2. 1. The Phenomenon

The phenomenon of sub-sentential speech -the uttering of words and phrases in isolation, i.e. not in the context of a sentence- dom inates WT. Stainton summarizes the point of WT with the following argument schema:

Premise 1: Speakers genuinely can utter ordinary words and phrases in isolation, and thereby perform full-fledged speech acts.

Premise 2: If speakers genuinely can utter ordinary words and phrases in isolation, and thereby perform full-fledged speech acts, then such-and-such implications obtain.

Conclusion: Such-and-such implications obtain. (WT, p. 3)

Whereas many theorists deny that words and phrases can be uttered in isolation (and thereby perform full-fledged speech acts) Stainton insists that they are in fact uttered in isolation all the time (and often perform full-fledged speech acts). Hence, much of the book is a sustained examination of various attempts to undercut the legitimacy of this use of words and phrases in isolation.

Stainton offers a wide variety of sub-sentences in order to stress their heterogeneity as a class, including, inter alia, prepositional phrases, quantificational noun phrases, verb phrases, proper nouns, and definite descriptions. He hopes to show that many examples of these sorts of sub-sentences can be uttered in isolation, and neverthe less communicate a proposition. To use a favorite example from WT, Sanjay and Silvia are loading a moving van and Silvia is searching for a missing table leg. Sanjay utters the mere phrase

2. 2. The Fuss.

It is important to note, as Stainton often does, that although sub-sentential speech is an interesting phenomenon for linguists and philosophers to study in its own right, the sorts of implications that seem to hold if it is found to be legitimate (the "such-and-such implications" of the argument above) are critical for several debates about the nature of language and thought. In this paper, I will be concerned primarily with the positive proposal Stainton offers in Chapter Eight and the debate discussed in Chapter Eleven regarding the boundary between semantics and pragmatics. The distinction between semantics and pragmatics is in an especially intense degree of flux these days, and I think that if Stainton is (mostly) right about sub-sentences, this is extremely good support for a certain perspective on the relationship between semantics and pragmatics -Relevance Theory.¹ Since I think there are serious problems for that perspective, I hope to cast some doubt on whether Stainton is right about sub-sentences.

My worries stem from the puzzle Stainton raises at the end of chapter three. He acknowledges that when considering sentences, we find it natural to distinguish between the content that is asserted and the content that is merely pragmatically conveyed. He describes the traditional account of how the asserted content is determined, "The content asserted, put roughly, is the context-invariant semantics of the sentence, plus the content contributed by context to elements of the sentence's structure" (WT, p. 59).² Though many theorists disagree as to how context interacts with the sentence structure, Stainton notes that these theorists still agree

that there is a content-bearing structure provided by the expression used, and that what is asserted is the content of what one gets by developing that structure. It is precisely the latter that affords the natural divide: what is merely pragmatically conveyed is content that doesn't result merely from development of the structure used. (WT, p. 59)

But, here is the puzzle Stainton acknowledges arises if sub-sentential speech is genuine: When it comes to sub-sentences, "the content of the assertion cannot be got merely by modifying or shading the contents of the expression uttered. No matter how we develop the expression that was spoken, the result will still be sub-propositional... "(WT, p. 59). The result is that "when it comes to isolating what is genuinely asserted, we can no longer appeal to the difference between developing a given structure and bringing in a new structure entirely" (WT, p. 59). This result may not seem especially problematic -one need only find some other rule for including what is asserted and excluding what is merely conveyed. However, I will argue that coming up with such a rule can be difficult enough just for sentences, let alone for sub-sentences, given the perspective Stainton and the other Relevance Theorists take on the semantic-pragmatic divide.

Herman ^{Cappelen and Ernie Lepore (2005a}, ^2005b, ²⁰⁰⁷) have generated a series of well-known worries for theories that claim that what is asserted does not result merely from development of the sentence structure (a position I call moderate contextualism, which includes Stainton and the Relevance theorists). These theories argue for the existence of unarticulated constituents of what is said or asserted -elements that are found neither in the surface structure of the sentence that is uttered, nor in the logical form of that sentence. According to the moderate contextualists, in some cases these unarticulated constituents are needed for sentences to be able to express full propositions (and hence, in order for utterances of these sentences to assert full propositions), and in other cases are needed in order for a sentence to express the right proposition (and hence, in order for utterances of these sentences to assert the right proposition). What Cappelen and Lepore claim is that if the case can be made for such augmentation to account for what is asserted for a limited range of expressions, similar reasons will require us to augment almost all expressions in so many ways that we will be forced to become radical contextualists. As a result, we will ultimately be unable to rule out so much contextual influence that we will be incapable of drawing the distinction between what is asserted and what is conveyed, and will be forced eventually to deny the stability of context-invariant word and sentence meanings (so we will be forced to deny the existence of semantic content).

