Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

According to Davidson’s model for action sentences (DAS, for short), in ‘He did it’ the pronoun ‘it’ is a bona fide referential device denoting an event. This initial move amounts to a systematic change of the grammatical role normally attributed to a VP such as “butter the toast”. Every such action predicate introduces variables responsible for cross-referential connections. Non-referential expressions are semantically reconstructed as introducing referential expressions.

I want to discuss Davidson’s starting point and sketch an alternative model according to which event pronouns are inessential for logical forms if one allows the introduction of verb-variables. The new variables are the formal representations of the colloquial, multitask pro-verb ‘do’. In contrast with DAS, ‘do’ does not disappear at the level of logical form and the expressions “did” and “it” can only work in combination. While the verb stands for an action predicate and holds the sentence together in intra-sentential anaphora, the bare (i.e. non-event) pronoun signals a semantic interpretation of this anaphora according to which each of its inheritors includes the information that the action alluded to by means of ‘do’ is a constituent of the situation described by the corresponding sentence.