Abstract

Truth-Conditional Pragmatics, the theoretical framework advertised and illustrated in this book, stands in contrast to (what used to be) the traditional way of looking at the semantics/pragmatics distinction. This introductory chapter spells out the contrast by discussing a number of issues. Firstly, the modularity issue (is semantic competence sufficient to assign truth-conditions to arbitrary sentences of one's language, or is pragmatic competence also needed?). Secondly, the extent of context-sensitivity issue (is context-sensitivity pervasive in natural language, or it is a rather restricted phenomenon? Are all/most expressions similar to indexicals?). Thirdly, the pragmatic modulation issue (is the semantic contribution of expressions calibrated through the operation of ‘free’ pragmatic processes like metonymy, narrowing or sense-extension?).