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Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology 18

Alessandro Capone
Marco Carapezza
Franco Lo Piparo Editors

Further
Advances in
Pragmatics and
Philosophy
Part 1 From Theory to Practice
Perspectives in Pragmatics,
Philosophy & Psychology

Volume 18

Editor-in-Chief
Alessandro Capone, University of Messina, Italy

Consulting Editors
Keith Allan, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Louise Cummings, Nottingham Trent University, UK
Wayne A. Davis, Georgetown University, Washington, USA
Igor Douven, Paris-Sorbonne University, France
Yan Huang, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Istvan Kecskes, State University of New York at Albany, USA
Franco Lo Piparo, University of Palermo, Italy
Antonino Pennisi, University of Messina, Italy

Editorial Board Members

Noel Burton-Roberts, University of Newcastle, UK
Brian Butler, University of North Carolina, Asheville, USA
Felice Cimatti, Università della Calabria, Cosenza, Italy
Eros Corazza, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
Marcelo Dascal, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Michael Devitt, Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA
Frans van Eemeren, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Alessandra Falzone, University of Messina, Italy
Neil Feit, State University of New York, Fredonia, USA
Alessandra Giorgi, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy
Larry Horn, Yale University, New Haven, USA
Klaus von Heusinger, University of Stuttgart, Germany
Katarzyna Jaszczolt, University of Cambridge, UK
Ferenc Kiefer, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
Kepa Korta, ILCLI, Donostia, Spain
Ernest Lepore, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA
Stephen C. Levinson, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Fabrizio Macagno, New University of Lisbon, Portugal
Tullio De Mauro, ‘La Sapienza’ University, Rome, Italy
Jacob L. Mey, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
Pietro Perconti, University of Messina, Italy
Francesca Piazza, University of Palermo, Italy
Roland Posner, Berlin Institute of Technology, Germany
Mark Richard, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
Nathan Salmon, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Stephen R. Schiffer, New York University, USA
Michel Seymour, University of Montreal, Canada
Mandy Simons, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA
Timothy Williamson, University of Oxford, UK
Anna Wierzbicka, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Dorota Zielińska, Jesuit University of Philosophy and Education Ignatianum, Kraków, Poland

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11797

Alessandro Capone • Marco Carapezza
Franco Lo Piparo
Editors

Further Advances in
Pragmatics and Philosophy
Part 1 From Theory to Practice
Editors
Alessandro Capone Marco Carapezza
Department of Cognitive Science Dip. Scienze Umanistiche
University of Messina Università di Palermo
Messina, ME, Italy Palermo, Italy

Franco Lo Piparo
University of Palermo
Palermo, Italy

ISSN 2214-3807     ISSN 2214-3815 (electronic)

Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology
ISBN 978-3-319-72172-9    ISBN 978-3-319-72173-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72173-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017964602

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018

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This book is dedicated by Alessandro Capone
to the late James Higginbotham, whose high
levels of scholarship and teaching are a
standing example for us all. I also dedicate
this book to my friend, Igor Douven, a
reminder that there are still very honest and
brilliant scholars around. The book is also
dedicated to Keith Donnellan, by general
consensus of the participants to the First
International Conference on Pragmatics and
Philosophy (Pragmasophia 1), held at the
University of Palermo in May 2016.
Acknowledgments

Professor Alessandro Capone would like to thank his friends and colleagues who
supported his projects throughout these years:
Istvan Kecskes, Jacob L. Mey, Wayne Davis, Igor Douven, Howard Wettstein,
Michael Devitt, Yan Huang, Keith Allan, Antonino Pennisi, Franco Lo Piparo, the
late James Higginbotham, Alessandra Giorgi, Denis Delfitto, Edoardo Lombardo
Vallauri, among many others.
Warm thanks are also due to Jolanda Voogd and Helen van der Stelt, editors for
Springer.

vii
Contents

Part I Theoretical approaches to philosophy of language

 emantically Empty Gestures ������������������������������������������������������������������������    3
S
Nathan Salmon
 boutness and Quantifying Into Intensional Contexts: A Pragmatic
A
Topic/Comment Analysis of Propositional Attitude Statements������������������   25
Jay David Atlas
 ub-Sententials: Pragmatics or Semantics?��������������������������������������������������   45
S
Michael Devitt
 n Investigation of a Gricean Account of Free-­Choice or��������������������������   65
A
Graeme Forbes
Negation as a window on the non-sequential nature of language
interpretation and processing ������������������������������������������������������������������������   81
Denis Delfitto
 mbedding explicatures in implicit indirect reports:
E
simple sentences, and substitution failure cases��������������������������������������������   97
Alessandro Capone
How Demonstrative Complex Pictorial Reference
Grounds Contextualism���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 137
Alberto Voltolini

Part II Pragmatics in discourse

Discourse, sentence grammar and the left periphery
of the clause������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 153
Alessandra Giorgi
Getting a grip on context as a determinant of meaning ������������������������������ 177
Keith Allan

ix
x Contents

 heory meets Practice – H. Paul Grice’s Maxims of Quality

T
and Manner and the Trobriand Islanders’ language use���������������������������� 203
Gunter Senft
 BDUCTIVE INFERENCES IN PRAGMATIC PROCESSES������������������ 221
A
Marco Carapezza and Valentina Cuccio
 oordinating Meaning: Common Knowledge and Coordination
C
in Speaker Meaning ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 243
Richard Warner
 workin’s “Semantic Sting” and Behavioral Pragmatics���������������������������� 259
D
Brian E. Butler
 tories and the transmission of knowledge: Narrative, evidence,
S
credibility and epistemic vigilance����������������������������������������������������������������� 275
Neal R. Norrick
Contributors

Keith Allan Monash University, Peregian Springs, QLD, Australia

Jay David Atlas Department of Philosophy, Trinity University, San Antonio, TX,
USA
Brian E. Butler Howerton Distinguished Professor of Humanities, Department of
Philosophy, UNC Asheville, Asheville, NC, USA
Alessandro Capone Department of Cognitive Science, University of Messina,
Messina, ME, Italy
Marco Carapezza Dip. Scienze Umanistiche, Università di Palermo, Palermo,
Italy
Valentina Cuccio Dipartimento di Discipline Umanistiche, Sociali e delle Imprese
Culturali, Università di Parma, Parma, Italy
Denis Delfitto Department of Cultures and Civilizations, University of Verona,
Verona, Italy
Michael Devitt The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, New York,
NY, USA
Graeme Forbes University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
Alessandra Giorgi Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy
Neal R. Norrick Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany
Nathan Salmon University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA
Gunter Senft Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The
Netherlands
Alberto Voltolini Philosophy of Mind, Department of Philosophy and Education
Sciences, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
Richard Warner Chicago-Kent College of Law, Chicago, IL, USA

xi
Introduction

I am very pleased to notice that the number of scholars in pragmatics, since the
beginning of my academic career, has considerably increased, even if students are
confronted with the usual problem that for many topics there is no considerable
agreement and that, while some think that a certain phenomenon should be compe-
tently studied by semantics, others fiercely maintain that the phenomenon is essen-
tially pragmatic. I have myself gone through many doubts and dilemmas (see
Capone 2000) and while at the beginning of my career I found that the experience
of being contradicted by some semantician (e.g. one of my tutors, the legendary
James Higginbotham) was most excruciating, now, after decades, I feel that I am
almost totally unscathed by the doubts that assailed my mind in the past. I think
there is always a rational method for making a decision and when I decide that the
evidence in favour of a pragmatic view outweighs the one in favour of a semantic
view (or viceversa), I settle on a theoretical choice and I stick to it. This is not to say
that we are adamant that we are right and that, from now onwards, we will no longer
consider evidence that might militate in favour of re-opening an issue, but the
approach and the attitude to research has become so impersonal that I am quite
happy to say that it is the theory that decides (an issue), rather than myself. While as
a student I thought that one was absolutely to be right or wrong about a certain issue,
now I have the more relativistic stance that truth lies in the possible future advan-
tages which a theory might have over competing ones. (I am not a relativist concern-
ing factual truth, of course). Under the influence of James Higginbotham, I have
developed the attitude that theories share much with games of chess and that moves
that go a longer way towards explaining things are preferable. Of course, one way
of making predictions is to play the game and see what possible interactions a theory
might have with other theories – which means running simulations in one’s mind.
This approach I have to theories may sound rather philosophical – but in this case
the distinction between philosophy and science is not completely clear to me. This
does not imply – as I am afraid some may object – disregard for the (empirical) data.
On the contrary, we try to take the data into account and data are crucial in theory
formation. However, they do not have the last word. Faced with a very bad dilemma,
in which we cannot easily reconcile the data with the theory, we should take a deci-

xiii
xiv Introduction

sion and establish whether the theory is more important than the data or vice versa.
Of course, if a theory is likely to explain a lot more data, then we will not easily
abandon it, but we may start to have reservations about the data. Discussions of this
type abound in my book Dilemmas and excogitations (Capone 2000), and I do not
want to reiterate them. The upshot of that discussion is that we should have the cour-
age to make choices, and we should be aware that our choices may have future
repercussions (whether positive or negative).
In the papers collected in this volume, we present theories which are at the bor-
der between philosophy and linguistics, all having pragmatic topics as their core. I
have always thought that there might be fruitful interactions between philosophers
and linguists (an idea which got this series PPPP started) and this book serves to
prove that I have not been completely wrong in my intuition. I hope that there is
something unique in the papers I have chosen, as these were written by my favourite
authors. All the authors present here are characterized by three qualities: construc-
tive, hard-working, interdisciplinary.
Much of the work presented in this volume concerns the semantics/pragmatics
interface. Now there is little doubt about and much evidence in favour of the idea
that pragmatics contributes to propositional meaning. We cannot establish a full
proposition without the contribution of pragmatics. This apparently simple idea has
much work to do in philosophical and linguistic theories and we will not be sur-
prised to see that some philosophical topics can take advantage from such linguistic
contributions or that philosophical ideas can propel linguistics further (see Igor
Douven (2010)’s exemplary paper, The pragmatics of belief). To give a simple
example of the semantics/pragmatics debate, consider the following data:
A friend of mine, on the day of my birthday, wrote a message to me saying: “(I
wish you) a thousand of days like this” (This is a translation from Italian, of course).
On that day I had a terrible intestinal problem which caused excruciating pains. Did
he (really) mean that I had to have a thousand birthdays like that? Of course, it was
not reasonable to charge his utterances with pragmatic halos, which it did not or
could not possibly have. On the other hand, it would have been reasonable on his
part to ask how I was doing before making a deictic utterance, which invariably
derived meaning from its occasion of use (I personally thought that message was
rather infelicitous). In this case, on a charitable reading, this utterance interpretation
had to be divested of or (or insulated from) its deictic significance. Pragmatics
sometimes means enrichment, sometimes means meaning subtraction. On a chari-
table interpretation, any implausible (possibly contradictory or logically absurd)
meaning has to be avoided and replaced by a suitable one, on the assumption that
human beings are rational and that deviations from rationality are not (and should
not be) the norm.
A lot more could be said about rationality – but this touching example may be a
reminder to all that pragmatics is about reasoning and language (interpretation).
When we interpret, we engage in reasoning. Some of these acts are conscious, some
of them are not. It is possible that current pragmatic theories – contrary to the spirit
of Paul Grice – have neglected too much the fact that rationality in language means
engaging in reasoning to understand what a rational speaker/agent might have
Introduction xv

meant. We often stop to ponder on what people said and on what the obvious and
non-obvious implications of what they said are.
As a final note, I should say that the provenance of these papers is a big confer-
ence organized by Franco Lo Piparo, Marco Carapezza and myself at the University
of Palermo. It is not easy to forget the warm environment and the medieval architec-
ture of Palazzo Steri or the luxurious princely venue of Villa Niscemi, where the
final reception took place and the guests were saluted by Palermo’s Mayor. At least,
after so much work, we also enjoyed aristocratic privilege.
Finally, I would like to dedicate this volume to James Higginbotham, legendary
scholar and my unforgettable teacher. His severity was a form of benevolence and
generosity, which I cannot forget. This book is also dedicated, by general consensus
of the participants to the conference, to Keith Donnellan. I also dedicate this volume
to Igor Douven, without whom this series PPPP would not have existed.

