Truth-conditional semantics is an approach to semantics of natural language that sees the meaning of assertions as being the same as, or reducible to, their truth conditions. This approach to semantics is principally associated with Donald Davidson, and attempts to carry out for the semantics of natural language what Tarski's semantic theory of truth achieves for the semantics of logic (Davidson 1967).

Truth-conditional theories of semantics attempt to define the meaning sense of a given proposition in terms of the truth conditions under which it obtains in the real world. The meaning of conditional statements can be described by making reference to the truth conditions of the statement in an a priori unbounded number of "possible worlds."

Truth-conditional semantics is most clearly defined for assertions.

Contents 1 Language competence 2 Notes 3 References 4 See also

[edit] Language competence

Michael Dummett (1975) has objected to Davidson's program on the grounds that such a theory of meaning will not explain what it is a speaker has to know in order for them to understand a sentence, and has instead proposed what has come to be known as a Fregean architecture of language competence, consisting of three parts: a theory of sense, indicating the part of the meaning that the speaker grasps; a theory of reference, which indicates what claims about the world are made by the sentence, and a theory of force, which indicates what kind of speech act the expression performs. Dummett further argues that a theory based on inference, such as Proof-theoretic semantics, provides a better foundation for such a theory than the kind of referential theory that truth-conditional semantics is.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• D. Davidson (1967). ‘Truth and Meaning’. Synthese, 17:304-323.
• M.A.E. Dummett (1975). ‘What is a Theory of Meaning’. In S. Guttenplan (ed.), Mind and Language, CUP. Reprinted in Dummett, The Seas of Language, OUP, 1993.

[edit] See also

• Proof-theoretic semantics

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