answer to (Q) is semantic, not pragmatic or associationist. Actually, I sketch a view on which the answer to (Q) may be semantic. The tale I will tell presupposes a particular view about what grounds linguistic competence, a view associated with labels like 'usage based grammar', 'constructionist grammar', and 'cognitive grammar'. This is a view on which linguistic competence is constituted by something more like a process than a persisting, relatively unvarying state. Speaking roughly, the view, as I will develop it, identifies meaning with (community wide) internalized strategies for pairing sounds with meanings. It is a view on which there can be –on which there quite clearly is –a process on which utterance interpretation which at first is a matter of association or Gricean inference comes over time to be secured not by inference or association, but by deploying knowledge of meaning. It is thus a view on which a pragmatic or an associationist story about the origin of our disposition to interpret (1) as meaning (1') may be correct, while a semantic story that has it that in normal adults (1) means what (1') means is also correct. 5 Whether the tale I'll tell is off the wall or bang on is, of course, an empirical matter. But it is a tale I think we ought to take seriously as an empirical hypothesis.

5 Speaking strictly, the view is one on which sentence (1) has a meaning on which its use expresses what a use of (1') would. It also presumably has a meaning on which, when the sentence is used therewith, Substitutivity may be validly applied to the terms in it. In this regard, the view is like many accounts, Forbes' included, on which there is some sort of ambiguity in sentences like (1). Forbes' view, as I understand him, is that the ambiguity is induced syntactically –when a use of (1) involves "an implicit 'as such' ", substitutivity is normally blocked; when no such 'as such' occurs, the occurrences of the names are transparent.

Myself, I would prefer to remain neutral as to whether the sort of ambiguity Forbes and I agree is present in (1) is reflected in syntax. There is no reason, given a usage based view, that the sort of ambiguity (or polysemy, or whatever we end up calling it) which we find in sentences like (1) must be traced back to or at least mirrored in syntax.

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2. The semantic answer to (Q) turns on the idea that (1) and (2) have meanings which determine different claims, claims which in our example diverge in truth value. But what is and from whence comes a sentence's meaning?

A generic answer goes as follows. The meanings of sentences in a population are determined by conventions in the population for using them to characterize the way things are; the meanings of sentence parts are determined by conventions for using them to contribute to such characterizations. Such conventions, in turn, are a matter of what is common knowledge. For example, speaking roughly and ignoring ever so many bells and whistles, for it to be conventional in group G to use a sentence of the form x is old to say of object Y that it is old is for it to be common knowledge amongst the Gs that one way in which Gs use the sentence in conversation is to say of some individual Y, which the user indicates using the term x, that they are old.6 Meaning being a matter of common knowledge about ways expressions are used, competent speakers are cognizant of meaning, though their 'knowledge of meaning' may not bear all the marks of the relation picked out by natural language verbs like 'savoir' and 'wissen'. This answer is consistent, of course, with the idea that a sentence's meaning is often what one might call a "propositional skeleton", something which determines a proposition or truth conditions, but only with some input which the meaning instructs us to find in the context of use. It is a commonplace that this is true of sentences with expressions like demonstratives and indexicals. It is more or less a commonplace that it is true of sentences with vague

6 I take this to be the core of Lewis' proposal in Lewis (1969). Among the bells and whistles ignored is the requirement of a general desire for conformity within the community to the convention, as well as there being some alternative, unused way of achieving the end the convention's existence secures.

What this answer comes to turns on what it is for something to be common knowledge in a population. I intend a version of Bob Stalnaker's account of common ground (see, for example, Stalnaker (2014), Chapter 2.), generalized to populations which are not (constantly) communicating with each other. See Chapter 3 of Richard (2019).