Department of Cognitive Science Alessandro Capone

University of Messina,
Messina, ME, Italy

References

Capone, A. (2000). Dilemmas and excogitations: an essay on modality, clitics and discourse.
Messina: Armando Siciliano.
Capone, A. (2001). Modal adverbs and discourse. Pisa: ETS.
Capone, A. (2011). Knowing how and pragmatic intrusion. Intercultural Pragmatics, 8(4),
543–570.
Capone, A. (2016). The pragmatics of indirect reports. Socio-philosophical considerations.
Cham:Springer.
Douven, I. (2010). The pragmatics of beliefs. Journal of Pragmatics 42(1), 35–47.
 Part I
Theoretical approaches to philosophy
of language
Semantically Empty Gestures

Nathan Salmon

Abstract Frege held that the bare demonstrative ‘that’ is incomplete, and that it is
the word together with a gesture that serves as the designating expression, and like-
wise that it is the word ‘yesterday’ together with the time of utterance that desig-
nates the relevant day. David Kaplan’s original theory of indexicals holds that
Frege’s supplementation thesis is correct about demonstratives but incorrect about
‘yesterday’. Kaplan’s account of demonstratives deviates from Frege’s in treating
supplemented demonstratives as directly referential, hence rigid. It is argued here
that the gesture or other demonstration that accompanies an utterance of ‘that’ is not
part of the designating expression but instead part of the utterance context.

Keywords Context · Demonstrative · Demonstratum · Dthat · Gesture · Indexical ·

Singular proposition · Zat

1 Two Theories of Demonstratives

Pointing to a copy of Naming and Necessity amid several books I say, “That is a
great monograph.” My pointing evidently plays a role in securing the fact that the
occurrence of the demonstrative ‘that’ designates what it does rather than something
else, or nothing at all. What especially semantic role, if any, does my hand gesture
play? More specifically, how shall something like a finger-pointing figure in a
semantic analysis of sentences like ‘That is a great monograph’? Where do such
things as hand gestures belong in a correct semantic theory?

The present paper incorporated portions of my essay, “Demonstrating and Necessity” (citation in
note 4 below) by permission of The Philosophical Review. I am grateful to Ben Caplan and Teresa
Robertson for discussion and to the participants in my seminar at UCSB during Fall 2000 for their
role as initial sounding board for many of the ideas presented here.
N. Salmon (*)
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA
e-mail: nsalmon@philosophy.ucsb.edu

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018 3

A. Capone et al. (eds.), Further Advances in Pragmatics and Philosophy,
Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology 18,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72173-6_1
4 N. Salmon

In his classic essay “Der Gedanke” Frege offers an answer: Finger-pointings and
other hand gestures may be “part of the expression of the thought.” He wrote:
... [in some cases} the mere wording, which can be made permanent by writing or the
gramophone, does not suffice for the expression of the thought. ... If a time indication is
made in present tense, one must know when the sentence was uttered to grasp the thought
correctly. Thus the time of utterance is part of the expression of the thought. If someone
wants to say today what he expressed yesterday using the word ‘today’, he will replace this
word with ‘yesterday’. Although the thought is the same, the verbal expression must be
different to compensate for the change of sense which would otherwise be brought about by
the different time of utterance. The case is the same with words like ‘here’ and ‘there’. In
all such cases, the mere wording, as it can be written down, is not the complete expression
of the thought; one further needs for its correct apprehension the knowledge of certain
conditions accompanying the utterance, which are used as means of expressing the thought.
Pointing the finger, gestures, and glances may belong here too. The same utterance contain-
ing the word ‘I’ will express different thoughts in the mouths of different people, of which
some may be true and others false.1

All indications are that Frege means that a finger-pointing may act as a kind of
expression, in something like the manner of the descriptive phrase ‘object having
such-and-such visual appearance’. A gesture is not exactly a sentence component—
it is not a syntactic entity—but Frege evidently suggests that a gesture may never-
theless be a component of the full entity that semantically contains the proposition
that I assert. What semantically expresses the proposition that Naming and Necessity
is a great monograph, according to Frege, is not merely the sentence I utter but a
composite entity consisting of the sentence together with my hand gesture. The
gesture is a non-syntactic component of the full “expression”; it is what might be
termed quasi-syntactic. (If expressions are syntactic entities, so that hand gestures
are not expressions, Frege appears to accord them the status of honorary expres-
sion.) In an utterance of a sentence involving an indexical, Frege observes, what
expresses a proposition (a “thought”) is not the sentence itself—the “mere wording”
which might be written down or recorded by audio-recording device—but the word-
ing taken together with certain accompanying elements, like the time of utterance or
an ostension, things that cannot be “made permanent” by writing them down or by
recording the spoken word. In such cases, the mere wording itself is, in an important
sense, essentially incomplete. What express the proposition is neither the uttered
words nor the conditions accompanying the utterance, but the words and the condi-
tions working in tandem. Indeed, Frege says that the conditions form part of the
expression of the proposition, as if what plays the role of a sentence—what actually
expresses the proposition—is a hybrid entity made up of syntactic material (words)
together with such supplementary non-syntactic material as a time of utterance or a
gesture of the hand. According to Frege, the union of mere expression and environ-

1
“Der Gedanke,” Beiträge zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus (1918), translated by P. Geach
and R. H. Stoothoff as “Thoughts,” in Frege’s Logical Investigations (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1977). An alternative translation of the quoted passage occurs there, at p. 10.
Semantically Empty Gestures 5

ment accomplishes what neither can do without the other. A bare demonstrative
‘that’ would then service as a term for the function that assigns to a gesture, the
object that is before the speaker.2
Let us dub Frege’s view that such things as the time of an utterance or an accom-
panying hand gesture combine with mere expressions to form hybrid entities with
semantic content, the supplementation account. Following Frege let us call the
expression that on the supplementation account requires supplementation, a mere
expression (a mere demonstrative, a mere sentence etc.). Let us call the mere expres-
sion together with its accompanying supplement a supplemented expression (e.g., a
supplemented demonstrative, etc.) Supplemented words are hybrid entities—part
syntactic (the mere word), part non-syntactic (e.g., an action-type).
Frege’s account of indexicals may be fruitfully compared with David Kaplan’s
theory of demonstratives. The latter, as set out in Kaplan’s landmark study
“Demonstratives”,3 is justly famous. However, one central aspect appears to be little
appreciated or understood. In effect, Kaplan’s theory accepts Frege’s supplementa-
tion account of demonstratives but does not extend it to indexicals like ‘you’, ‘here’,
and ‘tomorrow’. This arises in connection with the distinction Kaplan draws
between pure indexicals and demonstratives. The former are complete expressions
that are not supplemented by non-syntactic material and instead take on differing
semantic contents with respect to different contexts. By contrast, according to
Kaplan, demonstratives are of themselves incomplete. They are said to stand in need
of supplementation by a demonstration (e.g., a hand gesture) on the part of the
speaker. Together the demonstrative and its accompanying demonstration then form
the analog of a pure indexical. Kaplan’s special theory of demonstratives includes
Frege’s supplementation theory of demonstratives generally: the mere word does
not have semantic content appropriate to a singular term; it requires supplementa-
tion, which produces something that takes on an appropriate semantic content.
According to Kaplan’s theory it is the supplemented demonstrative, and not the
mere word, that takes on content with respect to a context.
Furthermore according to Kaplan, gestures and other demonstrations function
like context-dependent definite descriptions: when performed (“mounted”) in a par-
ticular context, a demonstration takes on a representational content that determines
an object with respect to a possible circumstance. Which content is taken on depends
on the context; which object is determined then depends on the circumstance. In this
respect too Kaplan’s theory of demonstratives echoes Frege’s. Kaplan calls the per-
son, place, or thing demonstrated the demonstratum of the demonstration (in the
relevant circumstance).

2
If so, the mere word ‘that’ would function as a synonym for the definite-description operator ‘the’
except that the latter is always supplemented by verbiage (e.g., ‘author of Waverley’) whereas the
former is be supplemented by such non-syntactic elements as a finger-pointing or a hand gesture
(perhaps in addition to verbiage).
3
In J. Almog, J. Perry, and H. Wettstein, eds, Themes from Kaplan (Oxford University Press,
1989), pp. 481–614.
6 N. Salmon

Kaplan’s account of demonstratives, as contrasted with “pure” indexicals, can be

summed up in a pair of succinct theses:
KT1: Although incorrect about pure indexicals, Frege’s supplementation account
is correct with respect to demonstratives; but
KT2: As with all indexical words, the propositions expressed by sentences invok-
ing supplemented demonstratives are singular rather than general.4
The corresponding content rule governing supplemented demonstratives is the
following:
(TK) With respect to any context c the (English) content of the supplemented
English demonstrative ‘that’⌒δ, where δ is a demonstration, is the demonstra-
tum of δ with respect to c, if there is one, and is nothing otherwise.5
The fact that two of the greatest philosophers of semantics of the past 100 years
subscribe to the supplementation account of demonstratives is ample proof of that
account’s appeal. Nevertheless that account is counterintuitive. The peculiarity is
perhaps clearer in Frege’s account, which extends to such indexicals as ‘here’ and
‘tomorrow’. Intuitively, it is not a hybrid consisting of the word ‘tomorrow’ and the
time of its utterance that designates the day following that of the utterance, as on
Frege’s account; rather it is the word alone that does so, in the context of its utter-
ance—precisely as in Kaplan’s account of temporal indexicals. But for the very
same reason, it is intuitively not a hybrid entity consisting of the word ‘that’ and my
hand gesture that designates Naming and Necessity, as in Kaplan’s account. Rather
it is the word ‘that’ alone that does so—although it does so, of course, in the context
of my providing a gesture as guide to the book I intend.