Cappelen and Lepore explain that, in arguing for the need for unarticulated constituents, moderate contextualists distinguish between sentences that are semantically complete and those that are semantically incomplete. For example, consider

3.1. Examining the Conditions

Condition (II): Stainton addresses (ii) to refute the claim that the uses of sub-sentences under question are not expressing something fully propositional. To accomplish this, he considers the following argument from Jason ^{Stanley (2000}):

(P1) A full-fledged speech act must involve a fully determinate proposition.

(P2) The contested cases don't involve a fully determinate proposition.

C: The contested cases are not full-fledged speech acts. (WT, p. 52)

Stainton initially denies (P1), balking at the idea that to be a full-fledged speech act, a determinate proposition must be involved. Instead, he offers an alternative notion of propositional that requires merely that the content be "message-like" (WT, p. 52). He advocates this alternative notion by showing that plenty of vague sentential speech would not count as full-fledged because it also fails to express a determinate proposition. As Stainton explains, in many such cases, we just don't ask for hyper-specificity and don't expect someone who utters "I loved it" after exiting a roller coaster to be able to say, to the exclusion of all truth-conditionally distinct alternatives, precisely what she meant by "it". (The act of riding? The whole experience, from waiting in line to walking down the exit ramp? The roller coaster itself? The feelings she experienced while riding? Which such feelings?) Nor need she have a clear idea of just what unique sense of "love" was intended. (WT, p. 53)

This may be true, but I fail to see how it casts doubt upon whether the condition is required to be a proper speech act. After all, what sorts of speech would we be excluding from being full-fledged by maintaining it as a requirement? This speech would have some propositional, but merely message-like content, and would not be fully determinate. It is unclear just how imprecise the message can be and still be propositional -Stainton does not say- but, we at least are told that it needn't be as precise, generally, as the quoted aspects above about the girl and the ride. However, it is not obvious that being more inclusive about speech acts helps Stainton's case. It makes more sub-sentential (and sentential) speech count as propositional, but keep in mind that according to Stainton, these propositions must be part of what the use of a sub-sentence (or sentence) asserts, not merely what it communicates. He can surely get us to agree that plenty of speech can be propositional enough -that a vague message about some event is getting across to the audience without being overly determinate- but in these cases the messages are going to fail to count as what the utterances assert.

By whatever standards of determinacy he selects, there will be a set of utterances for which what they express is either determinate enough or not to count as what was asserted (this goes for sentences and sub-sentences). All that (P1) says is that any utterance that isn't propositional to this extent is degenerate. So, it looks like the only criticism Stainton makes against (P1) is that it excludes sentential and sub-sentential utterances that lack an asserted content that is determinate to this extent from being full-fledged speech acts. But what is the problem with doing that? An utterance should be considered seriously degenerate if we could not even locate what it asserted to this extent.

So, the mere fact that the standards for full-fledged speech acts exclude some uses of sentences isn't reason enough to reject them, since some uses of sentences shouldn't count as full-fledged either. We require a certain level of precision in what is asserted, and sentences or sub-sentences can either be used to assert propositions like that or they can't. Stainton actually recognizes this when he moves on to (conditionally) concede (P1), and then challenges (P2) by showing that some sub-sentential speech actually meets even the unreasonably high standards of determinacy involved in (P1). He considers two ways of demonstrating the presence of something fully propositional -one that tries to infer that something fully propositional was meant/asserted merely because there was something fully propositional in the vicinity of the linguistic exchange, and one that tries to infer the existence of something fully propositional from the presence of an act of successful communication. He stresses that these are inadequate for demonstrating the legitimacy of sub-sentential speech precisely because neither locates the proposition in the role that is crucial for Stainton: what is asserted or meant by an utterance.

