Semantic Under-Determinacy and the Debate on Context-Sensitivity

Abstract

The idea of semantic under-determinacy is typically accompanied by the thesis that the expressions that suffer from it are also somehow context-sensitive. A large debate has flourished in recent decades concerning the nature, extent and localisation of context-sensitivity in language. In the present chapter, I will present and critically assess the main positions that have emerged in the literature. These could be partitioned into two macro-positions: on the one hand, Contextualism has it that context-sensitivity plays a pivotal role in language, affecting the semantic content of utterances in ways that depart (either in quantity or in quality) from standardly recognised phenomena like indexicality. Three varieties of Contextualism — Extreme, Radical and Indexical — will be covered in the present chapter. On the other hand Minimalism, in a more conservative fashion, argues that context-sensitivity can affect sentence content only if it is triggered by already familiar and recognised semantic factors; all effects that are not attributable to traditional forms of context-sensitivity are to be traced to a different level of the semantics of utterances. Three positions which all subscribe to this thesis — Minimalism, Ultra-Minimalism and Non-Indexical Contextualism — will be illustrated and discussed.