4
Kaplan sometimes uses the term ‘utterance’ for the supplemented expression, reserving the term
‘sentence’ for the mere sentence. On Kaplan’s view, as on Frege’s, it is the supplemented sentence
that expresses a proposition when occurring in a context. (See note 10 below.)
Kaplan overstates KT2 by saying that “indexicals, pure and demonstrative alike, are directly
referential” (ibid., p. 492). This statement gives the misleading impression that the fact that indexi-
cal words are directly referential (in Russell’s terminology, logically proper names; in Kripke’s,
Millian) obtains somehow in virtue of their context-sensitivity. Both the statement and the mislead-
ing suggestion are refuted by the context-dependence of such non-rigid phrases as ‘my
hometown’.
5
This rule is stated slightly differently in “Demonstratives,” p. 527, where Kaplan says that it
“gives the character” of a supplemented (“complete”) demonstrative. The latter assertion conflicts
with my exposition, on which the instantiation of the variable ‘δ’ in (TK) to a particular demonstra-
tion yields a content rule that is not character-building. A character-building rule would specify the
content with respect to c as the such-and-such in c, where the demonstration’s content is: the such-
and-such. As I see it, the rule (TK) itself is instead Kaplan’s contextual definition of the mere word
‘that’. Have I misinterpreted Kaplan? Or is his claim that (TK) gives the character of a supple-
mented demonstrative an oversimplification of his view? (It does fix the character, specifying the
character by description.)
Semantically Empty Gestures 7

While Kaplan’s account of indexicals owes much to Frege, it differs from Frege’s
in important respects. First and foremost, Kaplan contends that a supplemented
demonstrative is directly referential, i.e., its semantic content is just the demonstra-
tum itself rather than a concept (in Alonzo Church’s sense) of the demonstratum.
Furthermore, a mere pure-indexical word like ‘yesterday’ is said by Kaplan to des-
ignate the relevant object—in this case, the day before that of the time of utterance
(and not a function from times to days, as in Frege’s theory6). The word takes on,
relative to a context of use, a content that determines the designated object with
respect to the context. The time of the context serves to determine the content.
Though Frege assigns a different designatum to the mere word, he allows that the
supplemented word designates the relevant day. One may wonder whether there is
any non-arbitrary way to choose between saying with Frege that ‘yesterday’-
supplemented-­by-the-time-of-utterance designates the day before that of the sup-
plementing time, and saying instead with Kaplan that ‘yesterday’ designates with
respect to a context the day before that of the context. Can it make any difference
whether we say that a word-cum-context designates a given object, or instead that
the word designates the object “relative to” or “with respect to” the context?
From a purely formal perspective the different ways of speaking amount to the
same thing. Either way we assert a ternary relation among a mere word, a context,
and an object. But from a broader philosophical perspective, Kaplan’s manner of
speaking better captures the underlying facts. There are linguistic intuitions govern-
ing the situation, and on that basis it must be said that ‘yesterday’ (the mere word)
designates a particular day—which day depending on the context of utterance. It is
decidedly counterintuitive that the word instead designates a function from times to
days, as on Frege’s account. The intuition is unshaken even among sophisticates
who, through proper training, have acquired the intuition that, for example, the
exponentiation in the numerical term ‘72’ (and likewise the word ‘squared’ in ‘seven
squared’) designates a particular mathematical function.7
It is preferable, both theoretically and conceptually, to see the ternary relation
among mere word, context, and object as the relativization to context of the binary
relation of designation between word and object, rather than as assigning a semantic
value to a cross-bred mereological fusion of word + context. One unwelcome con-
sequence of Frege’s supplementation account is the damage it inflicts on the syntax
of an indexical language. The material that accompanies the mere word to form the

6
For some details see my “Demonstrating and Necessity,” Philosophical Review, 111, 4, (October
2002), pp. 497–537; reprinted in my Content, Cognition, and Communication: Philosophical
Papers II (Oxford University Press, 2007), chapter 4; also in M. Davidson, ed., On Sense and
Direct Reference (McGraw-Hill, 2007), pp. 838–871.
7
Frege maintained that it is not the exponentiation itself (and not the word ‘squared’) that desig-
nates the relevant function, but the incomplete expression ‘__2’ (likewise, ‘____ squared’). On the
interpretation suggested here, Frege saw the mere word ‘yesterday’ as also being incomplete, its
argument place to be filled with the time of utterance (qua self-designating “expression”).
8 N. Salmon

supplemented expression does not itself have a genuine syntax as such. It is not that
such entities as times and gestures could not have their own syntax. In “Über Sinn
und Bedeutung” Frege observes that “it is not forbidden to take any arbitrarily pro-
duced event or object as a sign for anything.” A highly systematic mode of composi-
tion of such signs, and with it a generative grammar, could be cleverly devised, or
might somehow evolve through usage. Although the expressions that make up a sign
language, for example, cannot be “made permanent” by writing them down or by
audio-recording, still sign language has a syntax. But as a matter of sociological
linguistics, such aids to communication as times of utterance and finger-pointings
do not have an obvious and recognizable syntax. On Frege’s account, a language
with indexicals enlists the aid of elements from beyond conventional syntax in order
to express propositions. What manages to express a proposition in such a language
is not something that can be recorded by writing or the gramophone, at least not in
its entirety. It is partly syntactic and partly contextual. Natural-language syntax
becomes a fine theoretical mess.
In sharp contrast, one welcome consequence of relativizing the semantic rela-
tions of designation, and of expressing a content, to context is the recognition of a
third kind of semantic value—Kaplan’s character—which at least approximates the
semantic notion of linguistic meaning. Frege’s account avoids the claim that utter-
ances on different days of the word ‘yesterday’ are of a single univocal expression
with different designata, but only at a serious cost: the cost of misinterpretation.
Frege imputes univocality by interpreting the word in such a manner that it alleg-
edly designates the same thing on each occasion of use—that designated thing being
a function in Frege’s sense. Though the word’s meaning intuitively remains constant
from one use to the next, that same word (not some other expression) also does in
fact have different designata, and therefore also different contents, on different
occasions of use.8

8
There is a closely related reason why Kaplan contends that an indexical is monogamous in mean-
ing while promiscuous in designation, a reason pertaining to Frege’s puzzle in connection with
indexicals. Frege recognizes that ‘Today is Smith’s birthday’, uttered one day, expresses the same
proposition as ‘Yesterday was Smith’s birthday’ uttered the next. Yet, as Kaplan notes, Frege
apparently overlooks that the two sentences can differ in informativeness or “cognitive value”
(Erkenntniswerte). Contrary to Frege’s assertion, the information conveyed in an utterance at
11:59:59 pm of the former sentence is different from that conveyed in an utterance of the latter
only seconds later. An auditor who does not keep a close eye on an accurate clock is apt to find the
two assertions incompatible. But how can the two utterances differ in cognitive value when the
very same proposition is asserted in each? Kaplan’s explanation proceeds in terms of the characters
of the two sentences. There is an important yet generally overlooked aspect of character, one that
I believe Kaplan invokes in his solution to Frege’s puzzle in connection with indexicals, even if
only implicitly. (He does not articulate it in precisely the way I shall here.) The character has a
contextual perspective on content. More elaborately, the character specifies the content with
respect to a given context by describing it in terms of its special relation to the context.
Semantically Empty Gestures 9

2 An Alternative Theory

Kaplan intends his ‘dthat’-operator, which requires supplementation by singular

terms, as a kind of idealized, thoroughly syntactic model of natural-language
demonstratives, which require supplementation instead by actual demonstrations.
Kaplan sees in a single deictic utterance of ‘that’ a pair of components: the mere
word and the supplemental demonstration. Although the demonstration has a con-
tent, that content forms no part of the content of the supplemented sentences in
which it figures.
Kaplan briefly considers an alternative account that does away with Frege’s
supplementation account even for demonstratives, and treats all indexical words on
a par (op. cit., pp. 528–529). I call this alternative the Bare Bones theory. On this
theory, a context of use is regarded as including alongside such features as an agent
(to provide content for ‘I’), a time (‘now’), and a place (‘here’), an assignment of
demonstrata to occurrences of demonstatives, in case a single demonstrative is
repeated in a single context with different designata, as in ‘That1 [pointing to a
carton] is heavier than that2 [a different carton]’. Demonstratives on the Bare Bones
theory function according to a very simple substitute for (TK):
(Tn) With respect to any context c, the content of an occurrence of ‘that’ is the
demonstratum that c assigns to that occurrence.
This semantic rule imputes different characters to the demonstrative occurrences
in ‘That is that’, since there are contexts in which the first demonstratum is one
thing, the second demonstratum another. According to the Bare Bones theory, a
sentence like ‘That is heavier than that’ semantically presents its content with
respect to a context as the singular proposition about the first and second demon-
strata, respectively, that the former is heavier than the latter. This contrasts with
Kaplan’s theory, on which the content is presented instead by means of the contents
of the supplemental demonstration, as the singular proposition about the such-and-­
such in this context and about the so-and-so in this context, that the former is
heavier than the latter. The Bare Bones theory assigns no semantic role to the dem-
onstration that accompanies a use of a demonstrative, and thereby disregards the
epistemologically significant content-demonstratum distinction as semantically
irrelevant. Kaplan favors this distinction as providing a more satisfying solution to
Frege’s puzzle with regard to demonstratives: How can an utterance of ‘That1 is
that2’, if true, differ at all in content from an utterance of ‘That1 is that1’?
There are good grounds favoring an account of indexicals on which contextual
features are regarded as indices to which the semantic relations of designation and
content are relativized over Frege’s idea that such features instead form part of the
expression. These grounds extend straightforwardly to demonstratives. There is first
the damage inflicted upon English syntax. This is the main reason, or at least one
very important reason, for the retreat from ‘that’ to ‘dthat’, with the resulting well-­
behaved syntax of a sort that we students of language have come to treasure. But
foremost, linguistic intuition demands that a demonstrative has a single context-­sensitive
10 N. Salmon