Stainton needs to avoid a dilemma. The vaguer he allows the proposition to be, the less clear it is that the proposition is being asserted rather than communicated. The more precise it becomes, the less clear it is that there isn't actually a sentential structure involved in the ways that Stainton forbids. To deny (P2), he needs to show that there are some uses of sub-sentences that have contents propositional enough to be capable of asserting, and he needs to show that when they are determinate enough, that they are actually being asserted and not merely conveyed. If we find that there are no such uses of sub-sentences, then we need not relegate them to the status of winks and nudges, but we can still have reasons to describe them as degenerate speech acts.⁶

Condition (III): Stainton next considers (iii) and the challenge that the examples of sub-sentential speech under discussion are not force-bearing in the relevant sense. Stainton summarizes this challenge as follows:

(P1) A full-fledged speech act must involve a determinate, specific, illocutionary force.

(P2) The contested cases don't involve a determinate, specific, illocutionary force.

C: The contested cases are not full-fledged speech acts.

Much like his strategy regarding (ii), Stainton tries to show that (P1) is too high a requirement for many cases of sentential speech to meet. He notices that certain sentential utterances, such as "You must turn in your final report before you leave in the afternoon", as uttered by Maria to Susan, may fail to have a determinate, specific, illocutionary force, e.g. among an assertion of policy, a request, or an order (WT, p. 56). Stainton then asks

Would it follow that Maria, in so speaking, did not perform a genuine speech act, but only did something less than "full-fledged"? Can we, on these grounds alone, really assimilate her utterance of [that sentence] to things like kicks under the table, grunts, smirks, etc. -which is what my opponents here wish to do with sub-sentence uses? Surely not. (WT, p. 57)

Here we have the same sort of move as we received regarding (ii) and we need to raise the same sort of questions as before. What are the consequences of not counting (as full-fledged speech acts) examples where there are multiple possible forces involved? He explains that many of these cases are "perfectly fine speech act[s]" (WT, p. 57) because they have the possibility of being satisfied or not, as in the suggestion that Maria will be unsatisfied if the report is not turned in by the time Susan leaves. But this only tells us that the utterance could have successfully gotten a message across. Stainton himself insists that he wants and needs sub-sentential speech to do more than just get a message across -not every linguistic act that gets a message across should count as a full-fledged speech act. He wants them to have real force. Stainton suggests that if we deny that this is a full-fledged speech act, we are relegating it to a wink or nudge, but we need not, nor should not, do such a thing.

One way to see the degenerate nature of this speech act is to examine more closely the expectations that would hold between the speaker and the audience -to consider reactions that Susan could have or that Maria could expect her to exhibit, and whether these reactions and expectations would be justified, given the nature of what was uttered in this context. Keeping in mind the burdens placed upon the audience, we can show the sort of limitations involved in an utterance with a less than determinate or specific force. By uttering a sentence without a precise force, Maria has no reason to be terribly upset if Susan doesn't turn in the report that day, had Susan judged the utterance to be a polite request and not an order. By choosing that particular sentence rather than another one with a more determinate force, Maria should be willing to shoulder a greater share of the communicative blame if the desired outcome is not reached. Even if the desired outcome was reached, we can identify the risks involved in using utterances like these with indeterminate force, noting their expected limitations; we can outline the numerous ways the audience could achieve illocutionary uptake and question whether the speaker should find any of these ways of divining the force to be more or less probable, given that utterance in that context. So, we have good reasons to judge these sorts of cases as degenerate when compared to ones where the determinate force avoids these risks, especially if the speaker had a particular perlocutionary effect in mind that she wanted to achieve. If she wanted this accomplished, why would she utter that sentence?

When it comes to sub-sentences, the lack of additional linguistic material may make it even more difficult for speakers and hearers to have reasonable expectations about the outcomes resulting from the act. If adding words or phrases, or making something fully sentential, is a typical way of eliminating these indeterminacies of force, then the defender of sub-sentential speech cannot ignore this fact and say that in general, there is nothing wrong with multiple forces because some uses of sentences can have multiple forces and nevertheless communicate successfully. As with (ii), that is not what's at issue.