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expressions which depend on context to (at least partially) resolve their vagueness.7

Given the way I have cast what it is for something to be conventional, it will often be the case that there is not a single way W of using a sentence S in a group G such that it is common knowledge that W is a way S is used in G. Well known examples are provided by pragmatics. Negation is often used to convey a message without articulating it. One says 'He doesn't like corriander' meaning to convey that the subject dislikes it; one says 'Mary doesn't want you to come' meaning to convey that she wants you not to come. It is common knowledge amongst English speakers that negation is used in this way; it is common knowledge that it is also used in a way where the speaker does not intend to convey the strengthened claim. Scalar implication provides another example: There are two ways to use 'Mary has read some of Dickens' novels': in one what the speaker means to convey is that she has read some but not all of them; in the other that she has read some and possibly all of them. It is, I think, common knowledge that speakers can and do use this sentence and kindred ones in both ways.8

7 I take it this is also true of sentences like the sentence Mary has enough, which I would say has, to a first approximation, a meaning codified by a rule like this:

One way of using 'Mary has enough' is to say, of a female individual X indicated by the use of 'Mary' who bears the name 'Mary', that, for some contextually indicated stuff S and purpose P, the amount of S X has suffices for P.

It is only after context contributes something which determines that of which Mary is supposed to have enough and that for which what she has suffices that the question of truth can arise. Given that it is common ground in a group that this a way that the sentence is used, the semantics of the sentence makes it the case that a use of Mary has enough, in which the speaker intends to speak of Mary J. Bilge, money, and the purpose of buying a Bentley, says that Bilge has enough money to buy a Bentley.

Some classify this sort of example as the result of pragmatics, not semantics. For reasons which will become clear, I think classifying it in this way is (very probably) mistaken. 8 For discussion of these sorts of examples see Horn (2017). As I note towards the end of this paper (and in agreement with Horn), the 'neg lowering' understanding of the coriander example is, at least in some groups, conventional and thus semantic.

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Once this is pointed out, many will resist the proposal above about what it takes for something to be semantically conveyed by an utterance. Surely, it will be whinged, it is not a matter of semantics that many or even most uses of 'Mary has read some of Dickens' novels' convey that Mary has an incomplete acquaintance with Dicken's oeuvre. Likewise, for the strengthened understanding of sentences like 'He doesn't like coriander'. There is a theoretically important distinction between what a sentence says because of its semantics (and whatever contextual input that semantics demands) and what can be pragmatically inferred from the sentence's use. But this distinction can't be drawn simply in terms of common knowledge in a community.

If we cannot characterize what it is for a use of a sentence to semantically convey something simply in terms of common knowledge, how should we do it? A standard answer has it that individual speakers internalize a grammar, an assemblage of rules governing phonetics, syntax, morphology, and semantics. It is this grammar which underlies –constitutes, in fact –a speaker's linguistic competence; it is what is mobilized in production and interpretation. And it is what determines what utterances semantically convey. As this answer is usually elaborated, it's said that there is a loose sense of 'knows' in which the content of one's grammar is something one knows, though better perhaps to say the grammar 'informs' or 'controls' production and interpretation. And it is usually also said that there is a sense of 'common knowledge' on which many claims about the grammars of the mass of speakers are common knowledge, though 'commonly presupposed' in a sense Stalnaker has labored to make clear might be a better phrase than 'common knowledge'. And so one might allow that it is necessary, for an utterance of S to semantically convey p, that it be common knowledge that there is a way of using S on which it is used to convey p. But this is not sufficient. In addition, that a speaker's use of a sentence semantically conveys p requires that the speaker's internalized

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grammar dictates that the use (along with the needed contextual inputs) expresses p.9

I've cast this characterization of what it is for a sentence use to semantically convey P in terms of an internalized set of rules. I myself think that what the speaker internalizes is not so much a set of rules for interpreting sounds as a set of rules of thumb for doing this. I think this because I am sympathetic with views like usage based grammar, construction grammar, and cognitive grammar.10

Advocates of these views argue pretty compellingly that the best account of children's language acquisition makes it a matter of applying domain general cognitive processes: recording exemplars of uses of phrases, categorizing them, generalizing over categorized exemplars to create interpretive rules of thumb of the form in a situation of kind K, phrase P may be used to mean M, and concatenating such rules ("chunking" them) to form templates for pairing complex sounds with complex meanings. Using these tools to process linguistic experience leads the learner to form a repertoire of ways of interpreting a phrase, some more likely to be activated in contexts of a particular kind than others; it is this repertoire of rules of thumb, along with knowledge about the context of use, on which a speaker draws in producing and interpreting speech.

