Stefano Predelli
Nottingham
"Whatchamacallits and Thingiemabobbers: Words, Codes, and Placeholders."
I discuss expressions that are most naturally interpreted as ‘placeholder’ words. Their semantic profile is not that of contributing propositional content, but rather that of serving as ‘stand-ins’ for lexical items. I suggest that placeholder words are a semantically interesting category of expressions, whose analysis involves an idiosyncratic sense of ‘meaning’ and, relatedly, of ‘semantics’ itself. I tentatively conclude by proposing an extension of my picture of placeholder words to some more widely debated semantic issues.
Nottingham
"Whatchamacallits and Thingiemabobbers: Words, Codes, and Placeholders."
I discuss expressions that are most naturally interpreted as ‘placeholder’ words. Their semantic profile is not that of contributing propositional content, but rather that of serving as ‘stand-ins’ for lexical items. I suggest that placeholder words are a semantically interesting category of expressions, whose analysis involves an idiosyncratic sense of ‘meaning’ and, relatedly, of ‘semantics’ itself. I tentatively conclude by proposing an extension of my picture of placeholder words to some more widely debated semantic issues.