A Theory of Truth and Semantic Representation

Two conceptions of meaning have dominated formal semantics of natural language. The first of these sees meaning principally as that which determines conditions of truth. This notion has inspired the disciplines of truth theoretic and model-theoretic semantics. According to the second conception meaning is, first and foremost, that which a language user grasps when he understands the words he hears or reads. The two conceptions have remained separated, and the semantic theory presented in this chapter is an attempt to remove this obstacle. The theory combines a definition of truth with a systematic account of semantic representations. The analysis of pronominal anaphora is informed by the conviction that the…