Abstract
Significant differences among sentences of natural language does exist. It is not a matter of theoretical philosophy or theoretical linguistics but simply common sense. The difference I would like to focus on the sentences that are evaluated by linguistic significance alone and sentences that are evaluated by linguistic significance and (other) circumstances. In this chapter, I shall introduce the distinction and I will test it by investigating simple sentences involving proper names in the subject position, such as ?Diego Maradona exists' and ?Diego Maradona runs'. Later on, I will add some remarks about the distinction introduced. As a preliminary to my point of view, let me start with some pre-theoretical remarks. ?I am, I exist' «is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind» (Descartes, 1641: ***). ?I am sitting in front of the fire', instead, is not necessarily true every time I utter it. Descartes in the second of the Meditations on First Philosophy brings our attention to the difference between these two cases. I do not want to do any Cartesian exegesis concerning this famous passage.
