Three versions of semantic minimalism

Abstract

All of the semantic minimalists come together in seeking to reduce contextual inputs in semantics to a minimum, but they disagree over what this quantity may be, and more specifically, the extent to which something can still be classed as “minimal”. With this issue increasingly addressed, three versions of semantic minimalism can be identified: weak, strong, and radical. They are still gathered under the tag “Semantic Minimalism”, yet what they share is in fact less than their divergences as regards the minimal role of context. By revealing their divergent answers to the Range Problem and the Intention Problem, we will clearly see within semantic minimalism the schism, which is preliminary to assessing it.