Readings in the Philosophy of Language

Peter Ludlow, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, is the author of Semantics, Tense, and Time: An Essay in the Metaphysics of Natural Language (MIT Press, 1999), among other books, and the editor of Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias (MIT Press, 2001) and High Noon on the Electronic Frontier (MIT Press, 1996).

Part 1 Language and meaning: the thought - a logical inquiry, Gottlob Frege; excerpt from "The Blue and Brown Books", Ludwig Wittgenstein; translation and meaning, Willard Van Orman Quine; Utterer's meaning and intentions, Paul Grice; truth and meaning, Donald Davidson; what model-theoretic semantics cannot do, Ernest Lepore; what is a theory of meaning? Nichael Dummett; elucidations of meaning, James Higginbotham; knowledge of meaning and theories of truth, Richard K. Larson and Gabriel Segal. Part 2 Logical form and grammatical form: some remarks on logical form, Ludwig Wittgenstein; the logical form of action sentences, Donald Davidson; semantic structure and logical form, Gareth Evans; deep structure as logical form, Gilbert Harman; logical form as a level of linguistic representation, Robert May. Part 3 Definite and indefinite descriptions: descriptions, Bertrand Russell; on referring, Peter F. Strawson; reference and definite descriptions, Keith S. Donnellan; speaker's reference and semantic reference, Saul A. Kripke; context and communication, Stephen Neale; referential and quantificational indefinites, Janet Dean Fodor and Ivan A. Sag; indefinite descriptions - in defense of Russell, Peter Ludlow and Stephen Neale. Part 4 Names: on sense and reference, Gottlob Frege; proper names, John R. Searle; reference and proper names, Tyler Burge; lecture II of "Naming and Necessity", Saul A. Kripke; the causal theory of names, Gareth Evans. Part 5 Demonstratives: truth and demonstratives, Scott Weinstein; dthat, David Kaplan; Frege on demonstratives, John Perry; understanding demonstratives, Gareth Evans; individuation and the semantics of demonstratives, Martin Davies. Part 6 Attitude reports: the method of intention, Rudolph Carnap; on synonymy and indirect discourse, Israel Scheffler; vagaries of reference, Willard Van Orman Quine; on saying that, Donald Davidson; opacity and scope, Barbara Partee; sententialist theories of belief, Stephen Schiffer; a puzzle about belief, Saul A. Kripke; direct reference, propositional attitude and semantic content, Scott Soames; the prince and the phone booth - reporting puzzling beliefs, Mark Crimmins and John Perry; interpreted logical form, Richard K. Larson and Peter Ludlow; intentional "transitive" verbs and concealed complement clauses, Marcel den Dikken et al.