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SPEAKING WTH OBECTS

1. Introduction: I may hand you a ring while saying the words:

(1) This figure is a circle.

Here I speak with an object (the ring) to speak about that object. I transmit information by inducing a

perception identifying what I verbally refer to. This simple speech act is a paradigm of something we

do or observe most every day from infancy on, something natural and foundational. We do this as well

when the object we talk with is within the sentence referring to the object, as when we say:

(2) This figure O is a circle

(3) O is a circle

(4) His name is Nick

(5) Tarski said This stone is blue

(6) Bertie thought we are "but brief meat and brains"

Sentence-embedded objects like those underlined above we'll call displays. The ring and comparable

extra-sentential objects we'll call props.

No one thinks the prop-ring is a word or term. It's an object appropriated by an utterance of (1),

not a syntactic component of the sentence. It's a referent of a term in (1) we'll call a director. The

director, this figure, refers to the prop-ring. The prop does not denote or mean anything at all.

Historically, despite the evident semantic equivalence of uttering (2) and uttering (1) with its

prop, for some 2500 years, linguists and logicians, East and West, from Panini on, with rare exception,

have considered displays some sort of word, a kind of term that refers to itself (or its kind), something

properly called an autonym (Carnap (1937)). Autonymic conceptions of displays are diverse, but the
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core idea is that, semantically and syntactically, displays are self-referential syntactic components.

After Tarski's (1932) formalization of a metalanguage, autonymic conceptions have been challenged by

paratactic conceptions of displays as props, extra-syntactic referents of some syntactic element.

Autonymic conceptions have yet to justify positing display self-reference when what can be said

with a display might be said with a prop, a referent that doesn’t refer. Paratactic conceptions have yet to

justify disregarding the evident name-like syntax of displays that enables display sentences to say what

cannot be said with props.

This essay's Part I (Fonseca v. Autonyms & Parataxis) explains an historical compromise

conception. Semantically, the d3isplays of (2) and (3) are referents like the prop-ring of (1); they don't

denote or predicate. Syntactically, they are name-like sentence components whose position enables

their prop-like semantics. Displays and props are presentations of an object, not representations of

themselves. We present an object to an audience to induce their perception of it and direct their

attention to it. Its presentation refers them to it without its representing or referring. Unlike props,

displays are presented syntactically by positioning them where a term for the object would denote it.

What actually denotes display and props is their director.

Part II (Displays of Speech) then distinguishes displays from quotations (repetitions of

something said), and display marking from quotation marking, and explains how these distinctions

structure the explanation of the semantics and syntax of sentences like (5) and (6) wherein quotations

are displayed.

Part III (Display Formalization) explains the misconception of displays in Alfred Tarski's

(1932) formalization of a metalanguage by stipulating that flanking an expression with a pair of lines
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creates a new expression denoting the flanked expression (or its kind). We'll call this new expression an

intranym because it refers to its interior, unlike an autonym that refers to itself. Tarski's formalization

represents displays with intranyms, and misrepresents the form and content of our natural

metalanguage.

I. Fonseca v. Autonyms & Parataxis

2. Framing the Project: The guiding premise of this project is that sometimes what is said with a

display may be said with a prop, and sometimes it can’t. The semantic (propositional, informational)

content of utterances pairs like (1) and (2) may be the same.

(1) This figure is a circle [+ waving a circular object]

(2) This figure O is a circle.

Of course their semantic content differs if they are read as referring to distinct concrete particulars, but

they may also be read as referring to the same property, a kind of shape. In this respect, (1) is like (2b)

and (2r):

(2b) This figure O is a circle

(2r) This figure O is a circle

So it seems that the location of the circle inside or outside the sentence has no more semantic import

than its print style or color.

However, many display embedding utterances have no prop-using utterance counterparts. One

example is (4): His name is Nick. A starker example: an utterance of (4A) (Nick is his name) is not well

matched by pointing at a prop Nick while saying is his name. Attaching a prop to an uttered sentence

fragment doesn’t make a grammatically whole sentence. We’ll later see other display utterances, like
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(6)(Bertie thought we are “but brief meat and brains”), that can’t be said with props.

In essence, this project aims to explain such facts, and some of the implications of that

explanation. That explanation is shaped by the assumption that these matters have a history. My hunch

is that our use of displays is best understood as developing from our use of props. Our use and

understanding of props seem basically pre-linguistic: we couldn’t acquire our first language if we

didn’t naturally understand props. Displays are sentence components, creatures of language that come

later. (Nonhuman animal speech does not evidence utterances embedding displays.) Variations in

display syntax seem to be later developments; some of them seem due to peculiarities of modern

language and modern theories of language

3. Presentation v. Representation: When I hand you a ring while saying sentence (1) the ring

is a prop; the indexical descriptor, this figure, is a director. This director refers to its prop (or a property

of it). My handing you the prop also refers you to it. I use it to induce a perception of it, to make it an

object of your attention and thought. That presentation identifies the director's extension perceptually

while the director identifies the presented prop verbally. You witness my showing you what I'm talking

about.

Presentations of a thing direct attention to it by using it to induce a perception of it.

Representations of a thing direct our attention to it in its absence. Propositional representations rest

upon presentations. Since naming requires identification of the referent, fixing the referents of our

names must begin with a preverbal way of identifying things. Names are first learned by coordinate

presentations of two perceptual objects, a name (Mama, dog, water, red) and its referent (an individual,

property, relation, event, location, etc.) The name's referent is identified by a presentation inducing a
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perception of it.

Presentations take many forms. Phonemes may be presented by a parent or babbling baby. A

prop may be presented by producing it, pointing to it, posting words on it, or passively exploiting

circumstances priming the audience to fix on the prop when presented its name or a verbal reference to

it. Properties, types, kinds and other abstracta may be presented by presenting their perceptible

instances, for they are identified by directing attention at their instances. So too, perceptible individuals

may be identified by presenting a replica.

Yet, many things are not presentable. Many terms cannot be taught ostensively -- and most that

can aren't. Eventually, most of our words are learned purely verbally, with words explaining other

words.

Still, the importance of presentation is gauged by its primacy, not its relative frequency.

However wide and tight our net of verbal definitions, none of our words represent anything unless

some of their reference is communally coordinated by joint perceptions of a name presented in the

presence of its referent (Davidson (1973), Engelland (2014)). We can refer to things, perceptible and

imperceptible, past, present or future, in actual and imaginable worlds, because we can refer with some

perceptible objects in our world. Language gets to be about the world by incorporating the world within

our linguistic acts

The role of presentations in our acquisition of terms and our knowledge of their referents is both

causal and epistemic. Presentations are our ultimate evidence of our (imperfectly) shared

understanding of our language and our world. Whatever way we learned a word, our best test of our

referring to the same perceptual thing is our shared reference to it in its presence. Such verifications of
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word-object correlations don't silence all possible interpretive skepticism. Nothing could do that. But

normally, given the usual speaker-audience psychological similarities, presentations provide reason

enough for confidence that communication is succeeding.

I may introduce you to a thing or its name by showing you thing and saying its name. I may

introduce to you to a property or predicate by using the same object and the same words. Which I am

doing may depend on the context. Often, as in this essay, I do both at once. (What could be wrong with

my wanting my readers to take my term introductions both ways?) We may first define a term by

presenting both the term and its referent. With definitions established, we may present an object and

represent with our terms. I may point at your shirt while saying: My kitchen is that color. By identifying

the verbal referent as the perceptual referent the content of your understanding is enhanced.

So is your cognitive standing. Perceptions of an object are evidence of the object’s existence

and perceptual properties. Presentational reference is defeasible evidence for its intensional contents.

Your acquaintance with a referent informs your references to it, and authorizes them. You now know

what you are talking about. Representational reference has no such epistemic import. Someone’s

affirming a description may be evidence of its denotation, the description itself is not. Special

circumstances aside, a name is no evidence of any of its referent's properties or its existence.

4. Props: Props are extra-sentential objects used like an appositive term, for they are

primarily identifiers of the subject their director identifies. But, appositive terms are alternative

representations of the subject. Props are not representations. They don’t “mention” anything. They

identify the director's denotation by being it, or instancing it, or exemplifying it, or replicating it -- and

by their being perceived as doing it. They are constituents of speech acts that contribute to the act’s
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informational content, but not to the sentence’s semantic content. They contribute information that is

incorporated in the proposition expressed by their presentation coordinated with an utterance.

Sometimes the same proposition is expressed with a replicant object within a sentence.

In essentials, prop presentation is biological communication. It takes many forms, some of them

linguistically sophisticated, but generally they are best conceived as basically a kind of pre-linguistic

demonstrative. Pointing is an apt paradigm. We naturally use and read gestural pointers as directors of

attention. Its a natural referential mechanism we don’t choose, create or control.

While the core of prop presentation is pre-conventional, it mixes with representational and

conventional elements when, for example, an object is presented by presenting a picture of it, or, more

importantly, when the object presented is itself a conventional, representational object, like a map,

diagram, word, numeral, or sentence. Conventions and representations operate in the presentation and

the perception of representational objects, for we commonly present such objects to be not merely

sensed, but, specifically, to be read.

Here, what we perceive may be individuated primarily by its convention-created, functional

(semantic) properties. The graphemes (types and tokens), Nick, Nick and Nick are three versions of

the same name. Their material doesn’t matter: such objects may be embodied in graphite, wood, plastic,

pixels, etc. Even their perceptual resemblance is inessential: they don't resemble the phoneme, Nick,

that they represent by doing visually what it does audially. The various graphemes and phonemes are

not different names of the person. Culture may make perceptually diverse objects identify the same

name by making them be the same name identifying the same person. We are taught to see some shapes

as the same word we hear.

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Our perceptions are culturally conditioned. But the core of prop presentations is a fact of our

nature: We are referred to things by their presentation. We read perceptions induced by presentations

accompanying an utterance about the perceptual object. We read them identifying the verbal referent.

Presentations have that effect on us and our intensionality. If we didn’t naturally read presentations we

couldn’t be taught any conventions.

5. Display Conceptions & History: Displays are like props fitted to function in a syntactic

structure. Props acquire their semantic role by some extra-syntactic, semantic event like pointing.

Nothing extra-syntactic directs attention to a display. Instead, displays are presented syntactically by

being positioned where a genuine name for the director's extension would denote that extension.

The core idea was first suggested by Pedro da Fonseca (1564):

[W]hether you write the following whole [sentence], This figure O is a circle, or only this,

O is a circle, in neither writing will that O be the subject of the proposition, understood in the

latter [sentence].(BK I, Ch 16)

Fonseca's discussion is short and skeletal. The nub is that the displayed O is a pseudo- or quasi-term

that only seems self-referential in (3) (O is a circle). Actually (3) is short for (2) (This figure O is a

circle), whose display is the semantic equivalent of the prop of (1) (This figure is a circle). In (1)-(3),

the object is a referent perceptually identifying its director's extension.

Theorists don't criticize Fonseca's proposal. It doesn't occur to them. Somehow, this elegant

insight of the once famed “Portuguese Aristotle” has gone little known and never appreciated for near

five centuries.1 Logicians and linguistic theorists haven't denied that (a) sentences using props always

1 I chanced upon my predecessor briefly described and dismissed in Ashworth (1974). John Doyle
generously further educated me about Fonseca and provided translations.
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have a director, (b) sentences using displays very commonly have an explicit director, (c) an utterance

presenting a solo display (= no evident director) says the same as some utterance with an explicit

director, and (d) some term must be operating when a display operates. Increasingly over the last eight

decades, theorists, unaware of Fonseca, have observed that a display is semantically prop-like, not

term-like. More recently a few theorists began attending to the operations of a director. (Cf. Jackendoff

(1984), Wertheimer (1999), Moltmann (2013))

Some theorists see that a display is not a term semantically, but they don't confront the puzzles

of how a non-linguistic object could be a syntactic component, and how it could be referenced without

some term referring to it. (Cf. Reach (1938), Whiteley (1957), Christensen (1967), Searle (1969)

Binkley (1970), Clark & Gerrig (1990), Read (1997), Recanati (2001) de Brabanter (2005).) Like their

autonymic foils, they (almost) never mention directors and never recognize their operation.

Davidson (1979) recognized that displays aren't terms. And he noticed the need for a term. But,

he thought that need filled by the Tarskian (1932) assignment of an essential semantic role for

quotation marks flanking an object. Davidson took the marks to be a single, universal demonstrative

director: this expression (more fully: the expression type of this expression token) . Sellars (1950) had

seen that expressions can be individuated both functionally and materially, so an additional director in

the form of another punctuational device is needed.

