Objective Over the past fifteen years, I have argued that the effects of context on content go well beyond what is standardly acknowledged in semantics. This view is sometimes referred to as Contextualism or (more technically) Truth-Conditional Pragmatics (TCP). The key idea is that the effects of context on content need not be traceable to the linguistic material in the uttered sentence. Some effects are due to the linguistic material (e.g. to context-sensitive words or morphemes which trigger the search for contextual values), but others result from top-down or free pragmatic processes that take place not because the linguistic material demands it, but because the literal meaning of the sentence requires adjustment or elaboration ( modulation ) in order to determine a contextually admissible content for the speaker s utterance. In the literature, one often finds arguments to the effect that, if Contextualism is right, then systematic semantics becomes impossible. More precisely, the claim that is often made is that TCP is incompatible with the Principle of Compositionality, upon which any systematic semantics must be based. The aim of this project is to defend Contextualism/TCP by demonstrating that it is not incompatible with the project of constructing a systematic, compositional semantics for natural language. This demonstration is of importance given the current predicament in the philosophy of language. We are, as it were, caught in a dilemma : formal semanticists provide compelling arguments that natural language must be compositional, but contextualists offer no less compelling arguments to the effect that « sense modulation is essential to speech, because we use a (mor or less) fixed stock of lexemes to talk about an indefinite variety of things, situations, and experiences » (Recanati 2004 : 131). What are we to do, if modulation is incompatible with compositionality? Our aim is to show that it is not, and thereby to dissolve the alleged dilemma. Keywords compositionality contextualism language and thought logical form philosophy of language semantics/pragmatics interface Programme(s) FP7-IDEAS-ERC - Specific programme: "Ideas" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013) Topic(s) ERC-AG-SH4 - ERC Advanced Grant - The Human Mind and its complexity Call for proposal ERC-2008-AdG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-AG - ERC Advanced Grant Coordinator CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS Address Rue michel ange 3 75794 Paris France See on map Region Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris Activity type Research Organisations Principal investigator François Recanati (Dr.) Administrative Contact Ludovic Hamon (Mr.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window EU contribution € 1 144 706,00 Beneficiaries (1) Sort alphabetically Sort by EU Contribution Expand all Collapse all CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS France EU contribution € 1 144 706,00 Address Rue michel ange 3 75794 Paris See on map Region Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris Activity type Research Organisations Principal investigator François Recanati (Dr.) Administrative Contact Ludovic Hamon (Mr.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window