The process of acquiring a language, on this view, is inherently dynamic. Experiencing someone using phrase P in a context of kind K to say Q tends to increase the likelihood of interpreting P in a kind-K context as 9 Mad dog internalists will want to jettison the bit about common knowledge in this characterization. Argument against rabid internalism can be found in Richard (2019).10 Perhaps the best introduction to usage-based grammar is Bybee (2010); a good summary statement with references to empirical support for the view is Ibbotson (2013). Construction grammar is developed in the work of Adele Goldberg; see for example Goldberg (2006). A survey of cognitive grammar is provided by the chapters of Geeraerts (2006).

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saying Q in the future; such future interpretation in turn strengthens the use of this interpretive strategy, so that with repetition comes a sort of mechanization of the activation of an interpretive strategy. The grammar of my language –that is, the grammar of my language at a particular point in my life –is first and foremost the repertoire of mechanized strategies I deploy in production and interpretation of speech. Since the acquisition of these strategies is an ongoing process, language acquisition is a life-long process, not one which, ignoring vocabulary acquisition, grinds to a halt around the age of 8.

It is the task of a seminar in linguistics to lay out the evidence that something like this view is on track; I won't try to do that here. Rather, I want to discuss what we should say about concrete cases on the assumption something like this is correct.

3. I begin with some things implied by the usage based view of grammar. None of them, I hope, is likely to raise eyebrows.

(1) The interpretive recipes which undergird linguistic production and comprehension –constructions, as they are often called –needn't be terribly productive. Idioms are the poster children for non-productive constructions. There just isn't a conventional route from 'paint the town red' meaning behave in a wild and crazy way to 'paint the town yellow' (or blue/green/grey) meaning behave in an X way for some way X of behaving. This doesn't mean that 'paint the town red' does not have among its conventional meanings behave in a wild and crazy way.

Constructions may also be productive only across a restricted class of expressions. So it goes with the construction responsible for phrases like 'Generative grammar drives Joan crazy':

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(c1) X drives Y A.

Pretty much any noun can occupy the X slot here, and anything picking out cognizers can replace the Y. But A ranges over a restricted class of phrases which, in the context of (c1), pick out a distressed mental state –'nuts', 'bananas', 'up the wall' 'to drink', 'crazy', and so on. That many constructions are semi-productive in this way is hardly surprising, at least given the perspective of usage based grammar, on which generalization over categorized exemplars is what generates linguistic rules of thumb.11

(2) Phrases –at least phrases individuated in terms of syntax and morphophonetics --may have a meaning or use that manifests itself only in contexts of a particular kind. This is most obvious when a word or phrase is ambiguous or polysemous. In such cases, context, both linguistic and extra-linguisitic must play a role in determining which interpretations are activated in the hearer. For example, the potamological meaning of 'bank' will rarely be used in contexts where financial matters are under discussion. We can expect speakers to have internalized such information and deploy it in interpretation. I'll urge presently that this sort of thing may be somewhat more widespread than conventional ambiguity and polysemy.

