Semantics In Context

Consider an utterance of the sentence ‘Some philosophers are from New York’. If no philosopher in the world comes from New York, competent speakers of English know that it is false. They also know that this utterance is true if six philosophers in the world come from New York. In other words, competent English speakers have clear intuitions about the conditions under which what is said by an utterance of this sentence is true or false. The apparent source of such intuitions is not diYcult to locate. Competent English speakers know the meanings of the words in the sentence ‘Some philosophers are from New York.’They also know how to combine the meanings of each of the words in this sentence to arrive at what is said by the utterance of the sentence,‘Some philosophers are from New York.’It is that linguistic competence that seems to be the source of their ability to report correctly about the truth of what is said by that sentence relative to diVerent possible circumstances, for example, the circumstance in which there are no philosophers from New York, or the circumstance in which six philosophers come from New York. So, the explanation for our ability to report about the truth and falsity of what is said by an utterance of ‘Some philosophers are from New York’in various possible situations is as follows. Competent English speakers know the meanings of the words used, and understand how they are combined. of the truth-conditions of the utterance of that sentence is due to their ability to combine the meanings of the words, relative to the context of Their grasp