tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21308815.post7882194532136566854..comments2023-10-08T15:51:17.426+00:00Comments on Beyond Necessity: Competent users of a languageEdward Ockhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07583379503310147119noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21308815.post-13344497155688207172012-02-15T13:44:40.730+00:002012-02-15T13:44:40.730+00:00Hi Ed,
I'm finding your latest posts something...Hi Ed,<br />I'm finding your latest posts something of a departure from your previous stance on the semantics of proper names. You now seem to be suggesting that a sentence containing a proper name may not have a clear meaning to a user because he may be unfamiliar with the proper name. I can think of examples where knowing the kind of thing that a proper name refers to can resolve ambiguities of meaning: <i>Fred caught Malaria</i> might be a medical report or a cricket score line with the verb <i>caught</i> having an ambiguous meaning. But suppose we resolve the ambiguous meanings explicitly by attaching a sense number to a headword, as we find in dictionaries. Do we not then get back to your original position where a proper name merely identifies which individual in some class is being referred to---the disease Malaria or the batsman Malaria, say---and this is all we need fully to understand the sentence?David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.com