Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Natural Language and its Speakers: Davidson’s Compositionality Requirement - Isaac Nevo
and in incorporating much idiosyncratic information about
particular speakers. On pain of failing to account for such
phenomena as malapropism, Davidson asks us to choose
between three principles upon which the standard view of
‘first’ (literal) meaning is constituted, namely, that first
meaning is systematic, that it is shared, and that it is
prepared. Not all three could be met, since the (ubiquitous)
possibility of malapropism shows that the interpretation
that is based on rules that are learned in advance
(prepared) and that are tied to conventional uses of
language does not suffice for interpretation, and the
interpretation that works is neither prepared nor
conventional. Davidson’s own choice is for preserving
(versions of) the first two conditions, regarding the
systematic nature and the shared-ness of interpretations,
and revising the third condition, regarding the necessity of
conventional, or shared languages. From this argument
follows his conclusion against the existence of languages
as quoted above.
Notice, however, that Davidson leaves intact the
condition of systematicity (of first meaning), and that this
condition is another version of our SCP. In fact, the move
from the weak to the strong versions of the principle can
be observed even in the text of the paper currently under
discussion (‘A nice Derangement of Epitaphs’). Consider
the following:
How should we understand or modify (1)-(3) to
accommodate malapropism? Principle (1) requires a
competent interpreter to be prepared to interpret
utterances of sentences he or she has never heard
uttered before. [WCP, so far]. . . The interpreter thus has
a system for interpreting what he hears or says. You
might think of this system as a machine which, when fed
an arbitrary utterance (and certain parameters provided
by the circumstances of the utterance), produces an
interpretation. One model for such a machine is a theory
of truth, more or less along the lines of a Tarski truth
definition. It provides a recursive characterization of the
truth conditions of all possible utterances of the speaker
[SCP, by this point], and it does this through an analysis
of utterances in terms of sentences made up from a
finite vocabulary and the finite stock of modes of
composition. (Davidson, 1986: p. 437; bracketed
comments added).
Only the strong version of the principle (SCP
compels us to choose between the second and third
requirements (for first meaning), namely, the requirement
of shared meanings and the requirement of shared
linguistic expressions, respectively. This is so because
only SCP requires, on pain of violating “systematicity” that
the interpreter should be prepared to interpret every
utterance produced by a speaker, on the basis of a
particular finite basis. If systematicity is to be understood in
terms of WCP, no such requirement follows, and the
possibility of malapropism could be taken in stride. The
systematicity of language would not be thought of as
precluding failures of derivation, where different bases are
at hand (as in “one word occupying the conceptual role of
another”), and no choice between the shared-ness of
interpretation and the conventionality of language need be
enforced.
References
Davidson, Donald 1984 [1965]. ‘Theories of Meaning and
Learnable Languages’ Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation
(Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Davidson, Donald 1984 [1967]. ‘Truth and Meaning.’ Inquiries into
Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Davidson, Donald 1984[1970]. ‘Semantics for Natural Languages.’
Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Davidson, Donald 1984 [1973]. ‘Radical Interpretation.’ Inquiries
into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Davidson, Donald 1984[1975]. ‘Thought and Talk.’ Inquiries into
Truth and Interpretation. (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Davidson, Donald 1984[1974]. ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual
Scheme.’ Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. (Oxford:
Clarendon Press).
Davidson, Donald 1984[1977]. ‘Reality without Reference.’
Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Davidson, Donald 1984[1982]. ‘Communication and Convention’
Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Davidson, Donald 2005[1986]. ‘A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs.’
Truth, Language, and History (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Davidson, Donald 1994. ‘The social Aspect of Language.’ Truth,
Language, and History (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Davidson, Donald 2001[1992]. ‘The Second Person.’ Subjective,
Intersubjective, Objective (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
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