Maria could have uttered the sub-sentence "Before you leave in the afternoon". But, in this case she has even less justification for being upset with Susan if she fails to deliver the report by the end of the day. In addition to confusion over the force of the utterance, we could imagine confusion over whether Maria wanted the report, or for her to stop by and talk about the report, or stop by and talk about her pending promotion. As an act, it is not as bad off as what would happen if Maria stuck her head in Susan's office and winked, but it is not able to add burdens upon Susan regarding the fact that the report was the object of interest. If Stainton is right, the context may be able to get the additional material into Susan's mind without the presence of more linguistic material, but even then, the sub-sentential utterance is degenerate to at least the same degree as the sentential one. Neither the sentence nor the sub-sentence speech is as bad off as the wink, but both the linguistic examples are degenerate nevertheless. Stainton needs to show us examples where uses of sub-sentences are not degenerate in this way.

Condition (iv): Stainton gives two reasons for thinking that subsentences can be used to literally assert, and not merely convey, propositions. First, he notes that if sub-sentential speech happened to be more like non-literal, metaphorical speech, or more like working out conversational implicatures, the audience would notice this phenomenologically. However, he claims that hearers do not react to sub-sentential speech in the same way they do when confronted with actual non-literal speech. Second, he notes that in order to settle this issue, we need to get clearer about why it matters whether something is a real assertion or not. Here he suggests that we need to look more carefully into the practical consequences of assertion, i.e. the things we hold people accountable for based on their linguistic behavior. If there are legal, moral, and communicative burdens and obligations placed on those folks who assert, as opposed to some other linguistic behavior, then we can ask whether some sub-sentential speech can also warrant these burdens as well. For example, Stainton notes that genuine assertions can be used to lie, and not merely mislead, and then offers an example where a sub-sentence is used to lie. Hence, he claims that by both of these standards sub-sentential speech can genuinely assert (and command and question).

In response, I do not share Stainton's view that communicating with sub-sentences is phenomenologically dissimilar from working out conversational implicatures or metaphors. To show this, I will concentrate on the interpretation of commands and questions and suggest an account where the alleged cases of sub-sentential assertion are more like commands and questions than Stainton claims. In doing this, the notion that communicators don't react differently to the use of sub-sentences than to the use of sentences will lose much of its punch.

Stainton's best cases -those where it looks as if sub-sentences are perhaps being used to assert- are cases where there is an object being talked about which is in (potentially) full view of the interlocutors. "From Columbia" with a bag of coffee in one's hand, and "From Wal-Mart" while holding up a pen seem like cases where the feature in question can be applied directly to that object without any obvious need to have linguistic material intervene. But in most other cases, the missing linguistic material matters, and this forces the hearer to react to the sub-sentential material much like she would if trying to work out a metaphor or a particularized conversational implicature.⁷ Consider an utterance of a general to his troops, as they hear shelling off in the distance by the shore, "To the beachhead[?]"

Or as crowds gathering before the football game watch a BBQ truck roll past them and utter "To the stadium?". Even if Stainton is right and some elements of the context are made manifest or salient enough for the communicators to get to the right proposition without the intervention of any additional linguistic material, these sorts of utterances are confusing in even deeper ways than non-literal speech typically is. one needs to work out whether the general is asking about the location of the bombing, or giving a hesitant order to go there, or a description of where the enemy troops will soon be (so we had better not be there); or whether the football fans are suggesting where the truck should go if it wants good business, or where it is going, or where they should go to order from it, etcetera.

It should be clear that I view these cases as degenerate speech acts, but even if they were full-fledged in the requisite sense, this sub-sentential speech places substantial burdens on the audience that would not be present had a full sentence been uttered, and these sorts of cases would be phenomenologically quite similar to non-literal speech and working out what was implicated. These uses of sub-sentences are hardly exceptional and I think the imprecision they introduce to the communicative scenario points to the burdens the speaker places on the audience by neglecting to utter a full sentence. By my lights, much of sub-sentential speech is like this. The audience has to work out this stuff on their own, with the help of the context, and this is very much like what goes on when processing non-literal or implicated content.⁸

At this point, I could compile examples of actual and fictional examples where these commands and questions failed because they involved sub-sentential speech, as in the case of "By the end of the day" and the examples above; and I could also give plenty of cases where uses of sub-sentences that allegedly assert are substantially like the failed cases of questions and commands in terms of their phenomenological similarity to implicatures and non-literal speech. But, of course, this won't help undermine Stainton's project, since he was never trying to show that all sub-sentential is full-fledged, but rather that some significant portion of it is. However, I want to note that focusing on the best cases of assertion and neglecting the cases where what was uttered was limited enough for the audience to have to struggle to work out the proposition in play unfairly underestimates how generally burdensome sub-sentential speech is on the audience, and hence, the sense in which much of it is degenerate compared to sentential speech. Hence, what I want to do instead of quibbling over cases is to sketch an account of what we do when we assert by uttering a sentence, and how different that is, as a speech act that is directed at an audience, from what we do when we produce a sub-sentence that is directed at an audience. This alternative account should make the case that sub-sentential speech can accomplish much, but that there are good reasons to deem it degenerate in substantial respects.

