Demonstrative utterances

Conclusion

We have worked out a small part of a program originally devised by Kaplan which included a clarification of the phrase ‘y intends to demonstrate x’. The analysis of demonstrative utterances, combined with a theory of deferred ostensive reference, enabled us to account for a much larger class of utterances (accompained by a relevant gesture) than expected. Regrettably, the analysis forces more questions on us than it answers. Although I have used the term ‘gesture’ quite freely without providing any sort of explication, there is much more to say about gestures and their relation to speech. Especially questions concerning the ontological nature of gestures (‘What kind of a thing is a gesture anyway?’), their epistemological status (‘How can we tell gestures apart from other actions?’), and their semantic status (‘What makes a gesture have meaning?’) have remained largely unexplored. To my knowledge, no philosopher in the analytic tradition has addressed those issues in any systematic manner.