The Linguistic Properties of Weather Reports

The chapter seeks to settle on the general syntactic and semantic properties of weather reports. In particular, it is argued that the locative construal of weather reports is adjunctional, that is, the position for a locative phrase is optional and so does not militate for any syntactic or lexical structure when such a position is not overtly occupied. It is also argued that Recanati’s arguments to a similar conclusion can be faulted in ways the strict linguistic argument on offer cannot be. It is concluded, in light of the phenomena discussed, that relevant meteorological predicates are derived from a general principle that raises nominal roots into verbal positions.

Squaring Pragmatism with Linguistic Meaning

This chapter has three major tasks. Firstly, I show how the conception of linguistic pragmatism on offer squares with certain features of standard truth-conditional approaches to meaning, especially as regards compositionality. Secondly, pace some recent semantic proposals, I argue that the properties of the Saxon genitive (e.g., Sally’s car) and adnominal adjectival attributions (e.g., red pen) are referentially open in the way I argued in the previous chapter. The third task involves sketching the kind of role I take syntax to play in fixing linguistic meaning and how the argument-adjunct distinction operates in regards to my core claims.

Linguistic Pragmatism

This chapter articulates and defends linguistic pragmatism as a linguistic hypothesis that language alone underdetermines truth conditions (or what is said), and doesn’t even provide a variable licence for the truth conditions of an utterance in a context. Linguistic meaning is characterized, therefore, in terms of constraints upon what can be literally said with a linguistic structure, without the presumption that the linguistic properties of an utterance in a context will determine a content. The hypothesis is explained in terms of the resources language makes available to content, differentiated from related positions, and defended against numerous objections, especially those that argue for an essential role for minimal propositions in accounting for aspects of what is said.

Quantificational Weather Reports

A major strand to the ‘standard view’ is that meteorological predicates must contain a locative position because we can quantify into it. If there were no such position, then the quantifications would be, contrary to fact, illicit. In this chapter I shall reject this line of reasoning. The kind of binding relations into which weather reports may enter do not militate for, let alone entail, the syntactic or lexical occurrence of a locative variable. The quantification at issue is analysed as a free relative construction. It will also be shown how domain restriction fails to have a linguistic licence.

When the Weatherman Says ‘It’s Raining’

This chapter will spell out the general significance of weather reports and detail some of the so-called ‘weatherman’ thought experiments designed to trigger pragmatist intuitions against the view that meteorological predicates project or lexically encode a locative argument. I shall defend the style of these thought experiments against some objections that rightly point out that the extant experiments do not establish what they purport to do; that is, the thought experiments are perfectly consistent with reading weather reports as essentially locative. Some alternative thought experiments will be presented that evade the complaint. The chapter will also caution against putting too much weight on them.

Concluding Remarks

This chapter discusses the programmatic nature of linguistic pragmatism with reference to three questions. Firstly, I address in historical terms the nature of linguistic variables by considering some remarks from Chomsky. Secondly, I address the apparent ontological commitment of semantics. Thirdly, I offer a final plea for placing semantics, as usually conceived, outside of language proper.

Variadic Functions and the Significance of Complement Deletion

A variadic function approach to weather reports and similar constructions is designed to save the spirit, if not the letter, of the ‘standard view’: although the meteorological predicate does not project a locative argument, there is a systematic way of construing the predicate as locatively relational (as having an indefinite argument), and so weather reports pattern with complement deletion verbs. I shall raise some objections to Recanati’s suggestion by showing that putative variadic functions are severely constrained by syntactic conditions, and so the kind of indefinite interpretations variadic functions allow cannot be freely available as an extra-linguistic pragmatic mechanism to coerce the desired reading. If that is right, the ‘standard view’ construals are simply not available, even with the permissibility of variadic functions. The general conclusion will be that the variadic function approach is unduly concessive to the spirit of the ‘standard view’.