meaning which assigns different designata, and hence also different contents, on
different occasions of use. On Kaplan’s theory, in sharp contrast, each utterance of
‘that’ with a different designatum is an utterance of a different term with a different
character or meaning. In fact, as with Frege, each utterance of ‘that’ accompanied
by a different demonstration with a different content is an utterance of a different
term with a different meaning—even if the demonstrata in that context are exactly
the same. (The character is represented by the function that assigns to any context
the demonstratum in that context of the particular accompanying demonstration.)
One feature of ‘dthat’ which is easy to overlook but which makes it a highly
implausible model for natural-language demonstratives like ‘that’ is that the former
is, by stipulation, a syncategorematic “incomplete symbol.” On Kaplan’s account
the mere demonstrative—the word itself—is meaningless in isolation. The content
and designatum of the compound term ⌜dthat[α]⌝ is a function of the content of its
operand α (viz., the designatum thereby determined), but the ‘dthat’-operator itself
has no character or content.
This is one respect in which Kaplan’s account is inferior to Frege’s. Natural-­
language demonstratives, in sharp contrast with ‘dthat’, have a meaning, one that
remains fixed for each use and determines the word’s content in that use. Frege eas-
ily accommodates the fact that a demonstrative has a fixed yet context-sensitive
meaning by taking the mere demonstrative to designate a function from features of
gestures to appropriate designata. By contrast, semantically ‘dthat’ is not a functor,
as its syntax would have us expect. It might appear that Kaplan could improve his
account significantly by following Frege’s lead and taking ‘dthat’ to be a functor for
the identity function, and by analogy, taking ‘that’ to designate the identity function
on demonstrata. For numerous reasons such a modification is not open to Kaplan.
One immediate problem—in fact, an immediate reductio of Frege’s account—is
that in the typical case a supplemented demonstrative is, according to that account,
a non-rigid designator. Its designatum with respect to a possible world w is simply
the demonstratum in w of the supplementing demonstration, and thus varies from
one world to the next. This contradicts Kaplan’s theory.
It might be thought that although Kaplan cannot follow Frege in taking a demon-
strative to designate the identity function on demonstrata, this only goes to show
that he must seek a different sort of function. The ‘dthat’-operator is an intensional
operator; an appropriate designatum for ‘dthat’ does not operate on the mere desig-
natum of its operand. Analogously, an appropriate designatum for a natural-­language
demonstrative cannot be a function on the mere demonstratum of the supplementing
demonstration. Instead, for any context c there is the aptly suited function @ic that
assigns to any individual concept (any content suitable for either a definite description
or a demonstration) the object determined by that concept in the particular circum-
stance cW-at-cT of c (and assigns to any non-concept itself). An account of ‘dthat’ as
designating @ic with respect to c could be made to yield the right intension (function
from circumstances to designata) for supplemented ‘dthat’-terms. Doing so would
make ‘dthat’ an indexical modal functor analogous to the sentential operator ‘actually’,
Semantically Empty Gestures 11

whose extension with respect to a context c is the function @pc that assigns to any
proposition its truth-value in the particular possible world cW of c.9
Yet Kaplan is barred from taking ‘dthat’ and natural-language demonstratives to
be functors. The problem is that the propositions expressed by sentences invoking
‘dthat’ could not then be singular propositions—any more than the contents of sen-
tences beginning with ‘actually’ are truth-values rather than propositions (although
this could be made to yield the right intension). If ‘dthat’ were semantically a func-
tor, the proposition expressed by ‘dthat [the suspicious-looking guy I saw yesterday
wearing a brown hat] is a spy’ would include among its constituents not Ortcutt
himself, but instead the content of the operand description ‘the suspicious-looking
guy I saw yesterday wearing a brown hat’ as well as the content of the functor itself.
This violates KT2, and therewith tarnishes the spirit of Kaplan’s general account.
The cost of mediation between KT1 and KT2 is not cheap: a demonstrative is
regarded as a syncategorematic incomplete symbol, as mere punctuation.10
Another problem with Frege’s account, inherited by the envisaged account of
demonstratives as designating @ic, is that the mere demonstrative is “context-­
sensitive” on Frege’s account only in the sense that its sense and designatum are
functions from contextually-variant elements. The central insight of Kaplan’s
account is that indexicality is not a matter of expressing functions from contextually-­
variant elements, but a matter of taking on different contents altogether in different
contexts. This observation goes significantly beyond Hans Kamp’s original insight
that indexicality requires multiple indexing of extension to contexts and to circum-
stances which may vary independently of context. An indexical’s extension does
indeed depend upon, and vary with, a context of use, but its content does as well. On
Frege’s account, the content of ‘that’ is the same in every context: the identity
function on demonstration contents. Although “context-sensitive” in one obvious
sense—the function in question is a function on a contextually-variant element—a
mere demonstrative on Frege’s account is not indexical in Kaplan’s sense. Likewise,

9
The character of a demonstrative might be represented on this proposal by the function that
assigns to each context c the corresponding function @ic. Alternatively, the character might be
identified with the appropriate function from singular-term characters to directly-referential-singu-
lar-term characters (e.g., from the character of ‘the suspicious-looking guy I saw yesterday wear-
ing a brown hat’ to that of the corresponding ‘dthat’-term).
10
Kaplan explicitly acknowledges some of these points in “Afterthoughts,” pp. 579–582.
Discomfort over the cost of mediation seems to have prompted a retreat from KT1. Kaplan says
that, precisely because the singular term is meant to be directly referential, he had intended the
designating term to be simply the word ‘dthat’, rather than the compound expression ⌜dthat[the φ]⌝,
and that the supplemental description ⌜the φ⌝ was to be merely a “whispered aside” which was
“off the record” (p. 581; Kaplan adopted these latter phrases from suggestions by Kripke and me,
respectively). Since the supplemental term is no part of the term ‘dthat’, he says, as originally
intended ‘dthat’ is not a rigidifier of something else but a term unto itself. I believe that Kaplan,
on reflection, has misjudged his own original intent for ‘dthat’ above (and his own theory of
demonstratives!) and that the theory is the one explicitly proffered in “Demonstratives” (at
pp. 521–527 and passim): that the complete term is the supplemented term comprised by the union
of the mere demonstrative with a supplemental demonstration. See “Demonstrating and Necessity,”
note 24 for details.
12 N. Salmon

although on Frege’s account a supplemented demonstrative, ‘that’⌒δ, is “context-­

dependent” in one obvious sense—the argument to the function designated by ‘that’
is given by the demonstration δ—it is not indexical in Kaplan’s sense. It is crucial
to Kaplan’s account that the supplemented demonstrative be indexical. The content
of ‘that’⌒δ in any context is the demonstratum of δ in that context, and conse-
quently varies with the context. For these reasons (and more), Kaplan is barred from
taking the mere demonstrative—the word itself—to have a meaning in isolation.
The demonstrative ‘that’ has a definite meaning, which remains unchanged from
one utterance to the next and which is shared by demonstratives of other languages.
As with any indexical, the meaning of a demonstrative looks to the context to secure
a content, and thence, a designatum. Far from being an “incomplete symbol,” a
demonstrative—the word itself—is a designating singular term if anything is. When
Ralph points to Ortcutt and declares, “He is a spy!” the word ‘he’ designates Ortcutt.
Furthermore, even if the pointing itself is regarded as somehow designating Ortcutt,
intuitively it is the word ‘he’ rather than some hybrid consisting of the word and the
pointing that semantically designates Ortcutt. Again, Kaplan’s account of demon-
stratives as syncategorematic punctuation, rather than as fully designating singular
terms, is not merely somewhat counter-intuitive. It is incorrect.
Kaplan forcefully argues that Frege’s puzzle provides grounds to segregate
demonstratives from indexical words like ‘I’ and ‘yesterday’ in that the former
require Frege’s supplementation account. Contrary to the Bare Bones theory, the
mere fact that separate occurrences of a demonstrative within a single context typi-
cally differ in their demonstrata does not adequately explain the apparent informa-
tiveness of ‘That = that’, any more than the apparent informativeness of ‘Hesperus
is Phosphorus’ is adequately explained by noting that a single object typically has
one name rather than two. Even sophisticated speakers aware of the co-designation
of two occurrences of ‘that’ in a particular context deem it possible to believe that
that1 [pointing to something x] is the same as itself without believing that it is that2
[pointing again to x]. Frege’s puzzle is concerned with the contents of such sen-
tences as ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’ and ‘That is that’ and not merely with their
syntax: How can the expressed propositions differ in the ways that they do from
those expressed by ‘Hesperus is Hesperus’ or by an utterance of ‘That = that’ while
pointing simultaneously with both hands?11 Kaplan’s explanation in the case of
demonstratives is that the complete sentence is supplemented by distinct gestures
(“demonstrations”) with distinct contents, and though the two supplemented demon-
stratives have the same content in the relevant context, they differ in the manner in
which they semantically present their common content as a function of context.
The Bare Bones theory assigns a single character to ‘That is that’, and a single
content to all utterances of it while pointing twice to the planet Venus. Yet the theory

11
Cf. my Frege’s Puzzle (Atascadero, Ca.: Ridgeview, 1986, 199), especially pp. 57–60, 87–92.
Performing the very same demonstration of the same object twice over in a single utterance of
‘That is that’ is in fact very difficult to accomplish. For convenience, I assume throughout that
pointing simultaneously with both hands is a way of accomplishing this feat (though this assump-
tion is strictly false).
Semantically Empty Gestures 13

also postulates one meaning for the first ‘that’ and another meaning for the second,
as if there were two expressions instead of one. At bottom, the latter is the general
strategy employed in both Frege’s and Kaplan’s solutions to Frege’s puzzle. It is a
strategy forced on any attempt at a semantic solution to the puzzle. The strategy
violates a linguistic variation on Occam’s Razor: Thou shalt not multiply meanings
beyond necessity. It comes close to violating a further, particularly imposing varia-
tion of Occam’s Razor: Thou shalt not multiply expressions beyond plausibility.
Kaplan laments the fact that his preferred solution to the puzzle about ‘That1 = that2’
does not extend to ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’, since the two names, unlike the sup-
plemented demonstratives, share the same character (ibid, pp. 562–563). Rather
than contort our linguistic intuitions in order to accommodate an explanation which
does not in any event work in the general case, it is wiser to extract from the case of
proper names an important lesson concerning Frege’s puzzle and devices of direct
reference generally: The epistemologically significant ways in which the same
proposition is differently presented, or differently taken, are not invariably a matter
of linguistic meaning.
The Bare Bones theory ignores demonstrations altogether, and consequently
ignores whatever semantic role they play in the proper use of a demonstrative. One
potential problem with the Bare Bones theory is that a demonstration’s demonstra-
tum need not be active or even present in the context. This point is illustrated by one
of Kaplan’s examples (used for a slightly different purpose). I may demonstrate the
late Alonzo Church by pointing to a photograph while uttering ‘He was one of the
greatest thinkers of the 20th century’. Church himself is not present in the context,
since he no longer exists. But the demonstratum is no mere photograph; it is Church
himself. At most, Church is present by proxy, his photograph standing in for him.
The demonstratum of a particular demonstration may be neither present in the con-
text nor an active participant, nor even present by proxy.12 Consider the following
discourse fragment:
(i) You recall the suspicious-looking guy we saw yesterday wearing a brown hat.
(ii) I suspect he’s a spy.

