Philosophy of Language Quotes

“Now (obviously) a sentence’s truth—even when we hold the sentence’s meaning fixed—depends on which world we are considering. “Brown is Prime Minister” is true in the actual world but, since Brown need not have been Prime Minister, there are countless worlds in which “Brown is Prime Minister” is false: in those worlds, Brown did not succeed Tony Blair, or never went into politics, or never even existed. And in some other worlds, someone else is Prime Minister — David Cameron, P. F. Strawson, me, Madonna, or Daffy Duck. In still others, there is no such office as Prime Minister, or not even a Britain; and so on and so forth. So a given sentence or proposition varies its truth-value from world to world.”
― William G. Lycan, Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction

“Some strings of marks or noises are meaningful sentences. It is an amazing fact that any normal person can instantly grasp the meaning of even a very long and novel sentence. Each meaningful sentence has parts that are themselves meaningful. Though initially attractive, the Referential Theory of Meaning faces several compelling objections.”
― William G. Lycan, Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction

“The only way to make a picture into a theory is to take it overliterally, to treat it as if it were a theory and see how it needs to be refined.”
― William G Lycan, Philosophy of Language (text only) 2nd(Second) edition by W. G. Lycan