Conceptions like these have been called demonstrative because of their (oversimplified but

rectifiable) semantic thesis that displays are referents of demonstratives (as though no other term could

serve).They are better called paratactic conceptions because their distinctive thesis is the syntactic

claim that displays are "paratactic" referents: i.e., not syntactic components of a sentence. Paratactic
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conceptions consider a display a referent of a term within the matrix sentence by presuming the

propriety of Tarski's formalized metalanguage. The assumption is that our natural language display

marks are the equivalent of the Tarskian marks stipulated to create a referring expression, an intranym,

a referential device designating its innards. That stipulation invites -- but doesn't demand -- a paratactic

construal.

However construed, while Tarski's referential marks are perceptually like the punctuation

natural languages now often use to mark displays (and to mark an odd lot of other things we’ll discuss

later), our display markers don’t create a display or any referring expression. They are disambiguators,

helpful interpretive aids, but semantically and grammatically inessential -- like capitalized initial

sentence letters. We couldn't create or understand display punctuation unless we already used and

understood unpunctuated displays. Paratactic conceptions are implausiblities outside a formal

metalanguage.

For natural languages, what has seemed obvious (to minds uncorrupted by formalist

conceptions) is that displays are autonyms that don't need directors. Compare (4) and (7):

(4) His name is Nick

(7) He is Nick.

These are apparently comparable, complete grammatical sentences. (7) has two terms denoting the

same person, Nick. Surely, (4) must have two terms denoting the same name, Nick. Some term other

than His name must be denoting Nick, -- and what else could it be but the displayed Nick? The idea that

(4)'s Nick names the name, Nick , just as (7)'s Nick names the person, Nick, is altogether natural -- and

so compelling that even displays of nonlinguistic objects, like the circles in (2) and (3), look like a term
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of some sort, unlike the prop ring of (1)..

Actually, like props, displays are presented objects. Unlike props, they appear to represent

themselves. That appearance is a halo effect of incorporating a prop within a syntactic structure. The

integrity of a sentence allows props to become sentence components only if they are like the matrix

words materially, perceptually, replicationally, and like names syntactically. So they look like names

semantically.

6. Material & Perceptual Properties of Displays v. Props: Props of vocalized sentences

can be virtually any sentence-independent object (event, property, location, etc.) perceptible by the

speaker and audience concurrent with the presentation of a sentence, because a vocal utterance is an

action readily coordinated with actions directing attention to such objects. Written sentences are

primarily products intended to persist apart from their production and detached from the objects

currently perceptible to a reader, so their props are generally limited to colored shapes on the same or a

facing page, or to things adjacent to signs about them: Slippery when wet.

To be sentence components, objects must be presentable as part of a sentence in the process of

presenting the sentence. Displays needn't be words or linguistic objects but they must be materially and

perceptually like the components of their embedding sentence-token.

Compatibility with the embedding sentence's material and perceptual properties is a vague

requirement subject to cultural conditioning. Our conception of the displayable gets challenged by

children's books, advertising, art, and innovations in sentence embodiment. Some cases are clear; some

are not. C-sharp is displayable in monotonic sentences, but not written ones. Color patches are displays

in otherwise monochromatic sentences; they are props when waved while voicing the sentence. Some
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purists might insist that a fabric swatch inside a greeting card sentence is a prop, not a display; few

would so insist if the swatch-embedding sentence is woven in fabric.

Tarski (1965) predicted that if the sentence this stone is blue has the words this stone replaced

with a small blue stone, we would not regard the result as a sentence. Most folks, I'd bet, would read the

whole as a kosher sentence when is blue is written in similar small stones -- and when such a stone-

sentence is in a photo, painting or other replication of a materialized sentence, real or imagined.

(Language has lots more aspects than formalist logicians attend to.)

The physical limits of display are relative to a linguistic medium. Displays can be any material

matrix words can be. Smells, tastes, tickles and pains can't be words of audial or visual sentences, so

they aren't displayable there; they can only be props for oral sentences. Gestures can be displays in

sentences of ASL but only props or pointers presenting a prop of oral sentences. Morse code can

transmit only displays of letter sequences. Braille has spatial limitations.

(A topic for another time: What can be presented in Mentalese, the Language of Thought? If

nothing can be, can there be such a language?)

7. Display Replication: A display's material and perceptual features are further

conditioned by the requirement that displays be reproducible along with the reproduction of their

matrix sentence. Props are sentence-independent concrete particulars that needn't be replicable.

Displays recur with the recurrence of their sentence, and as a component of semantically related

sentences, so we can validly argue both (8) and (9):

(8) Every figure O is a circle, and every circle is two-dimensional, so every figure O is

two-dimensional
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(9) This figure O is a circle and every circle is two-dimensional, so this figure O is

two- dimensional.

Parallel arguments using props are equivocations unless a single concrete prop is presented twice. (8)

and (9) would be equivocations if their display tokens were their material (ink, pixels, whatever), but

we read the recurring displays like recurring terms. Words and displays can be individuated by their

matter, but far more commonly and naturally we individuate them by their perceptual, positional and

functional properties. A display’s material resembles the matrix material, whatever that be; beyond that,

its material is inessential to its identity.

Generally, sentence reproductions (including here transcriptions and translations) may vary

widely in font, color, size, style, medium, etc. without affecting sentence meaning. Generally, displays

(and especially displays of matrix language words) are reproduced consistent with the reproductions of

the matrix words. Thus, the standard reproduction of (2) (This figure O is a circle) for a page of red

print is (2r) or, for a page of boldface print, (2b):

(2a) This figure O is a circle

(2b) This figure O is a circle

While they can be read the same, we naturally read (2c)-(2e) to say something else.

(2c) This figure O is a circle

(2d) This figure O is a circle

(2e) This figure O is a circle

Consistency of a display's perceptual properties with those of the matrix is the norm. Those are default

properties of the display. They have no informational import. What attracts attention is the perceptual
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peculiarities and divergences from the matrix. The color and style of the (2)/(2r)/(2b) displays are those

of their matrix words. We take the display (the sentence subject) of (2)/(2r)/(2b) to be simply the shape;

only the shape has any functional relevance or informational import. The displays of (2c) and (2d) are

conspicuously colored; (2e)'s display is conspicuously sized. We naturally read the (2c)/(2d) displays --

and the subjects of the sentence -- to be specifically a black circular shape. We take (2c) and (2e) to be

semantically the same, and unlike (2), (2b), (2r) and (2e).

The informational import of a display's perceptual properties is sensitive to the matrix

perceptual properties, and also to the perceptual properties of the sentence context. (2e) is ambiguous.

We'd normally take its display to be, specifically, a circular shape of that size. That leaves open whether

(2d)'s display is an instance of an absolute size replicated in (2b) in a page of 18 point print, or instead

an instance of a size relative to its matrix, unlike displays in all the other sentences. Consider also that a

(2c) in a page of red print might be replicated by a (2) in a page of black print.

A display's perceptual consistency with its matrix and context may be necessary for replicating

sentence meaning and truth. Some perceptual consistency may instead be inconsistent with semantic

replication. Consistency of font in (2f) alters the display's shape, and must be sacrificed for semantic

consistency in (2g):

(2f) This figure O is a circle.

(2g) This figure O is a circle

Some of the other variants of (2) may differ referentially, but they are all true, whereas (2f) is false.

Or so we might say in many contexts. But if I free hand write (2f), my audience might well

charitably see my display as a circle, just because I am saying that it is a circle. We do much the same
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when, as is the norm, we charitably read all the other above variants as true. Those other seven displays

much more closely approximate a geometer's circle than (2f)’s display does.They may be close enough

to be seen as circles in many circumstances, yet a geometry text might be faulted for affirming any of

those sentences.

So, display tokens of the semantically same type in synonymous matrices may differ, in kind or

degree, materially or perceptually to adjust for material or perceptual differences in their matrix or its

context, or for the constant matrix content. So too, materially and perceptually identical objects may be

display tokens differing semantically because of perceptual or semantic differences in their matrix or its

context. Further, the kind and degree of acceptable or required variation may depend on the speaker's

intention, and speech context -- and our standards of accuracy of reproduction, which properly depend

on our contextual interests and purposes.

To vivify the plasticity of a display's material and perceptual character, consider: What,

precisely, is the referent of an utterance of This figure O is a circle? Does that sentence printed on an

off-round balloon shift its reference and sense and gradually become a different sentence making a

false statement when the expanding balloon distorts the display? Or do the balloon words, This figure,

continue to refer to its display's original, deflated shape? (What if This figure O is black is a neon sign

whose colors change?) Questions about the identity of a display -- what are its essential, defining,

perceptual and material features -- might not have a determinate answer. Our intentions may be

inchoate in various ways and degrees. Our standards of acceptability of reproduction may conflict, for

our interests and purposes may compete.

8. Display Syntax v. Parataxis: Replication of display-embedding sentences may require

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adjusting the display’s perceptual properties, but must preserve its sentence position. A prop can be

located anywhere within the speaker's and audience's shared perceptual space concurrent with the

uttered sentence; suffice that attention to it can be captured by some coordinate perceptual act or

circumstance. Displays are presented by their syntactic position. Nothing inside or outside the sentence

points at a display. Apprehension of it is effected by its position within the sentence about it.

Specifically, displays are positioned like terms, because they function like appositive terms: they

identify a director's denotation.

Paratactic conceptions deny this and enjoy some plausibility, because display syntax seems

semantically irrelevant with sentences like (2) whose content is expressible with an utterance of a

display-less counterpart like (1) accompanied by a presentation of an equivalent prop. Actually, while

some displays may be replicated by a sentence-external element of discourse, many cannot, or not

without tendentious fudging.

For example, Davidson's (1979) only director is his display marks acting as the indexical

descriptor: This expression. He cannot account for -- or even recognize-- unmarked displays and their

legitimate transpositions. Nor can he really account for transpositions of marked displays. His

transformation of marked displays with an explicit director is a senseless stutter: (E'B') becomes (BEE):

(E'B'): This expression, 'badass', is slang

(BEE): Badass. This expression this expression is slang.

More generally, even Davidson's paradigm transpositions flout the standard punctuation practice of

marking a paratactic display when its embedded replicas would be marked. Our current norms restate

('B') with ('B'E). Style books don't recommend the Davidsonian (BE).
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('B') 'Badass' is slang

('B'E) 'Badass'. This expression is slang.

(BE) Badass. This expression is slang.

Current paratactic accounts of display have no account of paratactic displays.

(BE) would be properly punctuated if the word ‘Badass’ really were a prop, detached from the

matrix, presented on a blackboard. Paratactic conceptions misconceive natural language paratactic

displays as props. Such displays are not syntactically independent objects. While outside their matrix,

they remain syntactically attached to it by their adjacency. Sentences may refer to syntactically

detached words, but cannot presentationally refer to them. Speakers may present syntactically detached

words, but sentences cannot, because sentential presentations are essentially positional. Embedded or

attached, an object is displayed by its position within a semantic structure.

Since Davidson sees displays as prop-like, as having both a director and some presentational

device, he thinks his display marks are both, yet he doesn't explain how something could be both a

demonstrative term and a pointing finger. He doesn't see that (a) props and displays have the same need

for a director, and (b) no punctuation could be a prop director so (c) no punctuation could be a display

director either.

Set Davidson aside. A display without syntactic presentation would be like a prop lacking an

extra-sentential presentation linking it with a director. The object would float free of the utterance's

content. Actually, a misplaced display is worse than a free-floating prop because it imperils the

intelligibility of its matrix sentence, as in: *O this figure is a circle/*This figure is O a circle/*Is a circle

O.
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Paratactic conceptions disregard such evident facts of display syntax. And many others.

Consider:

(PL) Some t’s weren’t crossed and many i’s went undotted.

Displays can be pluralized. Props can’t. Nor can paratactic displays.

Most glaringly, paratactic conceptions exhibit a well-nigh willful blindness to the manifest

association of displays with directors. Obviously, displays are very commonly referenced by explicit

verbal elements in sentences. Positing display reference by some punctuation -- which may be utterly

invisible -- seems wholly gratuitous. What purpose could referential marks be serving? They are

redundant even as disambiguators because displays with explicit directors can rarely be read as other

than displays. Here, referential marks can only and do only get in the way as a stutter: This expression

this expression.

The semantic significance of display syntax will appear when we later see that, despite the

extensional equivalence of props and displays, the syntactic difference has modal consequences.

