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7772
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Compositionality explains how long sentences work, and truth conditions are the main compositional feature [Davidson, by Lycan]
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Full Idea:
Davidson's main argument in favour of his truth conditions theory of meaning is that compositionality is needed to account for our understanding of long, novel sentences, and a sentence's truth condition is its most obviously compositional feature.
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From:
report of Donald Davidson (Truth and Meaning [1967]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language Ch.9
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A reaction:
This seems to me exactly right. As we hear a new long sentence unfold, we piece together the meaning. At the end we may spot that the meaning is silly, or an unverifiable speculation, or not what the speaker intended - but it is too late! It means.
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19133
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If you assign semantics to sentence parts, the sentence fails to compose a whole [Davidson]
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Full Idea:
The puzzle is that once plausible assignments of semantic roles have been made to parts of sentences, the parts do not seem to compose a united whole.
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From:
Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], Intro)
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A reaction:
It's not clear to me that a sentence does compose a 'whole', given that you can often add or remove bits from sentences, sometimes without changing the meaning. We often, in speech, assemble sentences before we have thought of their full meaning.
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7327
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Davidson thinks Frege lacks an account of how words create sentence-meaning [Davidson, by Miller,A]
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Full Idea:
Davidson thinks that Frege's model for a theory of semantic value (and thereby for a systematic theory of sense) is unsatisfactory, because it provides no useful or explanatory account of how sentence-meaning can be a function of word-meaning.
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From:
report of Donald Davidson (Truth and Meaning [1967]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 8.1
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A reaction:
Put like that, it is not clear to me how you could even start to explain how word-meaning contributes to sentence meaning. Try speaking any sentence slowly, and observe how the sentence meaning builds up. Truth is, of course, relevant.
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19132
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Top-down semantic analysis must begin with truth, as it is obvious, and explains linguistic usage [Davidson]
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Full Idea:
Truth is the essential semantic concept with which to begin a top-down analysis of sentences, since truth, or lack of it, is the most obvious semantic property of sentences, and provides the clearest explanation of judging and conveying information.
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From:
Donald Davidson (Truth and Predication [2005], Intro)
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A reaction:
[a bit compressed] Presumably this goes with giving sentences semantic priority. The alternative approach is compositional, and is likely to give reference of terms priority over truth of the sentence. But accurate reference is a sort of truth.
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