Reply To Bach And Neale

In our paper, we first provide a framework to compare and evaluate competing approaches to what we call the problem of quantifier domain restriction. Secondly, we argue against all but one of the theories presentable within this framework. The theory left standing is a version of what we call the semantic approach. According to it, quantifier domain restriction is due to the fact that nominal expressions always occur with a domain index. In ‘On being explicit’, Neale challenges the comprehensiveness of our framework. In ‘Quantification, qualification and context’, Bach seeks to disarm the objections we have raised to his own theory of quantifier domain restriction, and raise some problems for our own. In our paper, we avoided using Neale’s phrase ‘the implicit approach’, because we had no real grasp of it. However, we did use his phrase ‘the explicit approach’. According to Neale, we misinterpret the intended meaning of this phrase in the two places in which we use it. Of course, nothing in our paper rests on this point. But the serious charge levelled by Neale is that our framework does not provide a comprehensive survey of possible analyses, because it has no room for the most promising version of the approach that results from a correct interpretation of this phrase. We should emphasize that, even after studying Neale’s illuminating reply, we are unclear about what he means by ‘the explicit approach’.