Displays are essential constituents of a species of formal truths, like:

'N'N: Nick names Nick.

'NF’T: Nick fed Fred is true if and only if Nick fed Fred.

Props are extra-syntactic elements, so they cannot be essential components of a truth due solely to

syntactic form. For now, just recall the point of the previous section about the inferential possibilities

with recurring displays vs. individual props.

Then, recall another of that previous section's morals. Unlike props, a display's contribution to a

sentence's semantic content depends on, not just its perceptual properties and sentence position, but
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also on the relations of its perceptual properties to the matrix content and to the perceptual properties of

the matrix and its context. These relations are another dimension of a display's integration with its

matrix. Evidently, sentence meaning may be composed from, not only the meanings of its individual

components and their positional relations, but also from the phonetic relations of the components. We

might conclude that some phonetic structures have semantic effects or that some syntactic relations

with semantic import are phonetic rather than positional.

9. Contra Autonyms: The syntactic role of displays is specially vivid when they appear

unmarked and solo. We accept (3) (O is a circle) as a complete sentence. A displayed circle is

sufficiently syntactic to complete an English sentence. A presented prop is not. Eliding the director of

(1) (This figure is a circle) leaves a sentence fragment: is a circle.

Solo displays seem the best case for displays being autonyms. Since (3) may say the same as (2)

(This figure O is a circle), (2)'s director may look dispensable, semantically redundant and syntactically

optional. The display seems to operate independently, referring to itself on its own. The sheer frequency

of solo displays might heighten this appearance, but it probably shouldn’t since the implicit director is

commonly so obvious that its absence is readily explicable by its evident superfluity.

For that same reason, we should not infer that displays are director-independent autonyms from

the bare fact that the interjection of an implicit director may sound plainly unnatural:

(4P) He is named Nick

(4d) ??? He is named the name Nick

(10) Tom said 'Ted slept'.

(10a) ??? Tom said the words (or, sentence, or whatever) 'Ted slept'
 20

We should expect insertion of a director to be awkward, a redundant stutter, when the director is

implicit in the speech verb or predicate. Consider:

(11a) Tom stated 'Ted slept'

(11b) ??? Tom stated the statement 'Ted slept'

(11c) Tom made the statement 'Ted slept'

(12a) He was baptized Nick

(12b) ??? He was baptized the name Nick

(12c) He was given the name Nick.

(13a) Nick's Fiat went kehfloo.

(13b) *Nick's Fiat went the sound kefhfloo.

(13c) Nick's Fiat made the sound kehfloo.

The (b) sentences are puzzling stutters. The (c) sentences seem to unpack the (a) sentences. (Cf.

Mutashansky (2008), Fara (2011), Moltmann (2013).) An awkwardness in interjecting an explicit

director term is an expectable consequence when the term is implicit in a cognate matrix predicate.

Why would -- how could -- such interjection be awkward in just these cases if there weren't an implicit

director?

The awkwardness of interjecting a director isn't probative. What matters is whether display

utterances say the same as a counterpart with an explicit director. The evidence here, and more that

later appears, suggest that display utterances don’t all have a single structure. We shouldn’t suppose

that display utterances must be diagrammed with the display appositional to a director. To make sense

of displays as presentational adjuncts of a director, it may suffice that displays be like an appositive in
 21

functioning to perceptually identify a director's subject.

We'd best be wary of reading data as evidence of display independence, for it may seem that if a

display is referenced without a director, the display must be referenced by itself. But, whatever the

worries of positing unspoken directors operating in the semantic structure of sentences with solo

displays, positing autonyms is way more problematic. It's fully on a par with positing self-referential

props. The supposition is empty and idle; it explains nothing.

Logicians have thought that words must have names if we're to talk about them, just as we need

names for other objects. Yet we need names primarily to refer to things in their absence. Unlike other

things, linguistic objects are "by definition" presentable in sentences. They are essentially displayable

objects.

Any word is so readily referenced and identified by displaying it that we have no call to name

or represent it. We sometimes have reason to identify a word with a demonstrative or descriptor, but

any word you might refer to by name you can better refer to by presenting it. We do name word

sequences (proofs, poems, plays) whose intra-sentential presentation is impractical, but there's scant

reason to refer to a word with a term as long as the word. It's not unintelligible; just unmotivated.

Positing autonyms seems unproblematic because we can make any phoneme or grapheme refer

to any other object we choose, and we can make any object be the referent of any other sound or shape

we choose. We can, for example, make a symbol 'E' refer to the symbol E. So we're well primed to

presume we can make the expression, E, refer to E: we need but intend it.

Yet, we can't well intend a prop-ring to refer to itself. So, why suppose we can intend to use a

word autonymously? That may seem intelligible, because we are familiar with the self-reference of
 22

persons and sentences, and the self-denotation of predicates. But these aren't precedents for autonyms.

Sentences like I am English, This sentence is English ,'English' is English can express substantive

truths due to the semantic peculiarities of specific words like I, this, English. But if any word can self-

refer, every displayable object can.

Is self-reference some kind of natural semantic property of objects? If that seems unlikely or

unintelligible, how do you get an object to self-refer? Do you baptize it, mentally pointing at it and

vowing that it thereafter refer to itself? Could we agree to use glonk as a self-referring word, and have

our dictionaries define the word glonk as meaning, simply and solely, the word glonk? Why we would

‘Nick’ names the actor Nolte and others; ‘circle’ is a predicate of shape, ‘I’ refers to its speaker.

These are cultural facts that are prior to and explanatory of the semantic contents of utterances in which

the terms appear. No sense can be made of object self-reference as a semantic property fixed to

sentence-independent items in our lexicons. Object self-reference seems at all intelligible only as a

situational property of an object in a sentence mentioning it. In fact, objects never appear to self-refer

except when displayed.

Certainly, displays do seem to self-refer. The illusion of display self-reference is inescapable,

because the object is in fact referenced and is being used to effect that reference by inducing a

perception of it where a genuine name for it would refer to it.

But with a genuine name we refer to a specific bearer only if we so intend the name. Our

intending a presented object to self-refer does nothing. The audience is referred to the object by its

presentation, whether or not anyone intends the object to refer to anything. The presentation explains

both the reference and the appearance of self-reference, and renders any self-reference redundant,
 23

purposeless. We present displays. We do not “mention” them.

Positing autonymy contributes nothing to an explanation of the semantic content of a sentence

or utterance. Instead, that posit only distorts the logical form of display sentences. We’ll see that the

famous controversies and conundra about the logic of displays derive from treating displays as terms.

9. Director Semantics & Syntax: Positing unspoken directors avoids the vacuity of

autonyomy, but if reference to the display is explained by its presentation, why is a director needed?

I cannot fully answer that. It seems to me plausible that while a complete declarative sentence

may have unspoken terms, the statement expressed is explicit in a sentence with at least two terms. But

I am close to clueless how to justify such a principle. We posit the operation of unspoken sentential

elements -- and other unobserved phenomena -- when it seems to fit in some explanation we favor. My

conception of the explanation I am developing is largely inchoate. I argue that displays are best

conceived as presentational adjuncts of a director, but I have little of a larger theory of language that

would make specific sense of that idea. Frankly, I don’t know what a sentence is, or much else that is

assumed in my arguments.

I assume that utterances embedding solo displays say what is said by some utterance with an

explicit director, for I see no counter examples. I assume that what is said with a solo display is best

explained by explaining what is said with an explicit director, because, with props and displays alike,

variations in what is said with variant directors is best explained by the director variance. I don’t see

how to explain variations in what is said with a solo display without assuming the operation of variant

implicit directors.

The significance of directors is obscured by an oversimplification in Fonseca's words quoted

 24

earlier. His core insight becomes more compelling by noting that (3) (O is a circle) might be short for a

great diversity of sentences, not just (2) (This figure O is a circle).

Any object has countless properties. Virtually any predicable of a displayable object could be a

director of its display. The implicit director of (3) might be figure, numeral, letter, title, enclosure,

name, sound, ring, etc. Recall that perceptually diverse objects may be tokens of a semantic type

serving the same director. The flip of this is that perceptually identical objects might serve semantically

diverse directors. What the object is and what it identifies are identified and determined by its director.

Further, as John Buridan (1986) noted near eight centuries ago: I can certainly say “Every term

‘Socrates’ is a singular term”, and “Some term ‘Socrates’ is a singular term”, and “A term Socrates’ is

a singular term”, and “This term ‘Socrates’ is a singular term”. The first of these is universal, the

second is particular, the third is indefinite, and the fourth is singular. Director predicates operate in

diverse syntactic constructions. The syntax of a display varies with its director's syntax.

Evidently, without some assumed director, the thought expressed by a sentence embedding a

solo display has an indeterminate content and structure. Any reading of (a sentence with) a solo display

assumes the content and structure of some director. Let’s elaborate on this a little.

For starters, (3) might abbreviate (2), (2L) or (2N):

(2L) This letter O is a circle

(2N) This numeral O is a circle.

Those four displays are materially and perceptually indistinguishable. Yet, letters and numerals are

distinct and independent kinds of objects. Is the object displayed in (3) the numeral zero or the English

letter pronounced oh? Or is it the general, unspecified shape of (2)? Abstractly it might be any of them;
 25

concretely it is a particular one.2

The syntactic options are starker contrasts. (3) may be short for (2D):

(2D): The figure O is a circle.

Display directors needn’t be demonstratives. Other modes of singular reference may be more suited for

reference in other contexts or to other kinds of referents.The demonstrative this of (2) favors reading

2 A director's identification of a display is a large subject. Outside displays, a particular circle is a letter

or numeral or neither because of its contextual function, as in:

(oL) The circle in this sentence is a letter, not a numeral.

(oN): The circle in this sentence is a numeral, not a letter.

(oL) is true and (oN) false because their referent constituent circles function, not as displays, but as

letters, constituents of words. What is predicated doesn't affect their function. Both (2L) and (2N) are

true because their referent constituent circles function as displays. Normally displays are most sensibly

read to be what their matrix says of them. Detached from a director, the circle in (3) is neither a number

nor a letter.

A displayed circle may be a letter by being a constituent of a displayed word as in (oL):

(14) The circle in 'not' is a letter.

We presume (14) true, because we presume its implicit director is (something like) the word, so the

display is read as a sequence of letters. With a function-neutral director, the display needn't be a letter:

(15) The circle in this sequence of shapes, 'not', is a numeral.

This director lets the object be what the matrix says of it. Displays are objects subserving a sentence, a

syntactic whole, not just their director.

 26

the descriptor, this figure, as referring to the adjacent sentence component, whereas (2D)'s definite

article the favors taking the topic to be some abstraction, a kind, type, class, property. (Compare: This

zebra is a striped animal/The zebra is a striped animal.) But of course the may be used to refer to

concreta and this may be used for reference to abstracta, and either may be used to refer to tropes,

concrete instances of a property.

The possible referents of directors are ontologically diverse. Their props and displays don't refer

to any of them, but presenting a perceptual object can direct attention upon the individual or a distinct

individual identified by perception of it: a property, type, trope or replica. These ontological

distinctions have great importance, yet commonly they are informationally and conversationally

irrelevant. Commonly, when we’re talking about words and their semantic and syntactic properties and

relations, we needn’t be anxious whether we’re talking about types or tokens, since we sensibly

attribute many the same semantic and syntactic properties and relations to tokens and types alike.

Directors of displays and props are primarily singular terms. Prop directors are predominately

Still, display plasticity is limited. Sentence predicates and interpretive principles can’t make the

object be something it couldn’t be. Consider:

(16) This figure ▼ is a circle

(17) This figure 0 is a circle

(18) This numeral ▼ is a triangle.

(16) is simply false. (17) is not so simple. The (17) on this page is false because it is a mechanically

produced oval. If I free-hand write such a sentence it might properly pass as true. (18) is a curious case

of a failure of reference. It seems more nonsensical than false (despite its possibly stating a truth).
 27

demonstrative. Display directors can be demonstrative, but most commonly they are definite

descriptions. They can be also be nondemonstrative indexicals:

(19) Her Hello was too hearty for my mood.

As noted earlier, since displays are referenced by their sentential presentations, we generally have no

reason to name displayable objects. But sometimes we do, so sometimes displays are referenced by

proper name directors:

(20) Paul pondered the Pythagorean Theorem, a2 + b2 = c2.

(21) Do you know “Side by Side”, Oh we ain’t got a barrel of money ...?

