Questions: Context-Dependence of Utterance Content

Question 1

A physicist says 'This table is not flat' and rejects it for an experiment. A carpenter says 'This table is flat' and uses it to support a glass. Are both statements true simultaneously?

• A. No — 'flat' has a fixed meaning and one of them must be wrong
• B. No — the physicist's higher standard of precision takes priority in all contexts
• C. Yes — each utterance is evaluated against a different contextually supplied standard of precision, so both can be true
• D. Yes — but only because the two speakers are using 'flat' as a pragmatic implicature, not in its literal semantic sense

Answer: (C)

On the contextualist view, gradable adjectives like 'flat' encode a standard of precision and a comparison class that context supplies. The physicist's context (quantum tunneling experiments) supplies a much stricter standard than the carpenter's (supporting a glass). The table satisfies the carpenter's standard but not the physicist's. There is no contradiction because the two utterances express different propositions. Option D is wrong — contextualists argue this is semantic, not merely pragmatic.

Question 2

The sentence 'She's ready' contains no explicit indexical like 'I' or 'here,' yet its truth conditions vary with context. Which theoretical position holds that this variability affects the proposition expressed, not just what is pragmatically implied?

• A. Semantic minimalism
• B. Contextualism
• C. Gricean implicature theory
• D. The description theory of reference

Answer: (B)

Contextualism holds that what is *said* — the proposition expressed — varies with context, not just what is implied. 'She's ready' expresses a different truth-evaluable content depending on the contextually relevant task. Semantic minimalism (option A) holds the opposite: that the linguistically encoded content is thin and context-independent, with all 'filling in' happening pragmatically and not affecting the proposition itself. Gricean implicature is what gets said when the minimal content is enriched, which is the minimalist's story, not the contextualist's.

Question 3

The context-dependence of gradable adjectives like 'tall' and 'empty' is merely pragmatic — these sentences express the same proposition in most contexts, and listeners infer the appropriate threshold from the situation.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

This is the semantic minimalist position, but contextualists argue it gets the facts wrong. If 'the glass is empty' expresses the same proposition — say, empty of all matter — in all contexts, then it is literally false in the kitchen context (since air remains). But we don't treat it as false there; we treat it as true. Contextualists take this as evidence that the truth conditions themselves shift: 'empty' in kitchen context means empty of beer, which is a semantic difference, not just a pragmatic one.

Question 4

A sentence containing no pronouns or explicit indexicals — such as 'The bank is steep' — can still express different propositions in different contexts of utterance.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

Context-dependence extends far beyond grammatically marked indexicals. 'Bank' is lexically ambiguous (riverbank vs. financial institution), but even beyond ambiguity, context supplies standards, comparison classes, and background assumptions that determine truth conditions. The sentence 'the bank is steep' expresses a different proposition depending on whether the relevant comparison class is riverbanks, interest rates, or wheelchair ramps. This is one of the central puzzles motivating the semantics-pragmatics boundary discussion.

Question 5

What is the distinction between semantic context-dependence and pragmatic context-dependence, and why does it matter?

Model answer: Semantic context-dependence means the proposition expressed — the truth-evaluable content — varies with context. Pragmatic context-dependence means the sentence expresses the same proposition in all contexts, but what the speaker implies or communicates beyond that proposition varies. The distinction matters because it determines whether two speakers in different contexts are disagreeing about the same thing or simply expressing different things with the same words. It also matters for legal interpretation, scientific communication, and cross-cultural understanding: if context changes the proposition, disputes about 'what was said' require careful reconstruction of context.

The semantic/pragmatic boundary is one of the central debates in philosophy of language. Semantic minimalists want to keep the encoded content thin and context-invariant; contextualists push much of the variability inside the semantics. The stakes are high for practical domains: legal statutes are interpreted differently depending on whether one thinks they encode thin or context-saturated content, and communication failures often stem from assuming shared context when contexts actually differ.