3.2. Assertion: An Alternative Account

What is distinct about sub-sentential speech is that the speaker provides an incomplete structure that serves as an invitation for the audience to complete the sub-sentence in a way that is not constrained by any additional linguistic material. According to Stain-ton, the sub-sentence is produced, and it is up to the audience to determine what additional material/content to fill in to recover the proposition behind the utterance. It is true that the speaker provides much more, and better, evidence in the sub-sentential case than she would with a mere wink or nudge; she has provided a phrase to help guide the audience to the proposition. But, in the sentential case, the speaker does not place an additional burden on the audience. Many sentences may stand in need of contextual resolution to determine the full proposition that is asserted when it is uttered in a context, but all of the elements that need to be resolved, tweaked, or filled-in are triggered by some element in the syntactic structure, so there is no need to freely add new elements to that structure, when it comes to sentences. The speaker may place additional burdens related to implicatures or non-literal material on the audience, but she provides all of the necessary linguistic material that stands in need of resolution to guide the audience straight to the full proposition that was asserted.⁹ Interpreting a sentence requires the development of a given structure; interpreting a sub-sentence requires bringing in a new structure entirely.

This is the sense in which I believe sub-sentential speech fails to really assert. A speaker may get the audience to grasp a proposition by uttering a sub-sentence, but the incomplete guidance is a crucial element that should not be overlooked, and it matters in determining whether sub-sentential utterances are degenerate speech acts, or whether they can be thought to really assert, just like sentential utterances. Stainton is correct in noting that many speakers use linguistic material that does not fully constrain how the audience is supposed to interpret an utterance, but there is a crucial difference between producing a complete linguistic guide to a proposition and providing an incomplete invitation to add to the linguistic material without an overt linguistically mandated constraint on where to stop.

Both types of utterance are common and both can be successful. If the speaker wants to get the audience to the proposition in question, he has two choices: utter a sentence that needs no completion (other than sense specification, reference assignment to indexicals, disambiguation, etc.), or utter something that the audience needs to augment to complete. Following Stainton, we need to get clear about the practical and conversational expectations and burdens that accompany assertions, rather than other types of utterances. From a speech act perspective, the speaker places a substantial burden on the audience by not guiding them with all of the linguistic material that he could have. Successful communication is not guaranteed by using sentences, of course, but the practical consequences of asserting using a sentence are key. What the speaker asserts with a sentential utterance is a direct route to the proposition; what a sub-sentential utterance provides only gets the audience partly there. The sub-sentential utterance is much more effective than a wink or nudge due to the amount of linguistic material it provides. But, someone who utters a sub-sentence should not become upset if the audience fails to fill in or complete it in the way intended by that speaker, because it was the speaker who chose to provide the incomplete map to the proposition. In the sentential case, the speaker introduces a linguistic structure into the conversation that is not in need of addition, only resolution.¹⁰ In the sub-sentential case, the speaker leaves the audience in charge and merely hopes the context can be a sufficient guide to success.¹¹

To tie this discussion back into the worries introduced in Section 2, I think that Relevance Theory and the other theories of asserted content that allow for unarticulated constituents of what is asserted face a serious problem in putting a limit upon isolating what is asserted in a context, among all the things that can be communicated in that context. Cappelen and Lepore raise this issue for sentential speech, and I agree that it is a serious concern. But, if my worries about sub-sentential speech are legitimate, and the speaker is simply inviting the audience to add to the structure in some appropriate way, given the context, I fear that there will be no way of showing when the audience has added too much to the structure, and no way of showing when the audience has added too little to the structure. The old standard is gone -one cannot just complete the structure mandated by the syntax. Instead, Stainton offers the minimal propositional content to constrain what is asserted. But, I think this suggestion lacks sufficient detail to avoid the pitfalls introduced by Cappelen and Lepore.