Paratactic conceptions have insisted that displays are referenced by demonstratives because they

think of displays as props, whose presentations are pointing-like preverbal demonstratives, and whose

directors are predominately demonstratives like this or demonstrative descriptors like this figure. The

The demonstrative this may be cognitively more primitive than a determiner the, but once we’ve

mastered a language, our talk about displayed words is most naturally expressed with a definite

determiner: the word (phrase, sentence, etc.) Generally, we don’t much say things like

(22) This name Boston has six letters

unless there’s reason to focus on the particular instance of the name. Despite recognizing that our talk

with displayed words is most commonly talking about the type, paratacticians presume that such

reference requires demonstrative reference to the concrete display because that’s the format of

reference to props. (Why they suppose the display demonstrative must have a descriptor, and cannot be

a bare this is yet another question worth pressing.) Their conviction is self-protective: start regarding

displays as extra-syntactic objects, and you will soon cease taking seriously their syntactic features.
 28

And now consider that (3) might instead be short for:

(2Q): A (any, each, every) figure O is a circle.

Here (more obviously than in (2D)) the director is a quantified predicate with an extension but no

referent for the display to identify. This is vivified in English, where displays normally succeed their

explicit director, but may transpose as quasi-predicates immediately preceding their director:

(13c) Nick's Fiat made the sound kehfloo

(13P) Nick's Fiat made the kehfloo sound

(2) This figure O is a circle

(2P) This O figure is a circle

In their predicate-like function displays look more like common names than proper names. Props are

not readily used comparably.

Another option is directors with referents that are not the display:

(23) My keypad's numeral 0 is a circle.

The circular director’s referent is identified by means of an elliptical display.

Still other options have been proposed. Recanati, for example, as argued that in a large class of

cases he calls "open quotations", displays aren’t referenced or mentioned or predicated either. However,

his analyses of these cases are unpersuasive.

Sentence Meaning & Speaker Intention Many a conception of display is incompatible with

some of these grammatical possibilities. Many cannot well account for any of them. Saka (2007)

rightly emphasizes the semantic variability of displays, and explains variations of what is said with a

solo display as due to the speaker’s intentions. Certainly, whether (2) or (2L) or (2N) or (2D) or (2Q))
 29

expresses a speaker’s intention in uttering (3) depends on the speaker’s intentions.

However, those intentions don’t explain the syntactic and semantic properties and relations of

the displays in those explicit sentences, (2)-(2Q). We automatically read the circles in sentences (2)-

(2Q) as displays; their presence in those sentences is otherwise random static, inexplicable and

senseless. We assume speakers intend the circles to be displays just as we assume speakers intend the

word circle to be a predicate of shape. That is, we assume they are speaking English, and intend to be

speaking English.

We commonly take such sentences to be types, abstracted from utterances and speaker-variable

intentions. They are constructions whose components are abstractions assigned determinate semantic

and syntactic properties and relations by a system of linguistic norms (syntactic, semantic, etc.) There

is little room for reasonable variant readings of sentences like:

(24): A square
is an equilateral rectangle.

Indeed, even without an explicit director, there may be little possibility of wondering what, exactly, a

speaker might be mean by uttering a sentence like (4): His name is Nick.

Still, even with an explicit director, displays are more liable than words to serve diverse

intentions, so speaker intentions have a larger role in fixing a display’s contribution to an utterance’s

semantic content. However, speaker intentions have a far larger role fixing a prop’s contribution to

semantic content. As sentence independent objects, props have much the same properties before and

after the brief moment when they are presented with some utterance about them. Their transitory

semantic role is assigned by the speaker’s intentions. They have semantic properties only while they

are presented along with an utterance. The content may be whatever be the prop’s contribution to an
 30

utterance’s informational content.

Displays are essentially sentence components. They have no reality independent of the sentence

presenting them. The linguistic properties of such components are largely a function of the sentence

presenting themreatures of language independent of speech. Extra-linguistic objects don’t become

fixtures of a language by being displayed but their reality as display is a creature of the language of its

explicit matrix. Which objects get displayed is a fact of speech. The grammar and semantics of their

display is fixed by the language of their explicit matrix, which may allow little room for speaker

variations.

My previous sections largely ignored the grammatical variations, without (intentionally)

excluding them, for my hunch is that our speaking with objects is best conceived as originating in a

natural, primitive form of reference with props identifying singular directors, and then developing

alternative formats. My hypothesis is that speaking with objects is an essential, natural dimension of

natural language and natural speech. I take it that human languages could never have developed if we

did not naturally -- without instruction, training, conventions or deliberate intentions -- use and

understand props and displays. We are first introduced to a language with co-presentations of words

and referent objects. When we can communicate in syntactically structured sentences, we have enough

to understand and use props. We don’t need instruction in the semantics of pointing fingers. We seem to

understand naturally, instinctively that a presentation-of-an-object-coordinated-with-a-presentation-of-

a-sentence-about-it identifies it as a referent of the sentence. Semantics of presentations is pre-

linguistic; it is in the structure of our natural cognitive processes

We don’t receive instruction in some semantic rule That semantic relation integrates the perceptual
 31

information

a pre-conventional use and understanding of props, and then props are naturally incorporated into

sentences as displays. So, displays might be basically identifiers of a singular term's referent because

props are (nearly) exclusively that. Props don't lend themselves to looking predicative. They don’t

pluralize. They aren't easily "transposed" to form counterparts of sentences like (2P) (This O figure is a

circle).

Put props aside. Referent displays seem to be basic because when displays aren't referents, the

utterance seems to say the same as some utterance with a referent display. Utterances like (2Q) with a

quantified predicate director seem to be restatable with an utterance like:

(2QS) A (any, every) figure with this shape O is a circle.

Not so the converse. The singular (2) (This figure O is a circle) isn’t restatable with some

generalization about such figures.

I speak of the basic director as a singular term whose referent is the display. We can say the

display is the referent when the reference is to some abstraction (a property the display exemplifies, a

kind it instances, a type it tokens.) We refer to the abstract -- we identify it -- (if possible) by presenting

the concrete because we are referred to the abstract by perceiving the concrete as instances of a kind.

That can take various forms.

Quite another kind of evidence of referent display primacy comes from languages that mark

displays verbally, in speech and writing alike, with particles. Ancient Greek fronted displays with a

definite article, usually a neuter whatever the display's gender (Barnes (2003)).3 Displays in Arabic

3 My thanks to John Cooper for further edification on this, and reference to the examples in Kühner,
R., and B. Gerth. (1898–1904).
 32

(Carter (1981)) and Sanskrit (Staal (1975), Seaghdha (2004)) are succeeded by a demonstrative.

Subsequently (and possibly consequently?) fourteenth and fifteenth century Scholastic

logicians, like Buridan, standardly marked displays with a nota materialitatis by prefixing iste terminus

(this term) or ly (or li), a particle derived from the French definite article le, which derived from Latin

ille. Later, Leibniz sometimes preceded displays with the Greek definite article (Spade (1996)). (That

Frege was the first to insist on display markers in formal work is one of many myths due to Quine

(1940).)

These conventions are not linguistic universals, but such particles seem grammatically

perspicuous, unlike our display punctuation. They look like natural expressions of displays’ being

basically referents perceptually identifying a singular director reference.

Elsewhere, this can be a stand alone term, so This is a circle is a sentence, so there’s little

pressure for positing some implicit director predicate in (2t):

(2t) This O is a circle.

Here a director predicate seems unnecessary, not because it is normally understood (like The word

implicit in ‘Der’ means the), but because it may contribute nothing to the sentence content, as in:

(2tt) This thing O is a circle.

(2t) seems no less determinate than (2t), and it seems more natural and idiomatic.

But, unlike this, the is not a term, and The is a circle is not a sentence. Thus, while (2d)

(2d) The O is a circle

is an acceptable English sentence, so is (2q):

(2q) A (any, each, every) O is a circle,

 33

and such apparent quantifications of a display need to be read as quantifications of a director predicate.

The determiner the does not appear apart from some term, but it may determine that what it governs be

read like a term

(22) The when and how of his arrival was unknown.

(23) The when and the how of his arrival were unknown.

These interrogatives are terms referring to what the question they ask is about: the date/time and the

means/manner. not displays like (24):

(24) The Hello was too hearty for my mood.

(24) has a curious ambiguity peculiar words like ‘hello’. Like any word in any language, it can be

displayed and appear to refer to itself or something it instantiates or replicates. Unlike other word in

any language, it is uttered by itself to perform an act of greeting, and it is also a term referring to such

acts. The latter use comes close to being a case of object self-reference -- even closer than the term use

of interrogatives.

(2d) is an acceptable sentence, and so is (2q)

(2q) An (any, each, every) O is a circle

Unlike the, such quantifiers don’t so well determine a non-term to look like a term-- unless it is a

display: ??? A (any, each, every) when and how of her tour was considered.

Some predicate (explicit or implicit) seems operative for much the same reasons that proper names

seem to presuppose some metaphysical categorization of the referent. There are difficulties
 34

understanding how we could identify or refer to some thing without our harboring presumptions and

assumptions about its basic category.

Natural language display markers call for further empirical research. Cross-linguistic study of

displays is lacking. The little there is suggests that the subject has surprises and complexities. (Coulmas

(1986a) reports that Japanese has a display particle unlike those of Ancient Greece, Sanskrit and

Arabic.) But the little there is is much befouled by misconceptions that distort observations and

descriptions of the data. A prime example is this matter of marking. All the scholarly reports of display

particles automatically equate them with modern punctuational disambiguators. They never consider

what the old markers might imply about display grammar.

Logicians are liable to be oblivious to the operation of a director because their formal work

generally assumes a single general director, like the expression. Paratactic conceptions look workable

in formalist discourse that studies some such single broad category of displayable objects. Such

conceptions are sorely challenged to recognize the evident great diversity of directors in common

speech. So too, autonymic conceptions are challenged to explain how an object manages to self-refer to

any of many kinds of objects, and be the referent of any of many perceptually different objects.

II. Display of Speech

11. Origin of a Conflation: Logical and linguistic studies have long been impoverished by

regarding displays as autonyms, and disregarding the role of presentations in linguistic representations.

Modern scholars, misled by Quine, further cripple themselves by calling displays quotations. The cost

of this novel identification is habitual inattention to the differential roles of display and quotation, and
 35

consequent confusions about direct and indirect speech. Direct speech is a display of speech. Displays

of quotations (= repetitions of prior speech) may be the most common and consequential displays of

speech. Their structure and function are incomprehensible without rigorously distinguishing displays

from quotations.

As a term for displays, quotation first appears in print in Quine (1940): "The name of a name or

other expression is commonly formed by putting the named expression in single quotation marks; the

whole, called a quotation, denotes its interior". Evidently, Quine thought some people had so-used

quotation. He did not credit himself with creating this usage: his "Autobiography" (Schillp (1986))

does not list quotation among his many successful neologisms. Nor did he ever explain the choice of

this label. In 1932-3 he began working with Tarski, whose Tarski (1932) refers to displays as "the so-

called quotation-mark names". Likely, displays were so-called by his teacher, Stanislaw Leśniewski,

whom Tarski credited for most of his ideas about displays (Ibid.). Polish logicians were impressed by

Frege's insistent marking of displays, so they might have been influenced by the connection with

quotation Frege drew, which we'll come to.

Pre-Tarski (1932) publications contain no hint of anyone imagining that a kind of term was

"formed" or created by flanking an expression with quotation marks. Such marks (in variant shapes)

had been increasingly used since the 16th Century to mark word sequences as having the punctuation-

independent property of repeating prior speech. By the 19th Century such marks were occasionally

used to mark expressions as having the punctuation-independent property of being displays (a

development explained below). By that century's end, Frege had declared the need for rigorously

applying this conventional disambiguator in formalist writings.

 36

Tarski initiated the abbreviation of quotation-mark name by contracting it in the same essay to

quotation name and contracting quotation-mark expression (which denotes quotation functions along

with quotation names) to quotation expression. Subsequently, Tarski and Quine may have fallen into

the conversational habit of contracting further to quotation. Or perhaps Tarski didn't object when Quine

used the contraction. But Tarski never took to Quine's usage in his writings. Nor did their

contemporaries: Carnap, Church, Reichenbach, et. al. Quotation is the jargon of generations brought up

on Quine. Signs of wide acceptance of the neologism come only after Quine's Methods of Logic (1950)

became the authoritative intro logic text far and wide.

