• Event Date: March 20, 2007
  • Event Start Time: 1:00 PM
  • Event End Time: 2:00 PM
  • Event Location: Stanford University, Department of Philosophy
  • Event Type: Talks: RuCCS Colloquia
  • Event Semester: Spring 2007
  • Event Contact: Kenneth Taylor
  • Event Extra info: <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/people/ktaylor/">Kenneth Taylor</a>
In this paper,  I argue that there  is no pragmatics/semantics  interface.  In particular,  there is no one place where the work of semantics ends and that of pragmatics begins. Pragmatics and semantics are everywhere intertwined because pragmatics happens everywhere.  The lexicon itself directly licenses pragmatic intrusion from the very start of the journey from sentence meaning to narrowly semantic utterance content.  Even beforethat journey is completed  pragmatics can generate what I call one and half stage  pragmatic externalities.  Nor is pragmatics done when the journey from sentence meaning to utterance content is complete.  Then pragmatics begins again to generate pragmatic externalities of a dizzying variety. Nonetheless,  I shall argue that despite the fact that the semantic and the pragmatic are everywhere enmeshed, there is  a distinction in both conceptand principle to be had between the semantic and the pragmatic.