Analyticity and modulation

Abstract

Acceptable analyticities, i.e. contradictions or tautologies, constitute problematic evidence for the idea that language includes a deductive system. In recent discussion, two accounts have been presented in the literature to explain the available evidence. According to one of the accounts, grammatical analyticities are accessible to the system but a pragmatic strengthening repair mechanism can apply and prevent the structures from being actually interpreted as contradictions or tautologies. The proposed data, however, leaves it open whether other versions of the meaning modulation operation are required. Novel evidence we present argues that a loosening version of the repair mechanism must be available. Our observation concerns acceptable lexical contradictions that cannot be rescued if only a strengthening version of the pragmatic strategy is available.

Logicality and the picture theory of language

“…To solve this problem, we have to find a way to distinguish between trivialities that are well-formed, such as (18a) and (18b), and trivialities that are ill-formed, such as (16a) and (17a). The solution I am going to present is one proposed by Del Pinal ( 2019 ); Pistoia-Reda and Sauerland ( 2021 ); Del Pinal ( 2022 ), among others. It is sometimes refered to as “contextualism”.…”

“… 29 Gajewski ( 2003 ) proposes another solution which is in the same spirit but differ in technical implementation. For arguments that contextualism is a better solution see Sauerland ( 2017 ); Pistoia-Reda and Sauerland ( 2021 ); Del Pinal ( 2022 ). …”