(3) An interpretation of a phrase which is not determined by the phrase's semantics can, with enough repetition, come to be part of the conventional meaning of the expression. Early Modern English's ancestors of the modals 'will' and 'shall' began as verbs expressing obligation; as a result of inferences from such uses to claims about intention, they acquired a meaning expressing intention. From this, again by an inference (if she intends to F, the future contains her Fing), they acquired a future / predictive meaning. Given enough repetition of uses of 'shall' which invite an inference

11 This is a standard example in the literature; see, for example, Bybee (2010), p. 81ff.

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about how the future will be, a speaker who begins with the interpretive strategy

(s1) Uses of shall can ascribe intention

can be expected to acquire the strategy

(s2) Uses of shall can be used to predict what will happen.

The latter strategy, once acquired, can come to be triggered without the need for anything like a Gricean inference, presenting itself automatically as a way to interpret uses of 'shall' in most or even all interpretive situations. As more and more speakers add (s2) to their repertoire of productive and interpretive strategies, more and more speakers come to know that other speakers have this strategy, that other speakers know that this so, and so on. And so eventually, not only may (s2) be a strategy speakers have automated for use in production and comprehension; its use may be common ground and thus part of the conventional meaning of shall. 12

These observations suggest an explanation for our intuitions about sentences like (1). When it is common knowledge that an individual has multiple persona, one persona may become associated with a particular name of the individual. This of course is what happened to Superman's two personae and our two ways of referring to him. When this is the case, one expects that –provided that we speak about the relevant individual often enough --auditors will often encounter utterances in which a speaker uses different names of the individual to convey information about the different personae. (1) is an example; Saul provides others. Forbes offers this example

12 This is another standard example, developed in great detail and cross-linguistically in Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca (1994).

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(9) Shostakovich always signaled his connections to the classical traditions of St. Petersburg, even if he was forced to live in Lenningrad.13

And here is one more

(10) If Jack Kennedy had met Norma Jean Baker and not Marilyn Monroe, they wouldn't have had an affair.

Encountering this sort of thing often enough with a particular name N and persona P will tend to lead a speaker to posit a way of using N in a sentence on which the user intends the use of N to contribute something along the lines of

(c2) N, in the personae P

to what's said. The speaker then has an interpretive strategy for sentences in which N occurs, something like

(s3) Uses of N when P is salient can be understood as are uses of N, in the persona P.14

If a speaker invokes a strategy like (s3) enough in generating or processing sentences like (1) when Superman's various personae are salient, this strategy can come to be one which a speaker automatically activates when the names 'Superman' and 'Clark Kent' are used –and so without the speaker making anything like a Gricean inference. That something like this has

13 Forbes (201), 229. The example is taken from an article in The New York Review of Books.14 Understand this as a first, rough statement of the strategy; refinement occurs in the next section.

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happened with names like 'Superman', and 'Clark Kent' seems quite plausible. On the view of grammar and competence I am sketching, that this strategy is activated automatically when the names 'Superman' and 'Clark Kent' are used makes it the case that it is a matter of semantics that (1) can express what (1') does, even if invoking a strategy like (s3) occurs with relatively few names, or even just with the two names. That said, it is plausible that strategies like (s3) are naturally generalized to other cases and used in producing sentences like (9) and (10). And if it is indeed the case that most speakers have automated the use of strategies like (s3) in production and comprehension, it is also plausible that this will be manifest to pretty much all speakers and thus common ground amongst them. 15

The question we began with was

(Q)Why do speakers have the intuitions they have about sentences like (1)?

On the story I just told, these intuitions arise by our competently applying strategies we acquire in course of using our language to (imagined) uses of

15 I haven't given a precise account of the truth conditions of a sentence like (1) when it is used to convey something along the lines of (1'). If forced to do it right now, I would begin by elucidating the notions of a persona and of manifesting a persona. Personae have associated with them –they are more or less defined by –various (usually observable) characteristics: how one dresses or how one speaks or what activities one engages in, etc., etc. To manifest a persona in the course of a bit of behavior is in the first instance to have that persona begin with and to behave in a way that would evidence to a person acquainted with the persona a tolerable amount of what defines the persona: Clark Kent manifests the Clark persona, for example, when he dresses in a suit and wears glasses or interviews people on the street.