Many of my readers have lived their scholarly lives in this linguistic community happily

oblivious to any peculiarity in their habituated usage of the word quotation. They may be unaware of

its Quinean coinage, or at least unquestioning of its aptness. They may be unaware or simply

unconcerned that previous logicians, linguists and laymen did not liken displays to quotations or

imagine the existence of a kind of term created by flanking quotation markers.

They may be unaware or simply unconcerned that, for a century or so, every respectable writing

manual and style book makes a point of distinguishing displays and quotations, and distinguishing the

proper punctuation of each. Many mid-20th Century English manuals campaigned for the clarity of

italicizing displays and reserving flanking lines for quotation. (Recent manuals drop that proposal,

which, we'll see, is unworkable.) Never mind that the manuals all botch the characterization of displays

(they say displays are autonyms). They are plenty clear that display and quotation are disparate

categories.

From Quine on, logic texts don't deny this distinction; they just don't deign to mention it. They
 37

introduce the term quotation to refer to displays. They preach the practice of marking displays with

quotation marks to distinguish displayed expressions from expressions in their matrix uses. The intro

texts do not mention any distinction between marking displays and marking quotations. Nor does the

scholarly literature on displays. That literature sometimes recognizes (as writing manuals regularly do)

that so-called square quotes are another matter, but markers of quotation are rarely recognized at all.

That literature offers various classifications of "varieties of quotation". These seem intended as

classifications of displays. They do not distinguish displays from quotations. A popular category is

popularly called direct quotation. This is not distinguished from what has more commonly been called

direct speech or direct discourse. Direct speech (discourse) is a display of possible speech, something

sayable. More fully, direct speech identifies the product of someone's (possible) act of speech (or

thought) by displaying it. Properly speaking, direct quotations are direct speech reports only of actual,

past speech.

(We'd best be entirely rid of talk of direct quotation. It cannot but breed confusion. Bad enough

it leads to conflating the formal category of direct speech with a historical subcategory of displayed

prior speech. Worse, while direct quotation is indeed a species of quotation differing from unreferenced

quotations, the term legitimates the incoherent term, indirect quotation, that refers, not to a kind of

quotation, but to an identification of a speech product in indirect speech. We say, She said, and here I

quote, "...", to explicitly exclude an indirect speech reading.)

This matter is far from purely verbal. Many readers have come to think that displays are

properly called quotations because they really are quotations. This is a perilous habit of talk and

thought. It demonstrably distorts how we view the data. Consider: it has long passed as a scholarly
 38

platitude that we mark displays in speech, mimicking inverted commas with air quotes (wagging

fingers or voicing quote/unquote). Everyone “knows" that. Actually, we never say:

(21) *Quote if unquote is spelled quote i unquote, quote f unquote.

(4q) *His name is quote Nick unquote.

Actually, displays get air quotes only when and because they are quotations. (You might say His name

is quote Nick unquote when air quoting scare quotes, a variant of quotation marks.)

The prevailing myth of display air quotes is compelling evidence of endemic inattention to the

whopping contrast between marking displays and marking quotations This chronic inattention is

evident throughout the literature on something allegedly "anomalous" about marked quotations within

indirect speech, as in (6) (Bertie thought we are "but brief meat and brains"). It is evident, for example,

in the common misconception that the display in (6) is not semantically a referent or syntactically a

noun.

To make progress with the famous puzzles about the formal properties of displays, we need to

understand our history, how we came to be writing and thinking as we do. We need to appreciate that

display and quotation are formally disparate categories, whose whopping contrast makes it remarkable

that people could come to think them comparable. We need also appreciate that, however whopping the

contrast, it is no accident that these categories got conflated. The development was unplanned,

unanticipated, and unnoticed, but in hindsight it seems all too natural and predictable.

Scholars of language and logic, East and West, have discussed displays for 2500 years. Only

recently has anyone thought of displays as quotations. Only recently has anyone associated displays

with some punctuation. Previous scholars might sometimes display a quotation, but they didn't consider
 39

displaying a kind of quoting. Many had disambiguated displays, not with punctuation, but with some

adjacent demonstrative term that flags the display of an object without altering its properties or creating

a new term. Scholars did not confuse these terms with quotation marks.

No one did, or could, consider displays quotations -- no one would think displays are aptly

named quotation mark names -- before they confused display markers with quotation markers. That's

because display and quotation are such disparate properties as to defy confusion until both they are

habitually identified by the same conventional marking.

Modern conceptions of display are marred by considering displays quotations, but the display-

quotation contrast cuts across any contrasts between conceptions of display. Displays are always

conceived as a class of sentence components distinguished by certain peculiar semantic and syntactic

properties. No one supposes that a prior history is a precondition of being a display. Some display

conceptions may confine themselves to displays of linguistic objects; some may insist that the objects

be pre-defined; they don't demand actual prior usage.

In contrast, quotation is an essentially historical category that cuts across every formal linguistic

category, syntactic, semantic, phonetic or whatever. Virtually any word sequence of any sentence could

be a quotation. That is, it could be uttered in repetition of a prior utterance. The innards of both displays

and quotations may cut across linguistic categories. However, the display of the words depends, not on

their history, but on their position within some sentence about it (the matrix syntax and semantics). The

quotation of the sequence depends on its history, unconstrained by matrix syntax and semantics.

Quotation is not a property of sentences or their components, but only of their utterances.

Display is a category of langue. Display is a category of parole.

 40

Quotation is not mere repetition. Otherwise virtually every utterance would consist entirely of

quotations. To ask What is truth? is not ipso facto to quote Pilate. A quotation is a word sequence

whose utterance is explained partly by its repeating some prior utterance. The relation is causal but

needn't be intentional. You might quote Mencken ignorant of his -- or anyone's-- originating the phrase

you favor. Whatever your understanding of its origins, suffice that your utterance of the phrase is

traceable to Mencken's utterance. Intentionality of repetition is not essential. Nor enough. Reciting is

not quoting. We may quote lyrics or dramatic lines, but not while singing the song or performing the

part. Adding sincerity doesn't help: we may quote pledges and prayers, but not while authentically

pledging or fervently praying. Quoting repeats the words, not their performance. And while repeating is

transitive, quotation is not: when I quote Mencken quoting Veblen, I repeat Mencken and Veblen, but I

don't quote Veblen.

Again, virtually any word sequence of any sentence could be a quotation, repeating a prior

utterance, but however much the words match a prior utterance, the later utterance is not a quotation if

produced independently of its predecessor.

If the above isn't obvious, that because display marking is confused with quotation marking.

Before protesting that there are counter-examples to the above contrasts, one should recognize that

neither displays nor quotations need be marked as such, so the alleged counter-example better be vetted

by removing any markers. Better also be reminded of a familiar, often forgotten fact. One clue of the

source of display/quotation confusion appears in Frege's (1893) words alluded to earlier: “It can also

happen … that one wishes to talk about the words themselves. This happens, for instance, when the

words of another are quoted”. Frege's "for instance" rightly implies that words needn't be quoted to be
 41

displayed and referenced. But he also here says that when we quote the words of another, we talk about

the words themselves, and thus he betrays a blinkering of quotation that associates it solely with direct

speech ascriptions. Experience teaches that Frege is not alone in this lapse. In saying or writing:

(20) Cosmological arguments are an unnecessary shuffle,

I quote Wittgenstein by using (the standard translation of) his words (an unnecessary shuffle) much as

he used them, for I mean to mean what he meant. He didn't denote or display his words, and neither do

I. Quoting is repeating words, not referencing them. Why, nonetheless, think of quoting as referencing

words? That comes from marking quotations, for that marking does reference the words.

Current histories on these matters are instructive about the distant origins of our current

punctuational practices. (They are less enlightening about the post-Reformation evolution that brought

us to our current practices, because they lack the requisite formal distinctions relevant to linguistic and

logical theories.) Historians trace our current complex use of what we currently call quotation marks

back to their origins, before they acquired their current shape and came to be called quotation marks.

Their precusors are marks used by medieval christian scribes to flag a special category of

quotation: passages of Sacred Scripture, the Christian Holy Writ. Subsequent scribes expanded this

practice and used similar marks for words of revered Church Fathers. Then came the Reformation and

the printing press, and the practice got "democratized" by printers using such marks for quotations

generally, whomever the source.

The core message of the markers of quotation -- the QM (quotation marker) message -- became

the bare historical claim:

QM: This is a quotation: i.e., someone said this/this was said by someone
 42

Put aside for now that what we call quotation marks are now used to say and/or do various other things,

sometimes instead of marking a quotation, sometimes in addition. Focus on what remains (outside the

discourse of linguistic and formal studies) their most common use: delivering just the QM message.

This snippet of history makes evident the essential historical character of what is marked.

Surely no modern logicians supposes that all and only Biblical passages are distinguished by some

formal linguistic feature (absent even in contemporaneous writings.) We can readily imagine various

motivations for monastic scribes to set off the words of Holy Scripture. So too it seems quite

understandable how monks might be moved to extend the marking to the words of those who spoke

most authoritatively about the sacred words. And we can see the spirit of the Reformation and

Renaissance and the power of the new printing press inspiring the great transformation to marking

everyone's words.

Quotation contains nothing of concern to theorists of linguistic structure, but it has no shortage

of social significance. Relaying another's message is a central, essential function of human speech, as it

is in much of animal "speech". Humans have all kinds of interests (epistemological, political, sexual,

legal, religious, etc.) in who said what and what was said by whom. Human relations often times pivot

on such matters. Our interests in all this are practical, not theoretical. They are heightened by the fact

that, while being a quotation does not itself imply anything about the content or structure the words,

your choosing to express yourself with some quoted words rather than your own may mean something,

and commonly means quite a lot. It bears directly on our understanding of what you are expressing, and

what you mean to be expressing. That's so if only because normally quoted words are meant to mean

what they originally meant.

 43

Considering the enormous significance of quotation, and its utter lack of any formal features,

nothing could be more natural than speech communities developing extra-formal means of signaling

quoted words. In contrast, outside formal studies, displays rarely need disambiguating markers,

because, outside such studies, their matrix syntax and semantics rarely allows their being read as

anything other than displays. This is specially so when a display director is explicit. (The rare exception

in English occurs with interjections addressing the audience: His name, Bob, is short.) Even solo

displays are rarely readable as other than displays. First off, displayed non-linguistic objects can't be

(read as) sentential elements outside a display. Secondly, since displays are syntactically term-like, only

displayed terms have syntactically viable alternative readings. Finally, the syntactic possibility of

ambiguity is closed semantically for most terms since their denotata are generally categorially unlike

themselves. Few sentences are like (21) and (22) in admitting dual readings.

(21) Peace preceded prosperity

(22) Terry rhymes with Keri.

Few predicates are like preceded and rhymes with in being predicable of both a term and its denotata.

Displays in the discourse of linguistics, logic, and mathematics are exceptionally liable to ambiguity

and consequent misreading because the names of linguistic categories are commonly members of the

category or have many similar properties, and our systems of numeration construct terms with

mathematical properties that enable the discovery and representation of mathematical relations by

operations upon numerals. Logicians like Buridan, Leibniz and Frege marked displays in their writings,

and refrained from recommending the practice in other contexts

Consequently, when quotation marking was introduced and achieved wide acceptance there was
 44

no marking of displays that could be confused with it. Displays were marked only in the arcane

writings of a few formal theorists, and their verbal markers were unreadable as markers of quotation.

Of course, quotation can be flagged in any language by ascribing it, predicating its historical

property of being spoken: the Bible says, Astrid asked, etc. However, such ascriptions are often

unwanted intrusions. Then too, they are often insufficient because languages commonly express both

direct and indirect speech with the very same words, like: Ned said neon is inert. It seems a natural and

nearly inevitable feature of natural languages that speech is identifiable by presenting the words and by

using them to represent their content. Many languages have no verbal devices distinguishing the two.

Many have devices that are unreliable indicators: e.g., proper English often drops the complementizer

that for indirect discourse and sometimes inserts it with direct discourse.

Again, quotation isn't evidenced by its formal features, so its importance has prompted the

development of extraformal means of signaling it by prosodic and other behavioral devices.

In daily discourse, the primary source of display ambiguity is due to a large class of speech predicates

whose denotata are identifiable by a display of words or a representation of their content.

Apparently, while the look of the marks varied from country to country, the function was the

same: the marks marked words someone had said (spoken or written). Outside the writings of some

logicians, there was no practice of marking displays, per se, but only quotations.

