Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Natural Language and its Speakers: Davidson’s Compositionality Requirement - Isaac Nevo
that infinite set of sentences and supply it with an
interpretation. Is that the whole of the speaker’s language?
This is hardly the case. For the speaker may be a member
of a linguistic community, whose various members operate
with different (though, no doubt, overlapping) sentencegenerating
mechanisms (or theories), each with its own
potential infinity of sentences. Faced with that theoretical
whole, the interpreter may find her own finitely based
apparatus (what Davidson later calls the ‘prior’ theory)
insufficient (and the ‘passing’ theory that will be needed
may outstrip the limits of radical interpretation). If, on the
other hand, the speaker is given not in terms of a particular
sentence generating mechanism (or theory), but in terms
of her membership in a linguistic community, then the
infinite totality of sentences that she ‘might’ produce (as an
arbitrary member of that community) outstrips the totality
producible by any specific mechanism (or theory). Granted
even that every speaker might be understood in terms of a
particular theory, it is yet to be established that there is a
particular theory in terms of which all of them (collectively)
might be understood.
Assuming SCP, Davidson generalizes the results of
radical interpretation from the individual to the community.
If radical interpretation begins by supplying open Tsentences
with variables ranging over speakers and times,
and the evidence for such T-sentences specifies
conditions affecting each individual at a time, the
generalization is a universal quantification over speakers
and times with the proviso that the speakers in question
belong to a certain speech community. Thus, if an open
sentence T is:
(T) ‘Es Regnet’ is true-in-German when spoken by x
at time t if and only if it is raining near x at t (1984:
p. 135).
And the evidence for it is:
(E) Kurt belongs to the German speech community
and Kurt holds true ‘Es regnet’ on Saturday at
noon and it is raining near Kurt on Saturday at
noon (1984: p. 135).
The generalization (which of course requires more
evidence) is:
(GE) (x) (t) (if x belongs to the German speech
community then (x holds true ‘Es regnet’ at t if
and only if it is raining near x at t)) (1984: p. 135).
Regarding the proviso that is incorporated into the
generalized conditional, Davidson says: ‘The appeal to a
speech community cuts a corner but begs no question:
speakers belong to the same speech community if the
same theories of interpretation work for them.’ (1984: p.
135). But there is a question that is begged by this
reference to the community, and the question is one
regarding the scope of compositionality. Notice that the
membership criterion just quoted makes being answerable
to the same theory of interpretation as others sufficient, not
necessary, for membership in that community (i.e., in the
community defined by the theory). However, a person may
belong to an empirical community, e.g., the German
speech community, while being answerable to an entirely
different theory and not to the one in question. Again, all
we need to imagine for that purpose is a loss or a gain in
primitive vocabulary due to conceptual variation. (GE)
however makes membership in the community sufficient
for holding certain utterances true (i.e., for being
answerable to a certain theory). In other words, it makes
being answerable to the same theories necessary, not
merely sufficient, for membership in a speech community.
Hence (GE) exceeds the limits of the membership criterion
and is not supported by the evidence. It is plausible that
speakers who are answerable to the same theories
(namely, the same theories work for them) are members of
the same speech community. It is far less plausible that
only such speakers (i.e., speakers answerable to the same
theory) are members of any empirical speech community.
The former statement is compatible with WCP. The latter
requires SCP.
Thus, by moving from the individual to the
communal case, Davidson does make an important
assumption that is not fully accounted for (indeed, one that
he later retracts). The assumption is that interpretation
theory governs the whole of language (taken communally),
not merely the potential infinity of sentences that a
particular speaker would be inclined to produce at a
particular time. That assumption requires SCP, namely,
the claim that there is a finitely based theory such that
every sentence of the language could be derived by it (in
terms of its interpretation). That, however, is not the
degree of compositionality that it is plausible to require of a
speaker, since the speaker could be interpreted
compatibly with WCP, namely, the condition that specifies
that every sentence of the language could be derived by
some finitely based theory or other (the one that suffices
for the individual speaker being one of them). Again,
Davidson is taking a plausible claim about compositionality
and inflating it into a much stronger one without much
justification.
The upshot of this analysis is the following. If radical
interpretation culminates in generalizations (such as GE),
then it contains the presupposition that answerability to a
single truth theory (as captured in the idiom of the
interpreter) is necessary for membership in the linguistic
community in question. This presupposition is a form of
SCP. It is, however, an assumption that is not warranted
by the evidence gleaned from language as a concrete and
historically evolving entity. The evidence is compatible with
WCP, which does not require that linguistic communities
would be delimited by conformity to formal semantic
structures.
5. Schemes and Languages
In subsequent work, Davidson moves in two opposing
directions. Earlier on, the dominant direction had been to
deny that there are conceptual variations of any kind that
might present roadblocks on the way of radical
interpretation (or that might question Davidson’s reliance
on SCP as it is incorporated into his theories of meaning
and interpretation). Languages are taken to be primary
while ‘conceptual schemes’ are denied altogether, and in
this theoretical setting languages are taken to be both
empirically given (as ‘spoken’ languages) and formally
specifiable (as subject to a strongly compositional theory of
meaning/interpretation). On this construal, conceptual
schemes are made to appear as radically untranslatable
natural languages, rather than multiple but irreducible
bases upon which interpretation could take place (as made
possible by WCP). (Of course, the latter option does still
present roadblocks on the way of radical interpretation; it
makes it insufficient for determining the truth conditions of
an alien speaker’s utterances, and it leaves open the
possibility that some conceptual learning might have to
take place on top of radical interpretation and by other
means. But it is not committed to shadowy languages that
are absolutely untranslatable.)
225