Meaning and interpretation

Abstract

My aim in the paper is to sketch an answer to the question what knowledge speaker and interpreter are required to have for communication to be successful. Obviously, I will not be able to provide a fully worked-out epistemology of language understanding. Nevertheless, I will try to indicate the direction in which an answer to this question may be found. A prima facie plausible answer to the question seems to be that speaker and interpreter ought to be in possession of a theory of (type) meaning for language L. Yet Davidson famously denied this assumption. In the second part of the paper I will address Davidson's worry. Given that a smooth transition from type meaning to token meaning is thought to be hampered by the context sensitivity of linguistic interpretation, I will, in the third part of the paper, scrutinize the context sensitivity of linguistic interpretation more closely: How can context sensitivity be characterized, and how can it be resolved? In light of the (allegedly) massive context sensitivity of linguistic interpretation, some philosophers and linguists try to do without type meaning in anything like the traditional sense altogether. A fairly radical version of this idea can be found in Agustín Rayo's grab-bag model of language-mastery. In the fourth part of the paper, the model will be discussed in more detail - and it will be found wanting, in certain respects at least. In the fifth part of the paper I will attempt to amend the grab-bag model. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter, Inc., Boston/Berlin. All rights reserved.