I have seen no evidence of the initiators of this practice having intended or even anticipated the

consequences of their practice. I wouldn't expect them to predict the consequences, or to have much
 45

imagined the possiblities. In hindsight, much of the complex consequences seems virtually inevitable.

Quotation marks, from their very beginning, have been a peculiar, perhaps unique, linguistic

phenomenon. Prosodic and behavioral cues of direct speech and quotation are commonly found, but

these are essentially phenomena of speech, elements of utterance performances. In our speech they are

not properties of the uttered sentence. We rightly regard our punctuation as elements attached to a

sentence. Other punctuation (periods, commas, colons, capitals, question marks, exclamation marks,

etc.) signal

Quotation marks are peculiar punctuation because they are actually utterance markers, not sentence

markers.

That's because they mark words for an historical property of their utterance, not for any linguistic

(sentential, syntactic, semantic, phonetic) property.

Indeed, we not uncommonly quote some words quite unaware that we are quoting. Sometimes

we do refer to the words by attributing the quotation, by saying (e.g.) She said "...". Sometimes we may

refer to the words by marking them.

Attributing quotations and marking them are distinct ways of displaying words, because

attributing the words makes the reference within the matrix, so the historical predication is in the

matrix message message, while marking them makes the reference and historical predication outside

the matrix message.

The markers did serve as a disambiguator of sorts, for though it didnt distinguish between

distinct semantic contents of the words, it distinguished bewteen direct and indirect discourse, between

a presentation of the words and a representation of their content.

 46

In this latter capacity, the markers of quotation became markers of display. Still, the marks of

(25) could be quotational. And, I take it, originally they were only that. But, as (26) and (27) illustrate,

the marks couldn't remain quotational when direct speech gets negated or questioned. Consider the

awkwardness of the disjunctive:

(28d) Pete did report 'Paul snored' or Pete did not report Paul snored.
Since quotation is an historical property of uttered words independent of their grammar and semantics,

their marking is bound to be problematic when direct speech gets negated or questioned. Such marking

was bound to give birth to display marking because, as we'll see shortly, it creates a display.

It's well-nigh logical impossibly to write a coherent history of quotation marking while calling displays

quotations. Nor will it help to use the terminology of the orthodox taxonomies of quotation. Their

categories cut across the operative contrast of displays and quotations

Any association of displaying with quoting is utterly alien to anything in the prior two millennia of
thought about displays. The association is traceable to Tarski's taking displays to be names
distinguished by the quotation marks defining their reference

Perhaps because , you're thinking of quotation as essentially a display. And you're primed to think of
displays as referencing words by saying them. Something else, I conjecture, something more insidious
has been afoot.

It is evident in the discussion of Clark & Gerrig’s much discussed 'Quotations as

Demonstrations’. Though the authors and many commentators seem to think their subject is displays,
and their thesis is in competition with Quine’s and Davidson’s conceptions of displays, it is actually
focused on quotations. More specifically the focus is not on quotations generally but only on displays
of quotations: attributions of quotations in direct speech. There is no evidence of quotations in general
being demonstrations: only displays of quotation are remotely like demonstrations
 47

What does reference the words are the markers of quotation.

(20m) Cosmological arguments are "an unnecessary shuffle"
The QM (Quotation Marking) message in (20m) is a bare historical claim:
QM: This is a quotation: i.e., these words were said/someone said this

12. Quotation:
Humans have all kinds of keen interests (epistemological, legal, romantic, economic, etc.) in
who said what and what was said by whom. The diversity of interests is due partly to the diverse
readings of what was said and the diversity of possible referents. What was said may be identified by a
presentation of the words uttered or by a description of their content
We naturally adjust our standards for accuracy and adequacy of quotation to suit our current interests.
Sometimes close paraphrase passes for quotation. Sometimes deictic rules are transgressed. Sometimes
quotations are translations. Other times verbatim replication is essential but insufficient, and prosodic
factors, along with stutters and stammers, must be replicated. Quotation attributions can go wrong all
kinds of ways, and our concerns with imperfections are no less variable. So, generalities about
quotation (like many that follow) are liable to "exceptions" because what qualifies as a proper
quotation -- which features of the original must be replicated -- is contextually variable and liable to
controversy.
Our current conception of quotation, is intriguingly contoured. How much is culturally peculiar
is unknown. One peculiarity is documented. We, the educated people of the modern world, have
institutionalized the practice initiated by sixteenth century European printers of punctuating words
someone said as quotations, usually by flanking them with one or two lines (Parkes (1993), Finnegan
(2011)). That innovation has been unexpectedly consequential. One predictable consequence is that we
can now produce sentences like (6) (Bertie thought we are "but brief meat and brains") wherein
quotation marking can create ambiguity and alter propositional content.
Quotation is a primitive, primary communicational activity. Much animal speech relays
messages. Pre-print people produce quotations to attribute them in direct speech. Direct speech (aka
direct discourse, oratio (di)recta) attributes to a speaker a possible (not necessarily previous) speech
act, and identifies its product by presenting it. Direct speech attributes speech by displaying it. Indirect
speech attributes speech, but it identifies speech products by a representation of the product's
propositional content. The difference between a presentation of someone's words and a representation
of their content is commonly a matter of intense human concern; human relations frequently pivot on
such matters.
That concern contends with the fact that direct speech and indirect speech can take the identical
form:
(22) Ed said Ned fed Fred
(22) has two distinct, inter-related, and essentially equivalent readings that appear in the truism: To say
Ned fed Fred is to say that Ned fed Fred. For many, though not all, verbs of speech, what was said, the
product of the saying, may be or be identified with a propositional content, so a display of words may
be equivalent to a representation of their content.
Human languages evidence our concern to distinguish direct and indirect speech. Oral direct
speech is often marked by prosodic, paralinguistic and kinesic behaviors (Cf. Wilkinson (2010)). Many
 48

languages also have grammatical markers of direct speech and indirect speech, like:
(25) Ed said that Ned fed Fred.
(Cf. Coulmas, 1986, Kvavik (1986), Klewitz and Couper-Kuhlen (1999)). Modern writing often marks
direct speech with punctuational markers of display. This punctuation commonly gets mistaken for
markers of quotation.
Current writing often marks quotations, but this is grammatically and semantically optional.
Compare:
(20) Cosmological arguments are an unnecessary shuffle
(20m) Cosmological arguments are "an unnecessary shuffle"
The core QM (Quotation Marking) message is a bare historical claim:
QM: This is a quotation: i.e., these words were said/someone said this.
The QM message is an extra, off-stage, historical side-comment on the words used. It is not a
component of the quoted message or the matrix message. The truth or falsity of the historical claim
doesn't touch (20) or (20m)'s meaning or truth. Substitution of a synonym into the marked quotation of
(20m) may alter the QM message's reference and truth, yet the matrix sentence meaning and truth are
unaffected by synonym subbing in (20) and (20m) alike. Quotation marking is extra-linguistic, added
after all the words and other punctuation are in place, so the sentence meaning is already fixed.
A complication here. Absent any QM message (by punctuation or matrix term), quoted
indexicals have the referent of their use in the sentence matrix, not the referent of their original use.
Marking a quotation relates the words to a prior use, so marked quoted indexicals normally have the
reference of their original use, not their matrix use. More generally, when other factors in the sentence
or speech content identify the original speaker or the circumstances of the utterance, the marks may
suggest a particular reading of the quoted words. However, the marks don't enforce reading replication
of intent. I don't misquote you when I purposely intend something other than you meant by your words.
Display marks do enforce a reading, and nothing more. The DM (Display Marking) message is
more a directive than a predication:
DM: This is a display. Read this as a referent of this sentence.
Contrast:
(23) Peace preceded prosperity
(23m) 'Peace' preceded 'prosperity'
The nouns of (23) could be presented objects or names of situations. The marks of (23m) enforce the
display reading and eliminate the alternative. Such punctuation is like capitalizing initial sentence
letters: a typographical device facilitating identification of an intended reading which it presupposes
and does not alter.

14. Marks of displayed speech: Let's call the director of a direct speech display a speech
director. It is the (explicit or implicit) direct object of a verb of speech (or thought):
(25) Pete reported [made the report] 'Paul snored'
(26) No one ever said [the words] 'I am a transsexual Pope'.
(27) Has anyone ever thought [the thought] 'I am a transsexual Pope'?
Absent an explicit speech director and the display marks, (25)- (27) may be ambiguous over direct and
 49

indirect speech.
(25)-(27) illustrate marks of display commonly considered marks of quotation. Yet, if the
marks of (26) signaled quotation, they would contradict the matrix sentence message; (26) would then
express inconsistent messages. Similarly, in (27) quotation marking would preclude the questioning of
the QM message by the matrix sentence. In (25) the QM message is contained in the matrix message,
delivered by the speech predicate on the display; here quotation marking is permissible, but redundant.4
Still, the marks of (25) could be quotational. And, I take it, originally they were only that. But,
as (26) and (27) illustrate, the marks couldn't remain quotational when direct speech gets negated or
questioned. Consider the awkwardness of the disjunctive:
(28d) Pete did report 'Paul snored' or Pete did not report Paul snored.
Since quotation is an historical property of uttered words independent of their grammar and semantics,
their marking is bound to be problematic when direct speech gets negated or questioned. Such marking
was bound to give birth to display marking because, as we'll see shortly, it creates a display.
Quotation marking is truly informative only where the QM message is otherwise absent or
underspecified by the matrix sentence, as in (20m) (Cosmological arguments are "an unnecessary
shuffle"). Absent the markers, nothing suggests that the words are quoted.
Now consider:
(29) Bertie thought we are but brief meat and brains
The matrix predicate implies that some words within its scope could be quoted, but not that any are.
(29) could be purely direct speech, just as in:
(30) Bertie thought "We are but brief meat and brains"
or purely indirect speech, as in:
(31) Bertie thought that we are but brief meat and brains
or indirect speech by direct speech as in (6) (Bertie thought we are "but brief meat and brains"). And
(6), in turn, could be either (6I) or (6D):
(23I) Bertie thought that we are "but brief meat and brains"
(23D) Bertie thought "We are "but brief meat and brains""
Whether as (6I) or (6D), (6) is said to be puzzling, in a way that (30) and (31) are not, because
the marked words of (6) are both "used" and "mentioned", so they seem to have two different meanings
in the very same reading. Actually, displayed words have the same meaning(s) and referent(s) that they
have in their matrix uses.
Displayed words are referents of a sentence. Like any sentence referent, (a) reference to them
does not alter their properties, and (b) which of their properties affect or are relevant to the meaning or
truth of a sentence depends on the sentence predicates. To say Ned fed Fred is to say that Ned fed Fred,
precisely because the words have same meaning in their display and matrix occurrences. The displayed
terms in (26m) ('Peace' preceded 'prosperity') and (27m) ('Terry' rhymes with 'Keri') are not divested

4 Displays and quotations are standardly explicitly distinguished in writers manuals and style books
(Rarely, if ever, in texts of logic or semantic theory). Mid-20th Century English manuals frequently
urged italicizing displays and reserving flanking lines for quotation. Recent manuals omit that proposal,
perhaps because of persistent confusions, for they all assume displays are autonyms, and their
paradigms of quotation marking are display markings like (25).
 50

of their meaning or reference; rather, their semantic properties are simply irrelevant to the semantic
properties of the sentence. The component words of (25) (Ed said Ned fed Fred) have the same
meanings in direct and indirect speech. The distinct uses of Ned fed Fred are syntactic, not semantic.
The puzzles about (6) dissipate by recognizing that while its marks don't say This is a display ,
they do imply it, for they make it true. The words are displayed by and within the QM message: These
words, ..., were said. Within that message the display is syntactically like an appositive noun. That
message is outside the matrix message, so the displayed word sequence needn't be noun-like in its use
in that matrix.
The QM message may stay outside the sentence message when the marks fall within the scope
of the speech verb as in (6) (Bertie thought we are "but brief meat and brains"). (6) may be true just
whenever the unmarked (29) is true, like (20)/(20m). But, by creating a display within indirect speech,
(6)'s marks create a potential referent of a speech director: Bertie's thought. The marks don't themselves
create the reference. The speaker does.
Speakers mark quotations from various motives, and may mean various things by the marking.
Someone might mark (29) just to disavow credit for Thomas Kinsella's striking alliteration that
captures Lord Russell's thinking. If so, the QM message is extraneous to the matrix, so (6) may state
the same fact as (29).
Instead, more commonly quotations in indirect speech are marked to indicate that the speech
referenced contained the quoted words. That's the natural reading if we are unfamiliar with Kinsella's
line. Here (6)'s speaker identifies Bertie's thought by representing its content partly by presenting
Bertie's words encased in quotation marking. Now the off-stage, Someone said these words, becomes
the on-stage: Bertie said these words. More fully, here the utterance of (6) has the form: Bertie thought
we are but brief meat and brains, partly by thinking the words "but brief meat and brains". If you think
Russell knew nothing of Kinsella's words, you might deny (6) with: No, he didn't.
Quotation marking creates a distinctively modern channel of self-reference and communication,
with new content and concerns and kinds of irony and self-consciousness.