I would next take up the suggestion that we treat verbs as introducing quantification over events and states. On such a view and to a first approximation, the natural understanding of 'Jimmy loves Lois' is one on which it conveys that there is an event e, which is a loving, has Jimmy as its agent, and Lois as its patient. We can then say that for someone to manifest a persona P in event A is for the person to be involved in A –to be its agent or patient or play some other thematic role –and for that person to manifest P in the course of such involvement. Some complication of this story would be needed to make it apply to Forbes' example (9); I forego giving such.

This, again, is a rough account, one that I'll restrict in certain ways in Section 4.

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the sentences and (what we imagine) the situations surrounding such uses (would be). At the end of the story, it is common ground in the community of adult English speakers that something like (s3) is in use in production and comprehension. And the strategy is one each speaker has as part of her internalized knowledge of syntax, phonology, and semantics, since speakers have over time come to automatically deploy this strategy in certain kinds of situations; they do not arrive at the relevant interpretations of (1) and (2) as a result of a Gricean inference or the sort of association involved in the story Braun and Saul tell. On the tale I've told, our intuitions are the result of our competently applying knowledge of meaning.

The story I've told is an evolutionary story. It is very much a story about how history may have gone; it is a story about a process which, given enough time, would lead the members of a community of speakers to be in a certain sort of mental state, one which would make it the case that a use of (1) can express what (1') expresses in virtue of its semantics. It is an answer to (Q) when (Q) is understood as a question about what it is about our current mental state which makes us respond to (1) in the way we do.

Now, there is another way to understand (Q), on which it is a question about the origin of our current intuitions: When we first heard sentences like (1) and (2) and had the sort of intuitions about them which we now have, why did we have those intuitions? I have nothing to say against the idea that a pragmatic or an associationist answer to this sort of question is correct. They could both be correct, if some people first come to understand (1) as conveying (1') via a Gricean inference, while others at first simply associate what (1') says with an utterance of (1). But it is perfectly possible that over time the transition, from hearing a sentence like (1), (9), or (10) when the relevant personae are salient to taking the user to be trying to convey something which is partially about the personae, may become a

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transition that is neither an inference nor an association but the deployment of a community wide, internalized strategy for interpretation.

4. I suggested that once they have encountered enough uses of sentences like (1) to convey things like (1'), speakers can be expected to come to use a strategy like

(s4) Uses of 'Superman' / 'Clark' when the Superman persona / the Clark persona is salient can be understood as are uses of Superman / Clark, in the Superman / Clark persona

to interpret sentences in which the names 'Superman' and 'Clark' occur. So understanding a sentence is a matter of understanding it as conveying that Superman / Clark has behaved in a way in which the Superman / Clark persona is manifest. I suggested that this would naturally be generalized to a strategy like

(s3) Uses of N when P is salient can be understood as are uses of N, in the persona P

to interpret sentences in which a name N associated with a persona P is used. And if this sort of thing sweeps the community, becomes automated, and its use becomes common knowledge, this will make it the case that (1) can be used to conveyed what (1') does as a matter of its meaning.

Someone might say that this can't be true of the community of English speakers. For if it were, then sentences like 'Clark Kent is Superman' would have, as a matter of their semantics, a use on which they mean something like Clark Kent, in the persona Clark Kent, is identical with Superman, in the persona Superman. But it's not even clear what this last might mean. And even if a meaning can be assigned to it, there's no reason to think that as

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things stand 'Clark Kent is Superman' expresses anything more than the bare identity that Clark Kent is Superman. So, says the person I am imaging, the proposal I've made overgenerates, saddling sentences like 'Clark Kent is Superman' with meanings they obviously don't have.

I will for argument's sake concede that this last sentence does not have such a meaning. But why should this be thought to be an objection to the idea that something like (s3) is part of the semantics of the language of pretty much every English speaker? A construction need not be terribly productive. Generative grammar does not drive Joan pensive, even if studying or talking about or teaching it plunges her into extended contemplation. To have automated the strategy which we use to interpret certain things of the form

(c1) X drives Y A

as ascribing to X the power to make Y upset does not make one acquire a disposition to understand some sentence of the form of (c1) as ascribing to X a power to produce pensitivity. Likewise, having an automated strategy like (s3) to make sense of sentences in which the name 'Superman' or 'Clark' occupies an argument position of an action verb like 'enter' or 'leap over' does not entail or even make it likely that one is disposed to understand a sentence whose main verb introduces quantification over states, not activities, as conveying something that has to do with manifesting personae.16 Given that the strategy (s3) is to be understood as encoding is one which is limited to sentences in which names occupy argument positions of action verbs, the fact –if it is a fact –that 'Superman is Clark Kent' has a semantics which only allows it to be understood as a bare identity does not show that the proposal that (s3) is a part of English's semantics

16 Here I am assuming that something along the lines of the account of verbs mentioned in note 15 is more or less on the mark.

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"overgenerates." That a construction is productive over a limited domain –indeed, that it is in some strong sense compositional over a limited domain –does not imply that it is productive, much less compositionally so, over a larger domain.

5. I'll finish with some remarks directed towards the question, How much of a departure from more conventional views does the proposal I've sketched involve?

The distinction between information which is semantically conveyed and information pragmatically conveyed survives on this proposal. There can even be a fairly sharp border between the two. Suppose, for example, that we think that what is pragmatically conveyed is what is conveyed in virtue of broadly Griecean inferences about the speaker. Then, I think, a fairly sharp line between the semantic and pragmatic can be drawn; how sharp depends on how sharp the line is between (a) and (b):

(a) having a mechanized disposition to assign to a use of S in a context of kind K an interpretation on which it says that Q

and

(b) inferring, from the fact that S is used in a context to say P and surmises about the user's intentions in saying P, that the speaker intended to convey Q.17

There does seem to be a tolerably sharp line between (a) and (b). And the distinction between them seems fairly close to the sorts of distinctions many

17 To simplify exposition here, I'm pretending that it is only interpretations arrived at via broadly Gricean inferences which we will classify as pragmatic instead of semantic.

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people seem to have had in mind when they distinguish between what is semantically conveyed and what is pragmatically conveyed by an utterance.

The novelty in the view I'm sketching comes not from rejecting the distinction between semantically conveying and pragmatically conveying a claim, nor from my departing wildly from ways that distinction is often drawn. What novelty there is comes from adopting a picture of what constitutes an internalized grammar which departs from what was orthodox 30 or so years ago. That said, drawing the distinction in the way I have suggested runs contrary to some ways of classifying particular interpretations as semantic or pragmatic. Consider, for example, the example of negation lowering I mentioned before –that is, the fact that when a speaker says one of

(11) I don't want to go to Chelsea(12) I don't believe that Biden can win.

they pretty much invariably intend, and are taken to intend, the stronger

(11') I want to not go to Chelsea(12') I believe that Biden can't win.

The tendency to interpret (11) and (12) as (11') and (12') –indeed, the general tendency to interpret first person ascription of lack of desire or belief using negation lowering –may well at first arise in a learner as a result of inference. But with repetition of uses of sentences like (11) and (12) in which what is meant is the stronger interpretation, we will tend to automatically assign, at least with a certain probability, the stronger interpretation. If this is so and this fact is common knowledge, then there

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are on the view I am proposing two conventional meanings for such sentences.18

As I said, he proposal I've made is revisionary from the perspective of the generative tradition in linguistics. If you have a certain view of linguistic competence –a generalization of the view of knowledge of syntax associated with that tradition –you may think that the answer to the question about origin is likely also to be the answer to the question about what is responsible for our current intuitions. For the dominant tradition in generative grammar has it that what a speaker internalizes in acquiring a first language is a state which is more or less fixed relatively early in life; save for acquisition of new vocabulary items, it is not much changed later on. If you think this is true of syntax and generalize it to knowledge of meaning, you will think that the strategy one arrives at early on for interpreting uses of sentences –whatever one settles on in the first couple of years of dealing with such sentences –is overwhelmingly likely to be the strategy one sticks with. This sort of view grants that something which deserves to be call linguistic evolution occurs, but it is almost invariably something which occurs in the course of many generations.18 I believe I am here agreeing with Horn (2017), who speaks of the strengthening as being 'conventionalized'.