12
I am thinking here of a context as a potential setting or environment in which an utterance occurs,
rather than as the proposition, or set of propositions, assumed by all conversational participants.
The case of the answering machine demonstrates that a contextual parameter need not be at the
location of the context at the time of the context, since the agent of the utterance of ‘I am not here
now’ is typically asserting a truth. Though the agent of the context of such an utterance is, in some
sense, absent from the context, he or she is nevertheless playing an active role in the context—there
is an assertion in absentia by the agent—and I conjecture that it is this fact that warrants including
the absent agent as a contextual parameter. By contrast, the demonstratum of a particular demon-
stration may be entirely passive, utterly inert, a mere demonstratum. (See note 14 below.)
The pronouns ‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘that’ may differ in this respect from the special demonstrative
‘this’, for which the designatum is arguably always present in the context of use (or present by
proxy?). If something closely resembling the Bare Bones theory is applicable to ‘this’, it is so
because of some such special restriction governing its appropriateness. (In effect, the Bare Bones
theory may mistake ‘that’ for ‘this’. Or is it the other way around?)
14 N. Salmon

Although the ‘he’ in (ii) is anaphoric on the direct object in (i), it is a syntacti-
cally free term designating Ortcutt, not a bound variable. Of course, the ‘he’ does
not designate Ortcutt no matter what the context. The anaphora here is of a peculiar
variety. In effect, the ‘he’ in (ii) is a demonstrative and the definite description in (i)
plays the role of accompanying demonstration.13 The demonstratum is entirely
absent from, and inactive in, the context; the demonstrative ‘he’ succeeds all the
same. In general, the demonstratum of a particular demonstration need not be
­present by proxy nor connected to the context in any significant (“real”) manner,
e.g., causally. The demonstratum may be merely that which is demonstrated—wit-
ness Kaplan’s ‘dthat’-operator, which may be supplemented by material that desig-
nates merely “by description” an object from long, long ago and far, far away.
As mentioned, Church’s photograph may be employed as a stand-in for Church
himself. Another feature of the context which is no less relevant to understanding
my use of ‘he’ is my demonstration of Church via the photograph. The supplemen-
tation account puts the demonstration directly into the expression to form a peculiar
hybrid: ‘he’⌒pointing-at-the-photograph. But the demonstration does not belong in
the expression. My alternative proposal is that we put the demonstration in the con-
text. Intuitively, the speaker’s hand gestures, finger-pointings, and glances of the eye
are features of the context of use, every bit as much as the identity of the speaker and
the time and place of the utterance. Consider again Frege’s insightful observations:
“Thus the time of utterance is part of the expression of the thought. ... The case is
the same with words like ‘here’ and ‘there’. In all such cases, the mere wording, as
it can be written down, is not the complete expression of the thought; one further
needs for its correct apprehension the knowledge of certain conditions accompany-
ing the utterance, which are used as means of expressing the thought. Pointing the
finger, gestures, and glances may belong here too.” I agree with Frege, as against
Kaplan, that gestures and finger-pointings belong together with the time and place
of an utterance; I disagree with Frege, and Kaplan, that they are part of the expres-
sion uttered. Rather, they are features of the conditions of an utterance that fix the
contents of uttered indexicals. My proposal is that a context of use be regarded as
sometimes including among its features, along with an agent, a time, a place, and a
possible world, a demonstration.14

13
Contrary to Kaplan’s claim (echoing Peter Geach) that anaphoric pronouns may be seen as bound
variables (ibid., p. 572). If it is insisted that the ‘he’ is a bound variable, then what is the variable-
binding operator that binds it? The ‘his’ in ‘No author inscribed his book’ is not a designating
occurrence; it is genuinely a bound variable. By contrast, the ‘he’ in (ii) designates Ortcutt. The
‘he’ is not a “pronoun of laziness,” not an abbreviation for the description in (i). The speaker’s
suspicion is not merely a de dicto thought to the effect that whoever is a uniquely suspicious-
looking guy seen the day before wearing the relevant brown hat is a spy. It is de re concerning
Ortcutt: that he is a spy.
14
Kaplan objected that the demonstration should not go into the context rather than the expression,
for otherwise a possible context can include a demonstration completely different from the one
performed by the context’s agent in the context location at the context time in the context world.
This prospect can be avoided by restricting the admissible (“proper”) contexts to those n-tuples
<cA, cT, cW, ..., cD>such that the demonstration cD is mounted at time cT in possible world cW (etc.).
It is far from obvious, however, that such a restriction is desirable. Is the sentence ‘That object
Semantically Empty Gestures 15

Better yet, since the same demonstrative may recur within a single sentence or
stretch of discourse, each time accompanied by a different demonstration (‘That one
goes between that one and that one’), the context should include an assignment of a
demonstration for each syntactic occurrence of a demonstrative in a sentence—the
first occurrence, the second, and so on.15 This fuller notion of a context provides a
different explanation from that of Frege-Kaplan of the sense in which demonstra-
tives without accompanying demonstrations are incomplete. The demonstrative
itself is a complete expression, fully assembled and good to go. Strictly speaking, it
is the context that is incomplete. Or if one prefers, it is the occurrence of the demon-
strative in the defective context that is incomplete, because of a contextual defi-
ciency. It is like the use of ‘now’ in a timeless universe (“before” the Big Bang?).
The demonstration included in a context need not be an actual gesture, or any
action or event in the usual sense. The demonstration can be entirely verbalized—
witness the discourse fragment displayed above. Kaplan should formalize this by
putting the description from (i) directly into (ii) thus:
(ii′) I think that dthat [the male x: x is a suspicious-looking guy & we saw x yes-
terday wearing a brown hat] is a spy.
If the description in (i) is replaced by ‘the present Secretary of State’, Kaplan
would need to make a corresponding adjustment to (ii′). But there is no intuitive
justification for this dramatic departure from surface syntax. The description in (i)
does not occur in (ii), which is a complete sentence by itself. Instead, (i) is part of
the context in which (ii) occurs ((i) is the verbal context for the occurrence of (ii)),

(assuming it exists) is now being demonstrated’, for example, to be regarded as true solely by the
logic of ‘demonstrate’?
Ben Caplan, “Putting Things in Contexts,” Philosophical Review, 112, 2 (April 2003), pp. 191–
214 is a defense of the Bare Bones theory. Caplan contends that a context is not a “setting or
environment in which an utterance occurs” (note 12 above), and is instead simply a sequence of
contextually indicated designata, since inter alia there are legitimate contexts that are improper,
i.e., the context agent is not present at the context location at the context time in the context
world—as witnessed, for example, by the truthful answering-machine message ‘I am not here
now’. (It is agreed on all sides that there are legitimate contexts in which the agent is not speaking.)
Whereas so-called improper contexts are indeed legitimate, this merely acknowledges that, thanks
to modern technology (e.g., hand-written notes), it is possible for the agent of a potential utterance
setting to be not present in that setting. Caplan evidently concedes that a potential utterance setting
can include a demonstration whose demonstratum is absent. It might be held that, just as the agent
of an utterance setting may be absent, so may be the demonstratum. But it seems that something in
(or at least extractable from) the utterance setting must assign demonstrata to distinct demonstra-
tive-occurrences. Arguably, demonstrations typically accomplish this task.
15
One might wish to let the context assign demonstrations to each demonstrative occurrence in a
piece of discourse. The particular argument ‘He is taller than him; hence, he is shorter than him’
can be uttered with accompanying demonstrations that ensure the truth of the conclusion given the
truth of the premise. (‘He1 is taller than him2; hence, he2 is shorter than him1’.) Still, the form of
words evidently yields an invalid argument. Compare: ‘He is taller than him; hence, he is neither
shorter than nor the same height as him’.
16 N. Salmon

and the description in (i) is associated with the ‘he’ in (ii), playing the role of accom-
panying demonstration. As already mentioned, the description in (i) is a verbalized
demonstration. If the description is replaced by another, the context for (ii) is
changed, and hence so too its content. But (ii) itself remains the same complete
sentence with the same English meaning.16
Importantly, the distinction between so-called pure indexicals and demonstra-
tives is a matter of incompleteness not in the expressions, but in their contexts.
Demonstratives and “pure” indexicals alike are full-fledged indexicals, complete
expressions unto themselves. The demonstratives ‘this’ and ‘that’ are every bit as
complete and purely indexical as ‘you’ and ‘I’, as pure as freshly fallen snow. The
negative side effects of the supplementation account are avoided. The strictures of
the linguistic variations of Occam’s Razor are respected. Here is an Indexical theory
of demonstratives worthy of the epithet.17

16
It is for similar reasons that substitution of ‘Barbarelli’ for ‘Giorgione’ fails in ‘Giorgione was
so-called because of his size’. Substitution alters the context for the demonstrative ‘so’.
The construction in the text raises particularly perplexing issues. Consider the following
variant:
(i″) Consider whoever is the world’s shortest spy.

(ii″) He or she is under six feet in height.

It seems that the speaker has asserted of the world’s shortest spy, de re, that he or she is under
six feet, since the semantic content of (ii″) is evidently that very singular proposition. Kaplan con-
cludes (contradicting his earlier arguments in “Quantifying In”) that a mastery of the semantics of
such directly designating devices as demonstratives enables speakers to form beliefs of singular
propositions, and even to gain singular-propositional knowledge a priori (e.g., about the shortest
spy that he or she is under six feet, or about the first child to be born in the 22nd century that he or
she will be born on a Pacific island), in the absence of any “real” connection to the object in ques-
tion (“Dthat,” p. 241; “Demonstratives,” p. 560n; “Afterthoughts,” p. 605). This conclusion leads
almost directly to a form of the controversial doctrine of unrestricted exportation with regard to de
re belief. But even if de re assertion (assertion of the singular proposition) is in fact accomplished
through such means, it by no means follows that de re belief, let alone de re knowledge, follows
suit. On the contrary, firm intuitions derived from ordinary language show otherwise. Cf. my “The
Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” in M. Reimer and A. Bezuidenhout, eds, Descriptions and Beyond
(Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 230–260.
17
Kaplan observes that there is “a kind of standard form for demonstrations” accompanying a typi-
cal utterance of a demonstrative: such demonstrations have a character like that of a definite
description of the form: the individual that has appearance A from here now, where the mentioned
appearance is “something like a picture with a little arrow pointing to the relevant subject”
(pp. 525–526). Although this is plausible, building excess material into the linguistic meaning of
the demonstrative Kaplan inevitably misclassifies some utterances of synthetic sentences as being
utterances of analytic sentences, e.g., ‘He (assuming there is such a thing) has appearance A from
here now’. Though this sentence is true, a full mastery of its meaning does not by itself give one
the knowledge that it is inevitably true, as Kaplan’s account evidently implies. Its truth crucially
depends on non-linguistic, empirical information: that the demonstrated male appears a particular
way from the speaker’s perspective at the time of the utterance. This information is supplied with
the demonstration. It is part of the context of the utterance, not built into the expression uttered.
(Cf. note 13 above.)
Semantically Empty Gestures 17