Stainton offers the following account of asserting as an amendment to the standard Relevance Theoretic account (WT, p. 163):

A speaker S asserts that p only if:

(a) either (i) p results solely from developing the logical form of the expression uttered by S, or (ii) p could result merely by developing the logical form of the expression uttered and conjoining it with another manifest logical form of the appropriate semantic type;

(b) p is communicated by S.

Here is my worry, rephrased. Uses of sub-sentences do not give enough guidance for which logical forms (LF) of the right type can be acceptable additions for conjoining to the LF of the sub-sentence. Flowing from the arguments of Cappelen and Lepore, Relevance Theory's notion of manifestness cannot possibly rule out all sorts of content as being manifest in some context or other. If this is correct, then propositions that are not candidates for what is asserted are going to be the result of combining the LF of the sub-sentence with a LF of some semantic type that is both conjoinable to the sub-sentential LF and consistent with what was communicated. By uttering a subsentence, and communicating a proposition, the speaker is inviting the audience to add some LF of the appropriate semantic type but not further guiding them with linguistic material. If the additional material is a property or object, for example, there will simply be too many available that are manifest enough and consistent enough with what is being communicated.

Stainton believes that the notion of the minimal proposition will save Relevance Theory here, but the main problem with this is that there is not a theoretically neutral way of articulating what counts as minimal in this context. It is a contentious issue whether the minimal contents under discussion capture what is asserted when using sentences, let alone sub-sentences. But, Stainton has two possible sources for these minimal propositions. He could rely upon speaker intuitions about what utterances assert (or, in other terms, roughly, their intuitive truth conditions). In this case, he needs to be able to guarantee that there is a relative consensus about which elements constitute the level of content that is not merely conveyed by the sub-sentential speech. If there are items of a given semantic type that are required to capture the intuitively asserted content, then those minimal aspects should be included in Stainton's proposal, and all non-minimal elements should be excluded, and Stainton should be able to explain which elements are which. or, Stainton could rely on more metaphysical constraints (i.e. ones that are not dictated by conversational norms or mere speaker intuitions). on this account, what is asserted may be much thinner than speaker intuitions might suggest, since what is minimally asserted is merely whatever compo nents are needed to get the content to the barest proposition possible.

Consider Stainton's example from a conversation between John Dean and Richard Nixon about the publication of a story by the Post, where Dean utters "Typical" (WT, p. 60). Stainton explains

Here, Dean non-sententially asserts, of the salient event described by Nixon and Haldeman, that it was typical. This is asserted on the proposed account, rather than merely being implicated, because the content of "Typical", being an adjective that must apply to some thing or event, would otherwise remain sub-propositional. (WT, p. 60)

According to Stainton, that this was a typical event for the Post, however, is not asserted, because this "goes well beyond the minimal proposition one gets by finding an appropriate content for 'Typical' to combine with" (WT, p. 60, my emphasis). Hence, for this metaphysical constraints proposal, the only thing to add to an adjective to make it minimally propositional is some relevant event, and nothing else.

This is where things become problematic for Stainton. There are contents that Stainton can easily rule out as legitimately going well beyond what is asserted (he can clearly dismiss several contents as merely conveyed), but there is a large range of contents that can hover around a context that are legitimate contenders for what is asserted (and he seems unable to choose systematically which of these is the asserted content). To give a similar, oft discussed example, it is a matter of significant dispute whether, when uttered, "It's raining" contains an unpronounced constituent in its asserted content about a salient location.¹² Minimalists who insist that an utterance of this asserts merely that it is raining have been criticized for failing to acknowledge that it intuitively asserts that it is raining at the salient location. Similarly, one might argue that if it is possible to give an asserted content to "Typical", it should be that the publication of the story is typical for the Post. Indeed many people's intuitions point towards this enriched content as being what is asserted, and not merely conveyed by these utterances. Stainton's way of negatively defining what is conveyed, noting that "there are infinitely many propositions that cannot be arrived at merely by developing the Logical Form of that sentence" (WT, p. 162) does a fine job explaining why the fact that a person is not intelligent could only be implicated rather than asserted by "The next Nobel Laureate", and why the information that we should not play tennis could only be implicated but not asserted by "It's raining". But, his notions of assertion and a minimal proposition do not do a sufficient job explaining why, generally, the enriched content that this event is typical for the Post should not count as what is asserted, and it fails to identify which content is asserted.

