12 . 2 The Utterance Relation

The danger lurking around these examples is that we will derive a meaning that has Peter ordering up linguistic objects. We must avoid this pitfall, but we must also preserve the meaning difference: (1a) is true in a different class of situations than (1b). It will not do to strip off the quotation marks and gesture at a “metalinguistic” theory to explain why speakers easily find situations in which Peter orders “[ei]pricots” is semantically distinct from Peter orders “[æ]pricots”. The two sentences have clearly contrasting entailments. This is therefore clearly a semantic issue. My analysis capitalizes on the insight that “[ei]pricots” and “[æ]pricots” (with their quotation marks) have a dual semantics: they are natural language objects as well as properties. The sentences containing them in turn express two distinct propositions. In the case of (1a), we have at least the following: