Semantic Minimalism - state of the art

Argument Templates used by semantic minimalists

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Arguments against semantic minimalism

• collapse to semantic skepticism Szabo&King(2005)

• no explanatory role of compositionality for understanding Szabo&King(2005)

  Replies

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• intuitions track semantic content -
  Stanley&Szabo(2000) for quantified sentences; Stanley(2000, 2002a, 2002b), Szabo(2001)

  Replies

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Semantic Skepticism (aka Radical Contextualism) - state of the art

Argument Templates used by semantic skeptic

• Semantic intrusion in what is said
• temporal implicit
  • "X and Y is better than...", "Some of the cake is better then...", Indicative conditionals , causal relations, collective reading of "and" Wilson(1975)

  Against: Stanley(2000, 2002a, Szabo&King(2005)

Arguments against semantic skepticism

• Szabo&King(2005)

Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction

3 models Szabo&King(2005)

Weak pragmatic effect (semantic role of context): context affect what is communicated by affecting content via resolution of context-sensitive elements in the sentence uttered.

Strong pragmatic effect (pragmatic role of context): context affect what is communicated over and abov semantic content

1. Semantics: only unrelatized standing meanings - semantic content bearers are expression types (e.g. Montague)
2. 2 levels of semantic value: non relativized -+ relativized to context (where context fixes semantic content only insofar is follows the syntactic composition (e.g. Szabo&King(2005))
3. Only automatic indexical (not involving intentions) are considered for a context as relevant for contributing to semantic content (Bach2002a??)