# Précis of felicitous underspecification

Jeffrey C. King<fnref n="1" />

Accepted: 16 August 2024 / Published online: 10 October 2024
© The Author(s) 2024

**Keywords** Semantics · Context · Contextual sensitivity · Felicity · Metasemantics · Semantic values · Updates · Common ground

It is arguable that the word ‘I’ has a context invariant meaning that suffices to secure semantic values for it in context. Set ‘I’ in a context and its context invariant meaning secures the speaker of the context as its semantic value in that context (at least if there is one). Consider the class of contextually sensitive expressions whose context invariant meanings arguably do not suffice to secure semantic values in context. Demonstratives and demonstrative pronouns are the examples of such expressions that have received the most attention from philosophers. However, arguably this class of contextually sensitive expressions includes among other expressions modals, conditionals, tense, gradable adjectives, possessives, ‘only’, quantifiers, and expressions that take implicit arguments (e.g. ‘ready’ in sentences like ‘Molly is ready’). Most theorists, including me, think that since the context invariant meanings of such expressions do not by themselves secure semantic values in context for these expressions, they must be supplemented in some way in context in order to secure semantic values in context. For this reason, I call these expressions *supplementives*.<fnref n="1" /> Too see why many theorists think that supplementives need to be supplemented in context to secure semantic values in context, suppose I say ‘He is smart’. out of the blue where no male has been previously discussed, none is salient, I don’t demonstrate any male nor do I even intend to refer to any male in uttering ‘he’. It simply seems implausible to think that in such a case the context invariant meaning of ‘he’ secured a semantic value for it in context. After all, what would be the semantic value in context of ‘he’ in such a case?

I talked above about supplementives taking on *semantic values in context*. What I meant by this was the element that gets contributed to a supplementive in context *qua* contextually sensitive expression. In some cases, this is what we would

<footnote n="1">¹ So far as I know, the class of contextually sensitive expressions I am focusing on here does not have a widely accepted name in the literature.</footnote>

<footnote>✉ Jeffrey C. King
jking@philosophy.rutgers.edu</footnote>

<footnote n="1">¹ Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA</footnote>
normally call the semantic value of a supplementive in context. For example, an
individual is what gets contributed to a deictic pronoun used in context and on most
views the semantic value of the pronoun in context is that individual. However, in
the case of ‘only’, what gets contributed to it in context is an alternative set. So
if ‘Only’ in ‘Only Rebecca swam’. is assigned the alternative set {Rebecca, Fall,
Dan} in context, the sentence is true in that context iff Rebecca swam and Fall and
Dan didn’t. Hence, I will call the alternative set in this case the semantic value of
‘only’ in the context but normally we wouldn’t call the alternative set the semantic
value of ‘only’ in context. So my use of ‘semantic values in context’ is technical and
somewhat unorthodox.

Above I said that the context independent meanings of supplementives are not
sufficient by themselves to secure semantic values for them in context and that
they therefore need some sort of supplementation to secure semantic values in
context. Of course, the question of what *form* the supplementation in context takes
is controversial. For example, ever since Kaplan claimed that the semantic value
of a demonstrative or demonstrative pronoun in context is the *demonstratum* of its
associated *demonstration*, there has been a lively controversy over whether that or
some other account is the correct one. The question of what type of supplementation
is required for gradable adjectives (in the positive form), modals, possessives, and
so on to secure semantic values in context is less discussed and, if anything, less
settled. Call an account of how a given supplementive secures a semantic value in
context a *metasemantics* for the supplementive.

In King (2018) I argue that all supplementives have felicitous uses in which
they haven't been assigned unique semantic values in context. This conclusion
is somewhat surprising, since many uses of supplementives in which they have
not been assigned unique semantic values in context are quite infelicitous. My
case above of my utterance of 'He is smart.' is an example. Some authors have
suggested that whenever a supplementive is not assigned a unique semantic value
in context, its use is infelicitous.<fnref n="2" /> I call felicitous uses of supplementives in which
they haven't been assigned unique semantic values in context instances of *felicitous
underspecification*. The central idea is that in cases of felicitous underspecification,
supplementives get assigned a *range of candidates for being their semantic values in
contexts* rather than being assigned unique semantic values in contexts. Consider an
example.<fnref n="3" /> Glenn and I are out surfing at Lost Winds beach. There are some surfers to
our south stretching a quarter mile or so down the beach. I notice that some surfers
in an ill-defined group to our immediate south are getting incredible rides. I say to
Glenn looking south toward them 'Those guys are good'. It seem easy to imagine
that nothing in the context of utterance determines a unique group of surfers as the
semantic value in context of 'Those guys'. For example, it is easy to imagine that I
didn't intend any *specific, unique* group to be the semantic value in context. Nor does
it seem that anything else in the context determines a unique group as the semantic
value in context. Instead, there is a range of overlapping groups that are legitimate
candidates for being the semantic value in context of 'Those guys'. Nonetheless, my

<footnote n="2">² E.g. Heim and Kratzer (1) say this about singular pronouns (p. 243).</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ This is a real case.</footnote>
utterance is felicitous: Glenn had no qualms about my utterance and took it to be
impeccably acceptable. So this is an instance of felicitous underspecification.

As its title suggests, felicitous underspecification is the main topic of the present
book. Here is a summary of what is in each chapter. Chapter 1 provides examples of
felicitous underspecification for a variety of supplementives. In each case of felicitous
underspecification considered in Chapter 1, I will say how I think conversational
participants update the Stalnakerian common ground after accepting the utterance
of the sentence containing a felicitous underspecified use of a supplementive.
I will do so without there formulating a principle that determines the updates in
question. In Chapter 2, I formulate such a principle and illustrate its predictions with
some of the cases of felicitous underspecification considered in Chapter 1. I claim
the principle correctly predicts the updates discussed in Chapter 1. In Chapter 3,
I consider and discuss the mechanism that I claim associates ranges of candidate
semantic values in context with felicitous underspecified uses of supplementives. In
Chapter 4, I discuss cases in which felicitous underspecified uses of supplementives
are embedded in certain ways: under negation, and under ‘believes’ and ‘doubts’.
In Chapter 5 I take up the question of why sentences containing felicitous
underspecified uses of supplementives are felicitous in the contexts in which they
are uttered. In particular, I formulate a notion of a *context being appropriate for an
LF*, where an LF is felicitous in a context only if the context is appropriate for the
LF. In particular, an LF $\phi$ containing a use of an underspecified supplementive in
a context $c$ will be felicitous only if $c$ is appropriate for $\phi$. In Chapter 6, I take up
some problems that arise with underspecified uses of pronouns, demonstratives and
possessives and consider revising the appropriateness condition of Chapter 5.

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## Reference

Heim, I., & Kratzer, A. (1998). *Semantics in Generative grammar*. Blackwell Publishers Inc.

King, J. C. (2018). Strong contextual felicity and felicitous underspecification. *Philosophy and Phenomenological Research*, *93*(3), 631–657.

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