One might well ask what we should say about the other example in section 2, that of the tendency to understand

(A) Mary ate some of the cookies

as conveying that she ate some but not all of the cookies. What to say about this and other cases turns in part on what we should understand by saying that an interpretation is mechanized or automatic. If the tendency to so understand (A) is always mediated by an inference about the speaker's intentions, the tendency is not mechanized. But even if there is not a mechanized tendency to interpret utterances like (A) as strengthened, there may be a mechanized tendency to interpret such utterances in a particular sort of situation in this way. It may be common knowledge between Fred and I that, save some special signal, things like (A) coming out of Fred's mouth should be understood in the strengthened way. If this is so, then it's not implausible to think that Fred and I have managed to establish a convention for our conversations that awards (A) the strengthened meaning (as well as the non-strengthened one).

I am acutely aware that much more needs to be said about mechanization and conventionalization.

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If this is your view, you ought ask yourself how plausible it is in the case of lexical meaning. What, after all, is lexical meaning? Well, it's what the competent speaker knows about the meanings of certain relatively simple expressions from which she and others construct sentences. It is knowledge which is internalized, accessed in production and comprehension, and whose use in production and comprehension is manifest to, common ground among, speakers who communicate with one another linguistically. If we think of lexical meaning in this way –and I think many in the generative tradition would allow that this is an apt way to think of it –what is it?

Pick a group G of people who use their grammars to communicate with each other and a lexical noun N which the group uses. What is it that members of the group know about N? Well, they know how N is used by group members. For example, they know facts about what users more or less invariably assume when they use N. They know facts about which of these assumptions users more or less invariably expect their audience to recognize as being made. They know when such an assumption is one the user more or less invariably expects the audience to be ready to mobilize in understanding N's use. For example, if N is 'canker sore' and G is the collection of American English speakers, assumptions like

Canker sores are sores on your lips or gums'canker sore' is a word used to talk about canker soresCanker sores often involve small accumulations of pus

are ones Gs know that users of N presuppose, that users expect to be seen as presupposing, and that users expect auditors to be ready to use in making sense of the use. Speaking generally, when G and N are as above, the sort of claims I have in mind are those generic claims p such that

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Gs presuppose p when they use N in a sentence; Gs expect their audience to recognize p as being presupposed; Gs expect the audience to be ready to use p in making sense of their use of N.

For many such a claim p, it will be common knowledge amongst the Gs that users of N have the relevant presuppositions. This common knowledge, being knowledge, is internalized; it is accessed in comprehension and production. Being common knowledge in G it is common ground amongst members of G. It is thus at least a component of the meaning of N, a component I have called elsewhere the noun's interpretive common ground, or ICG.19 Being internalized and common ground, it is part of lexical meaning.