III. Display Formalization

16. Autonym v. Intranym: Calling displays quotations has distorted the study of speech and thought.

Calling both displays and intranyms quotations has derailed research on meaning and truth.

Tarski (1932) aspired to found a scientific study of truth by formalizing a fragment of language

with sentences referring to sentences and their components. Formalized languages are "artificially

constructed languages in which the sense of every expression is unambiguously determined by its

form" (Tarski (1932)). A Tarskian formal language -- call it Formalese -- is an artifact whose every
 51

feature is fixed by explicit stipulations and their entailments. Formalese goes metalinguistic by

stipulating a formation rule for intranyms like:

FI: An expression, 'E', consisting of marks flanking an expression, E, denotes E (or its kind).5

FI creates a species of expressions best called intranyms because they are terms denoting the

expression within themselves. Absent a version of FI, Formalese has no systematic means of

identifying and referring to the sentences and components that semantic theory studies. There is no

formalization of a metalanguage without stipulation of some formation rule like FI.

From Tarski (1932) onwards, logicians have assumed that the FI stipulated for Formalese is also

a description of natural language marked displays. Actually, (aside, perhaps, from the idiolects of some

logicians) intranyms are used only in Formalese. Natural languages have no use for intranyms, and no

use of them. There is no evidence of anything like an intranym in any language or theory of language

prior to Tarski. Yet now intranyms and marked displays get "mentioned" interchangeably. From Quine

1940) onwards, logicians have come to use the term quotation to refer indiscriminately to the intranyms

of Formalese and the marked displays of natural languages -- and thus to regard marked displays as

intranyms. Versions of FI are never introduced as replacements of or alternatives to displays.

Typically,they are presented as though stating a Formalese formation rule. Yet they get used as though

FI is a description of natural language displays. (Cf. Smullyan (1957), Richard (1986), Ludwig (1998),

5Tarski (1932) defines quotation mark name as a name of an expression “which consists of quotation

marks, left- and right-hand, and the expression which lies between them, and which (the expression) is

the object denoted by the name in question”. The Quine (1940) definition of quotation quoted above

restates this.
 52

Soames (1999).) 6

Through a glass darkly, Davidson (1979) saw that Tarski, Quine, et. al. didn't distinguish

intranyms from marked autonyms. Both terms refer to their interior. But the interior of a marked

autonym is an autonym. Autonyms (if at all intelligble) are terms, self-referential syntactic components,

whether or not they are marked as such. Autonym marks are mere disambiguators just like display

marks. Intranym marks don't disambiguate.They don’t discriminate between pre-existing options. They

create a new kind term that would not otherwise exist. Its referent is its interior.

To confuse intranyms with marked displays is to confuse FI with DD, our rule for display

disambiguation:

DD: An expression, ‘E’, consisting of marks flanking an expression, E, displays E.

Since autonyms are misconceived displays, to confuse intranyms with marked autonyms is to confuse

FI with DA, a misconception of DD:

DA: An expression, 'E', consisting of marks flanking an expression, E, uses E autonymously.

FI, DD and DA are starkly contrasting readings of a marked expression, ‘E’. Yet they are readily

6 Capellen and Lepore (2007) defend the descriptive adequacy of their version of FI by declaring it

immune to disproof by any evidence of unmarked displays: a theory of display needn't consider

unmarked displays! Why not? Allegedly because unmarked displays are optional: a natural language

could (somehow) get along without unmarked displays, or reject them as Formalese does. Capellen and

Lepore don’t notice that this would make a stronger reason why a theory of display needn’t consider

marked displays. They do not explain how (as things are) we could come to understand and use marked

displays or intranyms before we understood and used unmarked displays.

 53

confused. After all, none of them debar the intranym interior from being (read as) a display or autonym.

Little wonder that people don't notice their conception of “quotation” shifting among FI, DA, and DD.

DA and DD are not inconsistent with FI, but they are incompatible with Formalese. Formalese

cannot have disambiguators because disambiguation recognizes the legitimacy of alternative readings.

Expressions can be displayed or used autonymously in Formalese only if such use has been stipulated

there, but that stipulation licenses systematic ambiguities and equivocations, and thereby violates a

basic requirement of a formal language. Formalese cannot contain any ambiguity for FI to eliminate or

cancel.

Formal languages cannot allow displays or autonyms, but natural languages can include

intranyms. The idiolects of some logicians might actually be regulated by FI. But this innovation

introduces a distinct third use of a punctuation that has long marked repetitions of speech, and more

recently also marks displays. Quine thought he followed Frege in promoting the rigorous practice of

using such marks as disambiguators to preclude confusion of word and object, term and referent, use

and mention. That ambition betrays his own word/object, term/referent confusion. Frege promoted the

rigorous application of an existing convention to mark displayed expressions to preclude reading them

representationally. The intranym marks Tarski and Quine touted do preclude a representational reading,

but they preempt that ambiguity by introducing a more insidious ambiguity, because the intranym these

marks create looks just like a marked display. But, an intranym refers to an object displayed in a

marked display of it. Thus does an intranym term get confused with its displayed referent, .

Intranyms within a formal language create no ambiguity and may have real utility. Introducing

intranyms into our scholarly discourse about languages and metalanguages creates an ambiguity and
 54

consequent confusion. People were already prone to confuse display marking with quotation marking.

Now they are further prone to confuse display marking with intranym marking, because intranym

marking is like quotation marking: with both, the result of adding flanking lines is an expression that

refers to its interior. However, an intranym refers to its interior and doesn't predicate anything of it; that

reference is the intranym's contribution to the sentence's semantic content. Quotation marking refers to

its interior and predicates an historical property of it, but that reference and predication are outside the

sentence's semantic content. Display marks refer to the display but that reference only enforces a

reading it does not create or alter. The introduction of intranyms has been a cause and consequence of

prevalent unprecedented forms of term-object confusion.

17. Term/Object Confusions: The consensus amongst the cognoscenti on the topic is that the

conception of displays as self-referring names is a horse decades dead, not needing further beating

(Cappelen & Lepore (2012)). Yet, logicians and linguists still standardly call both displays and

intranyms names. Even Davidson unapologetically retained Tarski's talk of marked displays being

names whenever he explained his transformation of Tarski’s theory of truth into a truth-conditional

theory of meaning. Meanwhile, Davidson and everyone else applies quotation to intranyms and

marked displays alike.

Actually, the old autonymic misconception of displays remains alive, while the new intranymic

misconception of displays is the source of peculiarly post-Tarskian misconceptions. The

misconceptions sometimes collide but often happily coexist because at bottom both are confusions of a

term (autonym or intranym) with its referent (display).

Misunderstanding of the current state of the subject is perpetuated by misunderstanding its

 55

origins. Kaplan (1968) is hardly alone in thinking that Frege thought that “quotation marks produce an

oblique context”. Actually, that idea is the Tarskian innovation Quine promoted. Actually, displays are

"oblique contexts" whether marked or not, and Frege never suggested otherwise. Like nearly all his

predecessors, Frege thought displays are autonymously used expressions, and, like many before, he

thought his formal work demanded disambiguating markers. That's unmistakable in his famous

declaration of a policy of marking displays because there was then no such regular practice. It's

unmistakable in his comments on the innocuous absence of display marking in Riemann’s writings

(Frege ,1898?)). That absence may be regrettable, but Frege would find it risible to be told that

Riemann's sentences having unmarked displays are "not merely untrue but ungrammatical and

meaningless" (Quine (1959)).

Frege's statements about language are all made in natural language sentences using

disambiguated displays (Frege (1924?)). He never attempted a formalization of language about

language or considered a formal counterpart of displays. He and two millennia of predecessors left no

traces of any truck with intranyms or any inklings of display marks being essential constituents of

displays. Why? Because absent the formalization of a metalanguage, there's no reason -- not even a bad

reason -- to imagine anything like an intranym. (Frege warned against incautiously presuming that

expressions we invent make good sense.)

Frege thought he used names of words and symbols, but he never did. His autonymic

misconception did lead him further astray than his predecessors, because Frege (1892) likened displays

to intensional contexts as cases of “referential obliqueness’ since in both ‘HP’ and SHP, replacing

‘Hesperus’ with the coextensional term ‘the Morning Star’ may turn a truth into a falsehood.
 56

‘HP’: Karl said ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’

SHP: Karl said (believed) Hesperus is Phosphorus

(Predecessors back to Panini had noted this feature of displays, but not likened it to intensional

contexts.) Regarding these cases as truly comparable comes from mistaking displays for terms.

Actually, display opacity (=obliqueness) is the opacity of a prop, a referent object, not a term.

Props and displays are not referential contexts. Display substitutability is the substitutability of an

object, not a term. 'Greece is boldface' and 'Greece is boldface' display the same term but different

kinds of object. 'Hellas is boldface' displays a different term but the same kind of object. Which objects

replace a display without altering a sentence's semantic properties depends on which display properties

are semantically relevant, which depends on the sentence meaning, especially the predications on the

display. Further, recall that which objects can replicate a display in a reproduction of its matrix sentence

depends also on the perceptual properties of the matrix and its context. Neither of these constraints on

display equivalence have any counterparts in the equivalence of intensional or modal contexts. The

“irreferentiality” of displays bears little relation or resemblance to the irrerferentiality of intensional

and modal contexts.

Frege's autonymic misconception of display opacity does not appear to distort his conception of

intensional opacity, or his semantic theory generally -- any more than autonymic misconceptions distort

previous semantic theories. It's the peculiar post-Tarskian conception of opacity that inspires Quine's

(1953) semantic reductionism, where displays become "the referentially opaque context par

excellence". Again, with displays and autonyms, the marks are irrelevant to the opacity. Intranym

opacity is created by its marks. More precisely, intranyms and their opacity are created by the
 57

stipulation of FI. FI invites the idea of an intranym interior being an extra-syntactic "orthographic

accident" (Quine (1953)). Kaplan (1968) saw that idea leading to Quine's (1953) considering displays

"the referentially opaque context par excellence", and explaining away other forms of referential

opacity by way of display opacity. Frege's autonyms are no orthographic accident. Marked or not, their

reference is themselves, not some sub-syntactic snippet of themselves. Their opacity is not "par

excellence"; it doesn't distort Frege's conception of intensional contexts as intranym opacity distorts

Quine's.

Quine's misconception of display opacity culminates in his "disquotationalism": the thesis that

predicates like true and names "cancel" the semantic import of display marks. Recall that display

substitutability governed by semantic predicates (true, names) is just like term substitutability: only the

displayed object's semantic properties are relevant to the sentence's semantics, so objects with the same

semantic properties freely intersubstitute. Quine explains this referential transparency of displays

governed by semantic predicates by supposing that the marks create an opacity that semantic predicates

remove. That is a plausible interpretation of FI.

Consequently, with semantic predicates like 'true', display substitutability is like term substitutablity in

referentially transparent contexts: objects with the same semantic properties freely intersubstitute

without altering truth values.

Actually, display marks have no semantic import to cancel. (Nor do autonym marks.) Only intranym

marks have any semantic import. Only Formalese semantic predicates could be disquotational.

Disquotationalism is a paradigm of post-Tarskian term/object confusion. No pre-Tarskian

 58

"deflationism" about truth (e.g., Frege, Ramsey) makes any mention of display marks. Post-Tarski,

disquotationalism may never have been the dominant view, but even its many critics don't question its

core misconception of the semantic import of display marks.

