Re: THEORY: Underspecification

John Cowan:
> And Rosta scripsit:
>
> > I know you claim not to understand this other sense, but I can't
> > understand your claim. Surely it is part of the specification of English
> > that _dog_ means 'dog'? Else how do we hear [dOg] and understand 'dog'?
>
> In my view, we infer the pragmatic use of "dog" from analyzing
> originally holophrastic sentences like "See the dog" and "That is a dog".
> In the majority of sentences involving _dog_, we see that something
> canine is referred to; however, a minority of sentences do not
> refer to anything canine ("She's a real dog", e.g.).
I don't quite see where we differ. Change "we infer the pragmatic use
of 'dog'" to "we infer that the sense of _dog_ is 'dog'", and I would
certainly agree with you.

--And.