In the example of 'canker sore', the claims I said were part of the terms ICG look to form something like a definition for the term. But it is pretty clear that a term's ICG often includes a lot of information which no one would think helps define the term –it is much more encyclopedic than meaning is often thought to be. For most of the 20th century speakers assumed that fire trucks were red, expected their audience to recognize this and expected them to have that assumption ready to help in interpretation. But it's not definitive of fire trucks that they are red. Many examples of things in ICG, I'd say, are the sorts of things Putnam labelled as stereotypes --claims, often generic, which 'everyone knows' and are used in teaching a word. Examples include the claims that sheep go baa, that bees make honey, and (at many times, in many places) that women are submissive and should do men's bidding. A term's ICG, and thus its meaning, not only need not provide a definition, it need not even be true.20

19 See Richard (2019), Chapters 3 and 4.20 Putnam suggests that stereotypes are a component of meaning in Putnam (1975).

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I don't say that ICG is all there is to linguistic meaning. Something that determines, in context, the semantic value of an expression is part of the expression's meaning; ICG can't be relied upon to do this, if only because it can and often will contain falsehoods. But it should be obvious that ICG is something that can and does mutate saltatively, as did the ICG of 'marriage' in the last 30 or so years. 30 or so years back, American users of 'marriage' presupposed that marriage between a man and a man was not just illegal, it was impossible; they expected auditors to see that they assumed this. Nowadays, they don't assume this but instead assume that such marriages are relatively routine. Today everyone assumes that (everyone assumes that) that fire engines are red. But more and more communities are using white or lime green fire engines, since they are easier to see in the dark; if this trend continues, the ICG of 'fire engine' will eventually shift.21 The meaning of a lexical item often changes not just in childhood but in the course of adulthood, as what counts as manifestly and overwhelmingly obvious shifts.22 And surely the same sort of thing can happen with complex constructions, as speakers and eventually whole communities adopt new strategies to convey information 23

The evolutionary story I have spun about (1), (9), and (10) in support of the semantic answer to (Q) is of course as an empirical hypothesis. It needs to be supported or discredited by empirical research, research which can only proceed once we have a nuanced handle on how to tell if a disposition or process is undergirded by inference, association, or an internalized, non-21 For information about how fire engine red may turn into fire engine green, see https://www.apa.org/action/resources/research-in-action/lime .22 That this is so is one of the tasks of the argument in Richard (2019). 23 Even if syntax is partially determined by something innate, so that the usage based picture of syntactic structure needs to be stated carefully, the usage based picture of how syntax is paired with meaning will still be plausible. So even if syntax is in part determined by something innate, it may still be that meaning of pieces of syntax is something which changes over the life of a speaker.

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inferential automated strategy for pairing sound with meaning. But it's a reasonable hypothesis, one at least as likely as Superman's emerging from any phone booth into which Clark Kent steps.24

Mark RichardHarvard University

24 This paper was a contribution to a symposium at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in honor of Graeme Forbes. Thanks to the audience and David Braun for comments, and to Graeme for many years of conversation and friendship.

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Braun, D. and Saul, J. 2002. Simple Sentences, Substitutions, and Mistaken Evaluations. Philosophical Studies 111, 1-41.

Bybee, Joan. 2010. Language, Usage, and Cognition. Cambridge University Press.

Bybee, J., Perkins, R., and Pagliuca, W. 1994. The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. University of Chicago Press.

Forbes, G. 1997. How Much Substitutivity? Analysis 57, 109-115.

Forbes, G. 2010. Intensional Verbs in Event Semantics. Synthese 176, 227-242.

Geerearts, Dirk, ed. 2006. Readings in Cognitive Linguistics. Mouton de Gruyter.

Goldberg, Adele. 2006. Constructions at Work. Oxford University Press.

Horn, Laurence. 2017. Pragmatics and the Lexicon. In Huang, Yan, ed. 2017. The Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.

Ibottson, Paul. 2013. The scope of usage-based theory. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, Article 255

Lewis, David. 1969. Convention: A Philosophical Study. Harvard University Press.

Putnam, Hilary. 1975. The Meaning of 'meaning'. In Gunderson, K. ed. Language, Mind, and

Knowledge, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science VII. University of Minnesota Press.

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Richard, Mark. 2019. Meanings as Species. Oxford University Press.

Saul, Jennifer. 1997. Substitution and Simple Sentences. Analysis 57, 102-8.

Stalnaker, Robert. 2014. Context. Oxford University Press.

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