A final point on opacity. Tarski (1932) and Quine (1940) assure us that problems of intranym

opacity are avoidable by replacing intranyms with “structural-descriptive” designators, singular

descriptions identifying an expression by its spelling. The adequacy of this alternative went

unexplained and undefended. Some skepticism seems in order. After all, how could the spelling

alternative avoid the semantical problems if it is truly semantically equivalent? Now recall: 'Greece is

boldface'/'Greece is boldface'. Here the reward of avoiding referential opacity is encoding a truth and a

falsehood with the same spelling description. Consider also embedded intranyms: ''' '' 'Is an intranym'

is an intranym'' is an intranym'''. What is the equivalent spelling description? Consider also intranym

variants, like Quine's (1940) quasi-quotation marks and Sellars' (1950) dot quotation marks. All have

opaque innards, but cannot all be replaced with spelling designators. Logicians and linguists invent an

ever growing array of markers, because they need to refer to arrays of formally different kinds of

objects – objects natural language displays with its flexible system of directors. What would be the

spelling-designator variants for all the intranym variants? Finally, it needs asking: Suppose spelling-

designators were extensionally equivalent to intranyms. Still, are they fit for the practice of science

despite being cognitively inequivalent and infeasible? Like displayed words, intranyms can be read.

Words represented by a spelling description must be deciphered to be read, a formidable procedure far

more liable to error. Is a science of language really furthered by resorting to imperspicuous and

prohibitively impractical gimmicks?

 59

Anyway, as replacements of displays, spelling designators are no better than intranyms . Neither

can replace displays, because they presuppose displays, because Formalese terms have referents and

Formalese sentences have truth values only by assignments grounded in our use of props and displays.

That aside, even as an uninterpreted system, using intranyms or spelling designators, Formalese

is syntactically unfit for its prime function.

18. Syntactic Duality: Tarski's formalization of a metalanguage smacks against the

syntactic duality of language. Natural languages naturally generate sentences like:

(40) He is Nick, and Nick is his name, so he is his name.

For most folks, this formal entailment is an amusing absurdity canceled by extra-formal

disambiguation. In practice it's inconsequential, an innocuous linguistic curiosity. Yet that entailment

challenges the very idea of a formalized metalanguage. Formally entailing an absurdity is fatal for a

language lacking extra-formal means of disarming syntactic equivocations. So too, the equivocation in

(40) is essentially the duality in sentences like HN (He is Nick), which may introduce a person or his

name. Formalese cannot admit such dual readings; natural languages cannot avoid them.

Tarski's formalization cannot adopt Frege's (1893) practice of insistently disambiguating

displays in his writings. If marking displays became as standard as capitalizing initial sentence letters,

sentences with unmarked displays would still be no more defective, grammatically or semantically,

than sentences with lower case initial letters. (40) would still be perfectly grammatical and meaningful,

albeit obviously absurd. (Actually, Frege's practice is not universalizable. We must use and understand

displays before we understand and use display markers.) The legitimacy of (40) doesn't threaten Frege,

for the fragment of language he formalized was not metalinguistic. It does threaten a language aspiring
 60

to formalize Nick is his name. Formalization cannot recognize (40) as well-formed, albeit absurd,

because the preclusion of ambiguity and equivocation is a primary precondition of a formal language.7

Tarski and Quine the deny of (40). For them it was axiomatic that "a statement about an object

must contain a name of the object rather than the object itself" (Quine (1940)). Their denial was

emphatic. It was unprecedented. And it remains undefended. No one before had need of it, and no one

has said a word in its favor.

Formalists don't recognize that they are denying the legitimacy of our natural metalanguage of

displays. They recognize the reality of semantic paradox and aim to avoid it by restricting their object

language semantically. They see that intranyms save their metalanguage from ambiguity, equivocation

and absurdity, which they regard as regrettable defects of a natural language that are costlessly

eliminated in a properly regimented formal language. Formalists don't recognize that they preclude

syntactic paradox by replacing displays with intranyms and restricting the syntax of their metalanguage

to that of their object language.

19. Display v. Intranym Syntax: Formalese cannot state the formal truths expressed by

what we'll call metalogical sentences, like:

('N'N) [The name] Nick names Nick

('S'S) [The sentence] Snow melts says snow melts.

('S'T) [The sentence/proposition] Snow melts is true just if snow melts.

7 Recall Tarski's defining formal languages as "artificially constructed languages in which the sense of
every expression is unambiguously determined by its form". Per Frege,“the first requirement” of an
ideal language for logic and science is that the symbols be univocal, unambiguous (Frege (1882a)). To
make "logical" transitions from one judgment to another, “we may not use the same symbols with a
double meaning in the same context” (Frege (1882b)). A Formalese symbol may be assigned multiple
meanings only when this doesn't legitimize sentence ambiguities or equivocations.
 61

Metalogical sentences are comparable, not to analytical sentences (like Squares are quadrilateral), but

to first-order, objectual logical sentences like:

(NN) Nick is Nick

(SS) Snow melts if and only if snow melts

Both logical and metalogical sentences can express both formal, necessary truths and contingent,

empirical truths and falsehoods. Whether their utterance expresses a necessity or a contingency is itself

a contingency dependent on whether the speaker is using two occurrences of the semantically same

word(s). Languages require repeatable objects, perceptual types with semantically identical tokens. Yet,

in principle, any two instances of a perceptual type may differ semantically.

So, speech would be epistemologically impossible without the interpretive principle that the

normal, default reading of sentence tokens is that perceptually identical sentence components are

semantically identical.8 Necessarily, that's the standard reading of logical and metalogical sentences.

Presentations of the name, Nick, might refer to various usages of the name with various referents. Still,

our normal, default reading of ('N'N) and (NN) utterances is that, whatever either Nick-token may

name, they both name the same. So read, ('N'N) and (NN) are true, necessarily.

The flip side of this is the normal reading of sentences like: Nick is not Nick, Nick might not be

Nick, 'Nick' does not name Nick, 'Nick' might not name Nick. Rather than read them as denials of

obvious necessities (or denials of their obvious necessity), we normally assume that their occurrences

8 Gallois (2005) alleges that this principle is merely a convention, and thus self-identities are

contingent truths or falsehoods. Actually, the principle is a pre-condition of linguistic conventions.

Without it, formal truths are not representable.

 62

of Nick differ semantically.

Whatever our difficulties explaining it, we readily read and understand formula like:

(p) p is true iff p

(n) n names n

Displays are significantly like variables, and can be positioned like variables, because they take the

position of a referring expression but do not themselves refer to anything. They do not form a complete,

closed sentence with just a predicate. Sentence completion requires replacing variables with terms, and

supplying directors for displays. Displays are peculiar variables because matrix semantic predicate

words are read as the representational use of the words displayed, and the words displayed are read as

presentations of the words used representationally in the matrix semantic predicate. (Cf. Beaney,

Harman)

Displays aren't quantifiable, just as props aren't, because they are objects, not terms denoting objects.

Instead, a display's director may be quantifiable like any term, with or without a display. Thus a

sentence like (14) (Every i was dotted, but some t's went uncrossed) is formalized like (14F), not

(14F*):

(14F) (x) (Lix -> Dx) & - (x) (Lt x -> Ux) -- where ‘Li’ abbreviates 'letter i’ and ‘Lt ’ abbreviates
‘letter t’
(14F*) (x)(ix -> Dx) & - (x)(tx -> Ux) -- where ‘i’ and ‘t’ are displayed
Consequently, when the display's implicit director is something like, the expression, so-called
"substitutional quantification" of displays makes sense (Dunn (1968), Marcus (1972)).Since a display is
an object, not a term,
Now consider the much vexed question of quantification into or over displays. Evidently, what
it gets quantified is the director, not the display. Director terms are quantifiable like any term, with or
without a display. Displays aren't quantifiable, just as props aren't, because they are objects, not terms.
Perhaps that's why, while we can say
we more commonly appear to quantify over displays with explicit directors as Buridan does. In any
case, so-called substitutional quantification of displays makes sense when and because the display's
 63

(implicit or explicit) director is something like: the expression. (Cf. Dunn (1968), Marcus (1972)).
Display opacity is of a piece with its quantifiability. Displays aren't quantifiable, just as props
aren't, because they are objects, not terms. However, a display's director may be quantifiable like any
term, with or without a display. Consequently, when the display's implicit director is something like,
the expression, so-called "substitutional quantification" of displays makes sense (Dunn (1968), Marcus
(1972)).

Logical sentences present a relation between two matrix occurrences of an extensional

expression (a term or sentence). Metalogical sentences present a relation between a display of an

expression and its matrix use, between a presentation and its representational use. As with the sentence

form, a=b, any sentence of the form, (The name) 'a' names b, is true just when its two terms co-

designate. Sentences of either form are formally necessary just when the co-reference is free of

semantic contingency -- and thus, just when the two names are the same name. Thus, 'a' names a is a

syntactically distinctive form of 'a' names b because its truth is due to its structure independent of its

referential relations.

Elsewhere (......) I argue that (contra MacFarlane (2000)) a=a is a paradigm truth due to

logico-syntactic form. The logician's '=' is not the relational predicate of equality. It is comparable, not

to '>' and '<', but rather to a sentence connective like '.' that forms sentences that are true just when their

component sentences are true. The identity sign forms sentences that are true just when their terms

corefer, whatever the (extra-semantic) properties of the referent, so their truth is formally necessary just

when the constituent terms are the same. (Quine (1987) betrays his own use-mention confusion when

he accuses this metalinguistic conception of identity of use-mention confusion.) Here I am suggesting

that names is the semantic counterpart of the is of identity.

Earlier we saw that matrix predicates may require altering a display's perceptual properties to
 64

maintain sentence meaning in a replication of the sentence. So too, a semantic equivalent of a

metalogical sentence must have the same truth-securing syntax and a semantically equivalent semantic

object. So a proper translation of 'S'S must be like 'G'G and not like 'S'G:

'S'S: 'Snow melts' says snow melts.

'G'G: 'Schnee schmilzt' besagt Schnee schmilzt.

'S'G: 'Snow melts' besagt Schnee schmilzt.

'S'S's syntax demands that its translation switch its ostensible referent by translating the displayed

expression the same as its matrix occurrence in the semantic predicate, besagt Schnee schmilzt.

Elsewhere, extensional equivalence is essential for proper translation, but here the referent's role

explaining the truth ostensibly about it is subordinate to syntax. Like objectual logical truths, a

metalogical truth is translinguistic. Its truth is explained by a structural feature of sentences with a

semantically equivalent referent.

The Formalese 'S'S is not a formal truth. It states the contingent fact of the semantic relation of

a term to its referent, a relation created by the stipulation of FI. No term has any syntactic, formal,

logical relation to its denotation. The intranym referent might be the semantically same words as the

matrix component in the semantic predicate, but that coincidence is an artifact of a formally arbitrary

stipulation. So, a Formalese 'S'S and 'G'G are structurally like the inter-linguistic contingency, 'S'G. So,

in Formalese, 'S'S is semantically equivalent to 'S'G, not 'G'G. (Church (1954), Salmon (2002). Cp.

Olders & Sas (2001).) Formalese metalogical sentences state necessities comparable to Greece is

Hellas and Greeks are Hellenes. They are necessities explained by semantic contingencies.

Formalese cannot represent the logical form of metalogical truth. If Formalese takes displays to
 65

be paratactic, it takes a sentence that is true due solely to its syntactic form to be dependent on an extra-

syntactic element. If Formalese takes displays to be autonymic or intranymic, it takes a truth due solely

to syntax to be dependent on the contingent semantic relation of a term to its denotation.

Further, Formalese differs from our natural metalanguage in its subject matter as well as its

form. In Formalese the referent of a metalogical sentence needn't be semantically the words in the

semantic predicate unless Formalese supplements FI with a stipulation like:

FL: The expression within an intranym's marks is an expression of a language, L1,

contained in Formalese.

Formalese semantic truths are indexed to the language of the words referenced. Our metalogical truths

aren't indexed to any language: their displayed words replicate the words of the semantic predicate,

whatever the language of those words.

This might seem otherwise, because, again, a metalogical sentence utterance might not express

a metalogical truth. Whether it does depends on the speaker's intent, which may be uncertain. So

sometimes there's need for the display's director to specify the display as the words of some language

or as used on some occasion. Sometimes we can infer that p from an utterance of 'p' is true only on the

empirical assumption that the referent sentence means what we now mean by its utterance.

Still, if 'p' is true normally needed the premise 'p' says p to imply p, it would need the further

premise:

'p' says p says 'p' says p

and then the further premise:

'p' says p says 'p' says p says 'p' says p says 'p' says p.
 66

Like objectual modus ponens, metalogical truths are principles of reasoning and representation, not

premises of it. (If that weren't the default reading of metalogical sentences, they wouldn't sometimes

state empirical contingencies.) So when we talk about truth by talking with some language, normally

we're not talking about any language. We're predicating a translinguistic property of a translinguistic

object.
 67

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