Pure Quotation, Compositionality, and the Semantics of Linguistic Context

A straightforward treatment of quotation cannot be compositional. Consider, as we shall in this paper, the simplest case: pure quotation in written language by means of quote marks,1 as in (1) a. ‘Cicero ’ has six letters b. ‘farfalla ’ is Italian for butterfly c. ‘str jd e ’ is not a sentence d. ‘ℵ ’ is a Hebrew letter Although Cicero is Tully, and thus ‘Cicero ’ and ‘Tully ’ are synonymous (taking the reference of names as their meaning), (1a) is not synonymous with (2) ‘Tully ’ has six letters This ‘opacity ’ of quotation is a direct counter-example to compositionality, as long as the quoted phrase is a part of quoting phrase (the quoted phrase sur-rounded by quote marks). Indeed, non-compositionality is a main motive behind the wide variety of theories attempting to reanalyze quotation so that the quoted phrase is not