At this point Stainton could suggest going minimalist in the way ^{Cappelen and Lepore (2005b}) suggest for semantic content, in which case he might isolate what is asserted from the intuitive judgments about truth conditions or what is asserted. But, given the Relevance Theoretic framework Stainton endorses, it is up to the speaker to make what he asserts something that he expects the audience can reasonably understand as being asserted with a use of a sentence or sub-sentence. So, whatever LF the speaker expects the audience to augment the sub-sentential LF with can't really diverge from these sorts of intuitions and the relevant expectations towards the audience. These need to be made mutually manifest, after all. One can't define assertion too minimally and expect the audience to work out only those metaphysically required elements and not make the absolutely reasonable, relevant leap to the intuitive content, and then insist, "No! That's not what I asserted. I only implicated or conveyed that this was typical for the Post!" or, additionally, "Just add on this little bit to get to what I asserted -the bare event- not the other stuff the context and I are making mutually manifest -save that for later downstream in the pragmatic processing."

The problem is that there is no natural, principled way to stop all of this expansion of content for sentences, and certainly not for sub-sentences, when uttered. As someone who utters a sub-sentence, you are offering an invitation to complete a sub-propositional element but not giving the audience a reasonable chance to complete it in the desired fashion -there are too many things that could be plausibly filled in for the speaker to affirm or deny that, indeed, that is the proposition that was asserted. It might be acceptable for Cappelen and Lepore to have an error theory about semantic content,¹³ but I do not see how it could be acceptable for Stainton to have one as a theory about asserted content -not if the resources of Relevance Theory are supposed to help fill in the unarticulated aspects of asserted content. What is asserted must be something in line with judgments about what is intuitively asserted, if the speaker is supposed to have expectations that the audience will be able to fill in whatever aspects of asserted content are present. As Stainton explains,

I insist that the intentions a speaker can have are importantly constrained by her reasonable expectations about what the hearer can figure out [...]. Thus it is that what the hearer can figure out (something epistemic) ends up constraining what a speaker can intend -which, in turn, is part of the metaphysical determinants of utterance content. (WT, p. 224)

But, if what is intuitively asserted is only minimally constrained by what is linguistically mandated, and instead is only constrained by whatever can be made salient or manifest in a context, then there is no way to limit what can be part of what is asserted.

Relevance Theory has a nice system for explaining how many different ways propositions can be made relevant or manifest in a situation, and how few of these ways involve something like bare encoding and decoding. However, Relevance Theorists have a hard time isolating a genuine role for assertion that does not slide towards what is merely communicated (when it comes to sentential speech). And, since there is a huge difference between what can be made manifest when uttering a sub-sentence and what can be made manifest when uttering a sentence, in that one has so much more control over what one is making manifest with a full sentence, it is not at all clear that one can have reasonable expectations that the audience can work out what is salient given the minimal linguistic guidance of a sub-sentence. Perhaps Stainton has some other resources for getting the level of asserted content just right, but it looks like it is either going to be far too minimal to offer consistent expectations about the ability of the audience to work just that element out, and not the other elements, or far too broad to be contrasted with what is merely conveyed.

Stainton and Relevance Theory sometimes describe utterance interpretation as a "massive interaction effect" (WT, p. 228), and this is what I find worrisome. I do not see how what is asserted avoids becoming lost in these massive interactions, especially once one ceases to require that the elements of asserted content must come from developing the LF of the utterance. As I noted in Section 2, Stainton may be right about sub-sentential speech, and Relevance Theory may end up being the best theory about utterance interpretation, but if this happens, I think the distinction between what is asserted and the rest of the content evaporates. Since this distinction is critical to studying meaning, I think that the range of theories that tie all asserted content to what is developed from pronounced or unpronounced elements in sentential LFs are preferable to what Stainton proposes, at least without more being said about how he aims to solve the puzzle he outlines.¹⁴ Briefly, in the "It's raining" example above, such theories claim that utterances of that sentence assert the intuitive content that it is raining in the relevant location, L, and justify the presence of this unpronounced material as part of what is asserted by offering syntactic tests that justify the presence of a slot for location in LF despite its phonological absence. These theories have a clear divide between what is asserted (whatever is directly traceable to and developed from LF, pronounced or not) and the rest of what is communicated (whatever is not traceable to LF) and maintain a tight fit with what is intuitively asserted.¹⁵