3 Frege’s Puzzle

How does Frege’s puzzle with regard to demonstratives fare on this Indexical the-
ory? The sentence ‘That is that’ has a single meaning. The sentence is univocal but
indexical, expressing different identity propositions in different contexts—some
necessarily true, others necessarily false. The invariant meaning presents the con-
tent expressed in a given context with its contextual perspective, (roughly) as the
singular proposition about the demonstrata of the separate demonstrations assigned
by this very context to the first and second syntactic occurrences of ‘that’, that they
one and the very same. One might regard this as a lean and mean way of presenting
content as compared with the riches of Kaplan’s theory with its multiplicity of dem-
onstration contents. But to see matters thus is to draw a hasty conclusion on the
basis of a serious oversight concerning the communicative situation.
One may still appeal to the contents of accompanying demonstrations on the
Indexical theory in an account of Erkenntniswerte. The addressee understands the
sentence merely by knowing the relevant character-building content rule. But in
witnessing the utterance, the attentive addressee observes not only the sentence
uttered but also the demonstrations that are assigned to distinct utterances of demon-
stratives. Indeed, the addressee must observe the demonstrations to grasp the speech
act adequately, since knowing which proposition was asserted—knowing what is
said—requires knowing which object was demonstrated. Awareness of the context
provides the addressee with a special handle on the demonstrations assigned to each
utterance. This ancillary empirical knowledge about which demonstrations are per-
formed in the particular context allows the addressee to make substitutions into the
character-building content rule’s mode of presentation of the content, plugging in
particular demonstrations, with their particular contents, for the meta-level concept
the demonstration assigned by this very context. Instead of taking the proposition in
terms of its relation to the context, the addressee now takes the proposition in terms
of its relation to the particular demonstrations observably included in the context. In
effect, the addressee converts knowledge by description of the proposition in terms
of the context into knowledge by description in terms of the demonstration, exchang-
ing knowledge by context-specific description for knowledge by demonstration-­
specific description. The latter, in turn, provides acquaintance with the proposition
itself. The epistemic situation is not unlike learning the color of Alonzo Church’s
hair by being told that Church’s hair was the color of snow while simultaneously
being shown what snow looks like.
When the speaker utters ‘That is that’ pointing to the same object with both
hands simultaneously, the context assigns the very same demonstration to both syn-
tactic occurrences of ‘that’. In such contexts, the proposition expressed is taken by
the attentive addressee as a trivial self-identity—in effect, as the singular proposi-
tion about the demonstratum that it is itself. This special way of taking the proposi-
tion is given not by the character itself, which presents the proposition in terms of
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am living in a modest room on the upper floor) at half-past five,
thinking it best to see them as far as the harbour myself. The
appointed time has come, but not a carrier is to be seen. I wait till a
quarter to six, and am becoming somewhat uneasy, when I am aware
of the gradual approach of so frightful a din that there cannot be the
slightest doubt as to who is causing it. But have the twenty-four been
suddenly multiplied by three? A closely-packed crowd roars and
surges in the square beneath me; the bass voices of the men, the
shrill, vibrating cries of the women make up a pandemonium of
sound; but no disorderly actions take place—in fact I had not
expected any. The crowd follows me in a confused mass for the few
hundred paces down to the harbour, where the ferry-boat is waiting.
“Bwana, I would rather stay here,” says Kazi Ulaya, the handsome,
with a tender look at the fair one beside him. “Do what thy heart
prompts, my son,” I reply mildly. “And this is my boy, sir,” says Pesa
mbili II, of Manyema, who has by this time recovered his plumpness.
But he refrains from introducing to me the bibi, who, in some
embarrassment, is hiding behind his broad back.
“Now sing those fine songs of yours once more.”
The men are standing round me in a serried circle. “Kuya
mapunda” goes very well; the pleasing melody rises in full volume of
sound above the voice of the rushing Lukuledi. In “Dasige
Murumba” too, the singers acquit themselves fairly well; but when
the standard song, “Yooh nderule” begins, the circle seems full of
gaps, and my eye can distinguish in the twilight various couples
scattered here and there among the bushes by the bank. “Ah!
farewell scenes,” I think to myself, but soon perceive that I am
mistaken; no tender sentiments are being discussed, but my matter-
of-fact fellows are throwing themselves like wolves on the last repast
prepared for them by loving hands before the voyage. I wish them,
sotto voce, a good appetite, and make a note of the fact that the heart
of the native, like that of the European, can be reached through his
stomach.
The ferryman shouts impatiently to hurry them up, and I drive the
unattached contingent of the singers down into the shallow water.
Splashing and laughing they wade towards the boat; the darkness
has come on rapidly, and I can only just distinguish the white figures
as they clamber on board. “Yooh nderule, yooh nderule, bwana
mkubwa nderule”—the familiar sounds, long drawn out, ring over
the water in Pesa mbili’s voice—“kuba sumba na wogi nderulewa,
yooh nderule”—the chorus dies away. The boat has disappeared in
the darkness, and I turn my steps towards the mess-room, and the
principal meal of the day, where I am once more claimed by
civilization. The Weule Expedition is at an end.
ENTERING THE RED SEA
 CHAPTER XIX
FROM LINDI TO TANGA

On Board the ss. König, in the Mediterranean, off the

Mouths of the Nile, January 20, 1907.

A few hours ago, in losing sight of the palms of Port Said, we left the
last of Africa behind us. The flat, sandy shore of the Egyptian Delta
has now vanished from our view, and a grey waste of waters lies
before the vessel as she fights her way with increasing difficulty
against the rising north-west gale. The Mediterranean in winter is
not inviting. No trace in reality of the ever-cloudless sky we have
been taught to look for; and Captain Scharf, who certainly ought to
know, says that he has never experienced any other weather here at
this time of year. This season is always cold and stormy, forming no
pleasant transition between the delightful temperature of the Red
Sea in winter and the sub-Arctic climate of the Atlantic and the
North Sea. We shall have to steam along the coast of Crete and to
pass close enough to the southern extremity of Greece, to catch sight
of the snow-covered peaks of the Spartan mountains; so much does
the head-wind retard the course of our broad-bowed, somewhat old-
fashioned boat, which, for a first-class steamer, makes wonderfully
little way. The traveller has all the more leisure to retire, in the
comfortable smoking-saloon, into the solitude of his own thoughts,
and take stock of all that he has seen, heard and learnt in the last
nine months.
The evening of the 2nd of December passed very pleasantly on
board the Kanzler in Lindi roadstead. One could scarcely make out
where so many white-clad Europeans came from, all at once. One of
the passengers attributed this influx to the iced Pilsener which
Ewerbeck and I lavished in unlimited quantities in the high spirits of
departure; but this suggestion is scarcely to be taken seriously. The
presence of a German steamer in the harbour is in these latitudes
always a festival, celebrated by most people whenever it comes
round. And quite rightly so, for nothing is more deadening than the
monotony of workaday life in Africa.
 The trip which had taken the Rufiji three days of hard work was
performed by the swift Kanzler in one day. Early on the morning of
the fourth, Ewerbeck and I landed at Dar es Salam: Ewerbeck, in
order to take his final leave of the Protectorate, and I, to give account
to the Government of the financial and administrative side of my
expedition. For a new-comer like myself a change of place made no
difference; but the Imperial District Commissioner was visibly
moved by sad and serious thoughts. He had spent the best part of his
life, over fifteen years, in the development of this very part of
German East Africa; and, in such a case, a man does not leave the
scene of his labours with a light heart.
Dar es Salam was still more delightful than in June. At this time of
year it abounds in mangoes of every size and every variety. The
mango-tree was long ago imported from India, and is now found
wherever Indians are settled in East Africa, whether in British,
German, or Portuguese territory. It is certainly a pleasanter
immigrant than the low-caste Indian; it somewhat resembles our
linden tree in its mode of growth, and gives a pleasant look of home
to a settlement. The fruit, sometimes as large as a child’s head, is
served on ice at every meal, and is almost equal in flavour to the
pine-apple.
Into this pleasant, easy life the news of the events of December
13th came like a bolt from the blue. An excellent hotel, the
“Kaiserhof,” had been opened just before my return to Dar es Salam,
and I had the great pleasure of being one of its first guests. We were
almost suffocated with comfort: electric light, a broad, shady
verandah outside every room, a comfortable bath-room attached to
each apartment, and a more than luxurious table were, together,
almost too much of a good thing, after our lean months in the bush.
Fortunately, however, man becomes accustomed to every thing, even
to good living.
I have seldom seen so many long faces as in those days, when the
news of the sudden dissolution of the Reichstag burst like a bomb in
the comfortable, well-to-do official circles of the town. It seemed as
though every single European, down to the lowest subordinate, had
been personally affected by the event; all the mess-rooms were loud
with the dismal prognostications of the croakers as to the black
future—or rather the want of any future—before the colony, whose
 inglorious end seemed placed beyond doubt,
as each of us foresaw that the General Election
in January would admit at least a hundred
Socialists to the Reichstag. “And of course it is
all up with the railways,” was the stereotyped
refrain of all these lamentations, which the
mourners duly drowned in a sea of whisky and
soda. Personally I am convinced that things
will not be as bad as that, but that the next
Reichstag will show at least as much feeling
for the colonies as its predecessor, or, indeed,
it is to be hoped, still more. On January 25th
our steamer is to arrive at Genoa; on that date
the elections will be over, and on the following
day we shall be able to get a general survey of
THE AUTHOR IN the results, and form some idea as to the fate
BUSH COSTUME of our colonies in the immediate future.
I left Dar es Salam on December 20th by the
Admiral, a splendid boat, almost new, and rolling far less even than
the Prinzregent. It was also more comfortable than the latter; it was
no wonder, therefore, that all the cabins were full. We had still more
English on board than in the spring; many from Cape Town, and still
more from Johannesburg. Accordingly, the prevailing style of dress
was noticeably luxurious. This time I was able to go ashore at Tanga,
and even see something of the Usambara railway. Captain Doherr,
with his usual foresight, had (probably remembering the managerial
functions which he had been called upon to perform a few months
previously, in the service of the eight Deputies) arranged for a special
train to be ready for the passengers, or at least for such as wished to
avail themselves of it. With this we made the run to Muhesa, where
the expedition was brought to a halt by means of enormous dishes of
sandwiches and trays of whiskies and sodas. Something is really
being done in the north-east of the colony, as one can see even from
the train; it is true that not all the land is yet under cultivation, but
every bit of it is already in the hands of a permanent owner, even far
beyond the rail-head.
There were grand doings at Tanga in the evening. This town enjoys
a whole series of advantages. In the first place, it is the nearest to the
mother country of all our East African ports, and thus constitutes the
gateway to the colony. In the second place, the harbour is tolerably
good; the bay, indeed, is not land-locked to the same extent as that of
Dar es Salam, but, like the latter, it has sufficient anchorage within a
short distance of the shore. The most important point, however, is its
nearness to Usambara, the choicest part of our territory as regards
climate and soil. Usambara has but one fault: it is not large enough
to accommodate all would-be settlers. It is said that even now the
available land has been allotted, and there is no chance for later
applicants. Many of these are now staying at Tanga, or on their way
south to seek new fields for their energies: in fact, the boom at Lindi
was in great part caused by the congestion in the north. The
economic centre of gravity, therefore, for our whole colonial activity
lies at present in this north-eastern district. This, by the bye, is
evident from the whole aspect of European life at Tanga. After
passing many months on end in the Usambara mountains, with no
opportunities for social intercourse, the planter suddenly feels the
need of society, and in a few hours’ time we may behold him seated
in the club at Tanga.
Where there are Germans, there is also music. Dar es Salam enjoys
the advantage of two bands—that of the sailors from the two cruisers,
and that of the askari. Both are under official patronage, but I
cannot say much for the proficiency of the native performers: in any
case, their music was accompanied by a great deal of noise. At Tanga
it is not in economic matters only that the residents assert their
independence—even the Boys’ Band of that town is a purely private
enterprise. Tanga is a scholastic centre par excellence, hundreds of
native children being instructed in the elements of European
knowledge and initiated into the mysteries of the German tongue,
which, indeed, one finds that all the little black imps can speak after
a fashion. The more intelligent, in whom their teachers discover, or
think they discover, any musical gift, are admitted to the famous
Boys’ Band. This is just now in excellent training. When the
passengers from the Admiral presented themselves in the evening on
the square in front of the Club, the band turned out to welcome
them, and the playing was really remarkably good.
 CHAPTER XX
RETROSPECT

At the Entrance to the Red Sea.

