Abstract

This paper aims to defend François Recanati’s Availability Principle approach to semantics by illuminating and responding to two major challenges from minimalists, in particular from Emma Borg: the first concerns the notion of intuitive content and “awareness-of” presupposed in the Availability Principle, and the second concerns whether the principle makes a semantic theory unfit with normativity and compositionality. I lead the discussion toward the kernel question--the bearer of the semantic content--and show that the Availability Principle is appropriate if we respect the empirical basis of meaning.