Token-Reflexivity

Metasemantics and Singular Reference*

“…Henceforth we restrict ourselves to differences that are prima facie linguistically manifestable. 16 See Simchen (2013) for discussion of cases of truncated utterances that are referential despite having only subsentential significance. (One may think of such cases as playing a non-negligible communicative role in bringing topics into conversational salience.)…”

“…The matter deserves a separate discussion that cannot be undertaken here, but see Chapter 1 of Simchen (unpublished). 30 For further discussion of such phenomena and their relevance for metasemantics, see Simchen (2013). 31 It might be argued on essentialist grounds that it is of the very nature of sentential truth that it is better modeled by truth-in-a-model than by scrambled-truth-in-a-model.…”

“…2525It might be thought that the contrast between productivism and interpretationism does not coincide with a contrast between allotting explanatory priority to semantic endowment for subsentential expressions as opposed to allotting it to semantic endowment for full sentences (as is the wont of both Davidsonian and Lewisian varieties of interpretationism). This might be so as a purely conceptual matter, but considerations I offer in Simchen () tell against the option of a productivist account that allots explanatory priority to semantic endowment for full sentences. And familiar Quinean considerations regarding the evidential situation for interpretation deem an interpretationist account that allots explanatory priority to semantic endowment for subsentential expressions unpromising as well.…”