Christmas and New Year’s Eve were passed at sea, with the usual
festivities; the latter, on which the dancing was kept up with equal
enthusiasm and energy by German and English passengers, was also
the eve of our arrival at Suez.
About noon on the first day of January, 1907, I set foot on the soil
of Egypt, which I have only just left, after a stay of nearly three
weeks. I had a great desire to study the relics of ancient Egyptian
culture on the spot, and therefore left Cairo and its neighbourhood as
speedily as possible for Upper Egypt—Luxor, Karnak and Deir el
Bahri. From a climatic point of view, also, Cairo was not well adapted
for an intermediate station between the tropics and the winter of
Northern Europe. One after another of our passengers remaining
behind for a tour in Egypt became indisposed. Some, therefore, took
the next boat for Germany, arguing that their colds “would cost less
at home,” while others made off up the Nile by train de luxe, in order
to accustom themselves slowly and carefully in the glorious desert air
of Assuan to the sub-arctic climate of Ulaya.
The Assuan dam is historically a piece of Vandalism, technically a
meritorious piece of engineering, economically a truly great
achievement. The narrow-gauge railway winds up the Nile in sharp
curves between Luxor and Assuan. Sometimes the Nile flows in
immediate proximity to the track—sometimes there is a narrow strip
of alluvial level between the sacred stream and the new unholy iron
road. All this time one is oppressed by the narrowness of the country;
it seems as if the first high wind must blow the sand right across it
and bury it altogether. Suddenly the bare hills on the left retreat: a
wide plain opens out before us, only bounded in the far distance by
the sharp contours of the hills in the Arabian Desert. The plain itself,
too, is a desert—but how long will it remain so? Turn to the right and
consider the great block of buildings which meets your eye. It is
neither Egyptian nor Arabian, there is none of the dirt of Fellah
barbarism about it; on the contrary, it represents the purest Anglo-
American factory style. The tall chimney crowning the whole, and
emitting a dense cloud of smoke, forms an incongruous contrast with
its surroundings—the silver Nile with its border of green fields,
running like a ribbon across the boundless sands of the desert to east
and west. Look before you at the straight canal crossing the plain and
lost to sight in the distance and the ditches and channels by which it
distributes the Nile water in all directions, with perfect regularity.
The building is a pumping-station, established to restore the desert
plain by irrigation to its former fertility. Now it is still perfectly bare:
in a few months’ time, it will be a sea of waving corn with stalks
bearing fruit a hundredfold.
The economic exploitation of the Upper Nile Valley is an example
which ought to be followed by our own colonial administration.
Without a resolute purpose, without capital, and without accurate
knowledge of the country and its resources, even that English or
American company could do nothing. We need all three factors, if we
want to make any progress, whether in Eastern or in South-Western
Africa, in Kamerun or in Togo. There is only one small point of
difference—the alluvial soil of the Nile Valley, accumulated through
many myriads of years needs nothing but irrigation to once more
make it into arable soil of the first quality. The Nile, wisely regulated,
is the magic wand which will, almost instantaneously, change the
desert into a fruitful field. This transforming agency is absent in the
bush and steppes of German East Africa. It is true that that country
possesses numerous streams, but at present their volume of water is
subject to no regulation, and none of them is navigable on the same
imposing scale as the Nile. In the course of years, no doubt, the
Pangani will become an artery of traffic, as also the Rufiji, and
perhaps our frontier stream, the Rovuma; but it will not be within
the lifetime of the present generation.
The soil of German East Africa, too, cannot be compared with that
of Egypt; it is no alluvial deposit, rich in humus, but in general a
tolerably poor one, produced by the weathering of the outcropping
rocks and not to be rendered fertile by moisture alone. Nevertheless,
so far as I am able to judge, the water question remains the cardinal
one in our colonial agriculture. At Saadani they have begun at once
to do things on the grand scale, breaking up large areas with steam-
ploughs, in the hope that wholesale cotton cultivation may put an
end to the American monopoly. So far this is very good; the
temperature is favourable, and the soil quite suitable for such a crop.
One factor only is uncertain: German East Africa, like India, is never
able to reckon on a normal amount of atmospheric moisture—and, if
the rains fail, what then?
The Dark Continent has often been compared to an inverted plate.
The land slopes gently upwards from the sea-shore, the angle of
inclination gradually becoming greater, till we have a bordering
range of mountains of considerable height. But it is only as seen from
the coast that this range can be said to have a mountainous
character; once he has crossed it, the traveller finds that, as on the
heights of the Harz or the Rhenish slate mountains, he is on a plain
almost level with its summit. To carry out the comparison with the
plate, we may say that he has now crossed the narrow ledge at the
bottom, and is now walking over the horizontal surface within that
ledge.
This peculiar conformation has to be taken into account by those
engaged in developing our colonies, i.e., in the first place, it is
responsible for the fact that the rivers are navigable only to a very
slight degree, if at all. In the second place, the greater part of the
rainfall is precipitated on the seaward slope of the range, while its
other side is almost rainless, which accounts for the arid character of
Ugogo and the neighbouring districts. Yet the greater part even of
this interior has a soil on which any crops which can be cultivated at
all in Equatorial Africa are well able to thrive. The planter there is
fortunate in being able to count on the vivifying influence of the
tropical sun, which, throughout the year, conjures flourishing fields
out of the merest sand. In the south I was able, day after day, to
convince myself of the truth of this assertion.
The South has hitherto been the Cinderella of our colonial
districts, and I fear it is likely to remain so. The prejudice as to its
barrenness has deterred both official and private enterprise. It is true
that neither the Mwera Plateau nor the Makonde highlands, nor the
wide plains extending behind these two upland areas, between the
Rovuma in the south and the Mbemkuru or the Rufiji in the north,
can be called fertile. Sand and loam, loam and sand, in the one case,
and quartz detritus in the other, are the dominant note of the whole.
Yet we have absolutely no reason to despair of this country, for if the
native can make a living out of the soil, without manuring and with
none of the appliances of our highly-developed intensive farming—if
this same native is in a position to export an appreciable fraction of
his produce in the shape of sesamum, ground-nuts, rubber, wax,
cereals and pulse—it would surely be strange if the white man could
not make much more out of the same ground.
One thing, indeed, must never be forgotten: neither this district
nor Africa in general is a pays de Cocagne where roast pigeons will
fly of their own accord into people’s mouths; work, unceasing,
strenuous work, is just as much an indispensable condition of
progress as in less happy climates. We have had sufficient
opportunity to observe and appreciate this persevering industry in
the case of the Makonde, the Yaos, and the Makua. And we may be
sure of one thing, that the European planter, whether in the north or
the south, on the coast or in the interior, will not have a much easier
time than these people. That, however, will do him no harm; on the
contrary, the harder the struggle for existence, the more vigorous has
been the development of a colony throughout the whole course of
human history. The United States of to-day are the standing proof of
this assertion; the South African colonies, now developing in a most
satisfactory manner, speak no less clearly, and other cases in point
might easily be adduced.
The waves are running higher, the König having more breadth of
beam than depth, does not roll, but cannot help shipping more seas
than she would like. Ought I, in face of this grand spectacle, to let
myself be absorbed in useless forecasts of the future? My friend
Hiram Rhodes’s taunt about “political childhood” was cruel—yet
there was some truth in it, and not as regards the Zanzibar treaty
only. We Germans have begun colonizing three hundred years later
than other nations, and yet Dick, Tom and Harry are raising an
outcry because our colonies, acquired fully twenty years ago, do not
yet produce a surplus. The honest fellows think that “South-West”
alone ought to be in a position to relieve them from the necessity of
paying any taxes whatever. One could tear one’s hair at such folly
and such utter lack of the historic sense. Most books are printed in
Germany—none are bought, and but few read there. Among these
few we can scarcely include any works on colonial history, otherwise
it would be impossible that even colonial experts should know so
little of those thousand conflicts, difficulties and reverses
experienced to their cost by the English in India, in the South Seas,
in Africa, and in America, and which over and over again might well
have disgusted the Dutch, the Spaniards, and the Portuguese with
their extensive colonial possessions. Unconsciously influenced by the
wealth of England and the affluence of Holland, both in great part
arising from their foreign possessions, we are apt to forget that three
centuries are a period fifteen times as long as our own colonial era,
and that at least ten generations of English and Dutch have won by
hard, unceasing work what we expect to receive without effort on our
part. I am firmly convinced that we shall never learn to appreciate
our really splendid possessions till a more thorough system of
instruction has supplied the want above referred to—doubly
inexcusable in a nation whose intellectual pre-eminence is
everywhere acknowledged.
Such historic sense is to be gained by putting two kinds of capital
into the colonies—the blood shed for their preservation and
development, and the hard cash spent on the utilization of their
resources.
To illustrate the extent of the British Colonial Empire and its
distribution throughout the world, it is often pointed out that the
mother country is seldom without a colonial war of some kind. This
is true in the present, and it has also been true in the past: England
has in fact always had to fight for her dominions beyond sea.
Undoubtedly, this three hundred years’ struggle for possession,
which, under her special circumstances has often been for England a
struggle for existence, is the principal ground for the peculiarly close
and intimate relation between the mother country and the daughter
states. Hardly a family but has dear ones buried in Indian or African
soil. This fact at first attaches to the country a painful interest, which
very soon gives rise to an interest of another sort. The truth of this
doctrine has been illustrated in the saddest way for us by the
sanguinary war in South Western Africa.
The other kind of capital—the monetary—cannot be discussed in
the case of our colonies without touching on the railway question.
What complaints have been made of the invincible reluctance of
German capitalists to engage in colonial undertakings! I am not
myself a wealthy man, but, if I had a million to lose, I should
nevertheless hesitate before investing it in a country without means
of communication, being entirely devoid of natural ones, while
artificial ones are as yet only in the elementary stage. At home, every
one is now expecting great things from the new driver of our colonial
chariot. Herr Dernburg is a trained financier, and he, perhaps, can
succeed where others have failed—in the completion of the great
railway system projected long ago, and in procuring the no less
necessary financial resources.
Lastly, the native is not without an important bearing on the future
of our East African colony. As an ethnographer, I am in a better
position to form an opinion about him than with respect to other
questions, in which the outsider like myself has only common sense
to guide him. The black man is pronounced by some, “an untrained
child;” by others, “utterly depraved and incurably lazy.” There is yet a
third party who are inclined to leave him at least one or two small
virtues, but these are steadily shouted down. It is true that the native
population of the Coast towns have a horror of any serious work, and
look down on it as a lowering of themselves; but I think we may be
permitted to entertain a better opinion as to the great mass of the
people in German East Africa. The most numerous tribe in the whole
colony are the Wanyamwezi, who are estimated at about four million
souls, and occupy the whole central area east of the Great Rift Valley.
No one has yet ventured to doubt their industry or their capacity for
progress; they are excellent agriculturists, and at the same time they
were, for a whole century, the mainstay of the caravan trade between
the coast and the heart of the continent. Before long this traffic must
in the nature of things cease, but we have no right to suppose that the
Wanyamwezi will therefore become superfluous. A glance over the
reports of the Uganda Railway will show us how fortunate we are in
possessing such an element in the social structure as this vigorous
tribe. Let us then be wise enough to encourage and develop this
economic force for the native’s own benefit, and above all to get the
full advantage of it ourselves. What is true of the Wanyamwezi is also
true of many other tribes. Even now, I cannot forget the impression
made on me by the high average of the farming which I saw among
my friends in the Rovuma Valley. People who, however often they
have been displaced, still cling so firmly to the soil, must certainly
have great potentialities for good, or all the teachings of racial
psychology and history are falsified. This unexpectedly high stage of
culture can only be explained by an evolution extending over a
period of incalculable length. There is nothing to disprove the great
antiquity of agriculture among the Bantu; they are conservative, as
their continent is conservative; the few alien elements still in the
economic stage of the collector and hunter—the Bushmen in the
most arid parts of the south, and the Pygmies in the most
inaccessible forests of Central and West Africa—must have been
crowded out by them many centuries ago.
The farming of our natives is done entirely with the hoe—that
implement-of-all-work, with the heavy transverse blade which serves
alike for breaking up and cleaning the ground, for sowing the crops,
and, to a certain extent, for reaping them. We are too much inclined
to think of this mode of cultivation as something primitive and
inferior, and, in fact, in so far as it dispenses with domestic animals,
whether for work or for the supply of manure, it is really very far
behindhand. But we must also take into account that some parts of
our colonies are infested with the tsetse-fly, and that the system of
cultivating narrow strips of ground entirely with the hoe really marks
a very high stage of farming. The best proof of this is the retention of
the narrow bed in our gardens, where the cultivation can scarcely be
said to be of a more elementary description than that of our fields. It
is significant, too, that for the more intensive forms of culture when
carried on in the open fields, e.g., flower-growing, as near Erfurt,
Quedlinburg, Haarlem, etc., and market-gardening as in the
neighbourhood of Brunswick, Hanover, Mainz, and other large
towns, the long, narrow bed is most in favour. Moreover, it is
difficult to see how the native could cope with the weeds—the
principal danger to his crops—were it not that his narrow beds are
easily reached from all sides.
 The native mode of agriculture, therefore, need not be interfered
with: it has been tested and found excellent.
Another question is, how shall we, on this basis, make our black
fellow-subjects useful to ourselves? In my opinion, there are two
ways, as to both of which the pros and cons are about equal. Both
have been in operation for some time, so that we have a standard to
guide us in forecasting the ultimate development of the whole
colony. In the one, the native is not encouraged to advance in his
own home and on his own holding, but is trained as a labourer on the
plantation of a European master—plantations being laid out
wherever suitable soil and tolerable climate promise a good return
for outlay. The other method has the progress of the native himself in
view, and aims at increasing his economic productivity by
multiplying and improving the crops grown by him on his own
account, teaching him new wants and at the same time increasing his
purchasing power. In this way it is hoped that he will exchange his
exports for ours.
The future must show whether the German people will decide for
one of these ways to the exclusion of the other, or whether, as
heretofore, both will be retained. For the mother country their value
is about equal and depends on the degree of activity shown in
colonial affairs as a whole. But the second is decidedly to the
advantage of the native himself. As a plantation labourer he is and
remains a mshenzi; as a peasant proprietor he is able to advance. At
the same time we must not forget that our colonies were founded in
the expectation of providing homes for our surplus population, and
that if the native is to claim the most fertile parts of his own country
for himself, nothing can come of that ver sacrum. It also depends on
the general direction of our policy whether the numerical increase
and physical improvement of the native are to our interest or not.
Some primitive peoples have almost or entirely disappeared under
the influence of civilization; the Tasmanians belong to history; the
Maoris of New Zealand and the Kanakas of Hawaii are rapidly
diminishing, and we have lately heard of the last Vedda in Ceylon.
The negro race does not belong to these candidates for extinction; on
the contrary, wherever it has come in contact with the white, it has
grown stronger in every respect; there is therefore no fear of its dying
out. But shall we go further and, by artificial selection, deliberately
raise their coefficient of multiplication? Certainly we ought to do so,
for a numerous resident population is under all circumstances a
benefit to us. It solves the labour problem for the planter, and, on the
other hand, the European manufacturer and merchant will, of
course, prefer a large number of customers to a small one. How is
this improvement to be initiated? I have nothing further to add to the
remarks which, à propos of the various diseases and other scourges
of this continent, occur in the preceding pages.
In Europe some people are stupid, others of moderate capacity,
and yet others decidedly clever. The huge lip-ornaments of the
Makonde and Makua women sometimes produce the impression of a
simian type of face, and small boys occasionally suggest by their
features a not remote kinship with the missing link, but this exhausts
the list of excuses I could have alleged for looking down from a
superior height on the people in question. In all the months spent
among the natives of the Rovuma Valley, I never discovered any
reason why we should, as we are so fond of doing, associate the idea
of absurdity with the African. On the contrary, the behaviour, not
only of the elders, but of the liveliest of the young people in their
intercourse with Knudsen and myself, was characterized by a quiet
dignity which might well have served as an example to many a
European of similar social position. My personal experiences will not
allow me to believe in the dogma of the negro’s incapacity for
development. It cannot be denied that he has achieved a certain
intellectual progress, even in North America, though the obstacles
there are greater than the facilities. Why, therefore, should he not
rise, as soon as the opportunity is offered to him in such a way that
he can take advantage of it? Only we must not expect this advance to
take place overnight, any more than we can expect a rapidity of
economic progress at variance with every law of historical
probability.
It is now quite dark; the boat must have changed her course, for
the gale no longer meets us in front, but comes from the port side, so
that no doubt we are approaching Crete. To-morrow, or the day after,
we shall pass the coast of Greece. I must confess that I am looking
forward to a sight of this country, though I do not regard its classic
age with the same unbounded and uncritical enthusiasm as many of
our countrymen, to whom the ancient Greek is the embodiment of all
historical and cultural virtues. One thing only even the blackest envy
cannot deny to the Hellenes of old—a courage in colonial enterprise
which we should do well to imitate both now and in the future.
This future is still shrouded in mystery. Will our East African
colony become a second India? I do not doubt for a moment that it
will, and my mind’s eye sees the whole country traversed by railway
lines. One of these follows the old caravan road from the coast to
Tanganyika. The iron horse has superseded the old carrier-transport,
and the clattering train now bears the carriers themselves, as well as
bulky goods which could never have been put on the market under
the old system. One line runs to the Victoria Nyanza and another to
distant Nyasa; we are able to link up with the British network of
railways in South Africa, with the communications of the Congo
State, with the Nile Valley. Thirty years ago Stanley’s march to the
Lake Region and his boat-voyage down the Congo were epoch-
making achievements. We of to-day may perhaps live to make the
trip by train de luxe from the Cape to Cairo, and from Dar es Salam
to Kamerun.
 INDEX

