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Structured propostions and sentence structure

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Abstract

It is argued that taken together, two widely held claims ((i) sentences express structured propositions whose structures are functions of the structures of sentences expressing them; and (ii) senteces have underlying structures that are the input to semantic interpretation) suggest a simple, plausible theory of propositional structure. According to this theory, the structures of propositions are the same as the structures of the syntactic inputs to semantics they are expressed by. The theory is defended against a variety of objections.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of California-Davis, 95616-8673, Davis, CA, USA

    Jeffrey King

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  1. Jeffrey King
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Additional information

I have benefitted from discussions with Michael Jubien, Michacl Liston, Paul Teller, Howard Wettstein, Mark Wilson and especially David Copp. The comments of Mark Richard and an anonymous referee for Journal of Philosophical Logic on an earlier draft resulted in a much improved paper. Various circumstances resulted in this paper appearing after King [1995], though the latter was written later and amends the present view in several ways. See notes 9, 13, 15 and 33 of King [1995].

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King, J. Structured propostions and sentence structure. J Philos Logic 25, 495–521 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00257383

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00257383

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