On local bars and imported beer
“Imported” is a member of a large family of adjectives, including “enemy”, “domestic”, “local”, “exported”, “foreign”. Call these terms contextuals. Contextuals are prima facie context-sensitive expressions
in that the same contextual sentence can have different truth-values, and hence different truth-conditions, from utterance to utterance. I use Perry’s multipropositionalist framework to get a new angle on contextuals. I explore the idea that the lexical linguistic meaning of contextual
adjectives introduces two conditions to the cognitive significance of an utterance. These conditions contain a variable, y, that does not correspond to any lexical component in the sentence. This is the available tool for letting the speakers’ intentions, or what the speakers
have in mind, play a semantic role. My view focuses on the complex condition that linguistic meaning (as type) sometimes semantically determines.
Keywords: Adjectives; Perry; Reflexive-Referential Semantics; context-sensitivity; multipropositionalism
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 January 2012
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