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Three Demonstrations and A Funeral
Kepa Korta and John Perry
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[This is a preprint of an Article accepted for publication in Mind and Language © Blackwell
Publishing Ltd. 2005, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA
02148, USA.]
Abstract: Gricean pragmatics seems to pose a dilemma. If semantics is limited to the conventional
meanings of types of expressions, then the semantics of an utterance does not determine what is said. If all
that figures in the determination of what is said counts as semantics, then pragmatic reasoning about the
specific intentions of a speaker intrudes on semantics. The dilemma is false. Key points: Semantics need
not determine what is said, and the description, with which the hearer begins, need not provide the hearer
with knowledge of what was said, or the ability to express what was said, from the hearer's context.
§1. A Dilemma about What is Said
Consider Grice’s classic example of the motorist who has run out of petrol—long
considered a paradigm of Gricean implicature:
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Thanks to Kent Bach, David Israel, Jesus M. Larrazabal, Ken Taylor, and the two Mind and
Language referees for their helpful comments and corrections. The first author’s work has been
partially supported by a grant of the University of the Basque Country (9/UPV 00I09.I09-
14449/2002) and the Diamond XX Philosophy Institute. the second author thanks the Center for
Advanced Study, Oslo, Norway, the Stanford Humanities Center, the Stanford Philosophy
Department, and the Diamond XX Philosophy Institute for support.
Address for correspondence: Kepa Korta, ILCLI, The University of the Basque Country, Jose Elosegi
275, E-20015 Donostia, Spain
E-mail: kepa.korta@ehu.es
Word count: 9,879