Abdallah bin Malim, Wali of Mahuta, 352 et seq.;

his noisy devotions, 399–400
Achmed bar Shemba, song by, 31
Adams, Pater, on the Makonde, 259–60
African continent, conformation of in relation to Colonization, 415
race, original home, question of, 12
African Fund, the, 9, 10
Age-classes, 304
Akundonde, Yao chief, information from, 140, 184
settlement of, 212,
visit to, 213 et seq.
Alum, as water-clarifier, 153–4
Ancestor-worship, 326
Antelope-hunting, 200–1
Anthropology, difficulties of, in G.E. Africa, 53
Artistic aptitudes of Natives (see also Drawings), 36
Asiatic origin of African races, discussed, 12, 13
Assuan dam, the, lessons from for Germany, 413–5
Astronomical beliefs and customs, Yao, 184–5
Atlantic Ocean, historical density, 6
Axes, etc., bewitched, 210–12
Babies, see Children & Infants
Bagamoyo roadstead, 2
Bakeri of Zanzibar, 140, 142–3
Bangala river, Camp at mouth of, 208
Bantu imitation of the Masai, 118
origin, tribes of, 12, 53, 139
Baraza, the, 65,
described, 135
Bards, 170, 175
Bark-cloth, ceremonial uses of, 276–7, 313
manufacture of, 274 et seq.
Barnabas as artist, 367–8
Birth customs
Makonde, 281, 283
Yao (as to twins), 283
Black race, distribution of, explanation of, 13
Boots, question of, 71
Bornhardt on the geology of German East Africa, 66, 67–8
Botanical features (see also Bush), Masasi region, 69
Bows and arrows, 74
methods of using, 75–6
as toys, 285
Boys’ initiation ceremonies, see Lupanda, and Unyago
Brass-founding, native, 267–70
British Colonial Empire, comments on, 417
Burial customs,
Makua, 132
Yao, 194 & note
Bush and Scrub vegetation, 51, 52, 60
Bush-burning, 58–61, 255, 257
Bwalo, the, 231 & note

Calico, as dower, 306

over graves, 194, 214
Camp life, 83–4
sleeping discomforts, 119, 163, 164
Cape Banura, 24, 25
Guardafui, 14, 15
“Cape rubies,” 209, 210
Carnon, Archdeacon of Masasi, 45
hospitality of, 74
Carriers, see also Wanyamwezi,
difficulties with, 393
paying off of, and farewell to, 393–4, 400, 405–7
Cattle, Matola’s, 138,
stampede by, 164
Central Lukuledi Valley, lions in, 245
Chain-gangs, 28, 44,
native drawing of, 371
Charms (Dawa), 129;
used in Majimaji rebellion, 51
“Cherchez la femme!” 397–9
Child-life, native, G.E. Africa, 157–8 & note, 284 et seq.
Children, native, characteristics of, and aspect, 148
Chingulungulu, author’s stay at, 104 et seq.
description of, 134 et seq.
diseases noted at, 192
meaning of name, 104 note
native amusements at, 169
characteristics, 106
route to, from Mkululu, 126–7
water-supply at, 150–2