Keelefilosoofia raamat
acts the sentence could be used to perform. If you are able to use a sentence in
every illocutionary way that it affords, you know its meaning, and that is all
there is to sentence meaning. (This would certainly qualify as a "use" theory
of meaning, though superficially far from what Wittgenstein had in mind.)
But in fact Alston's view did nothing to illuminate locutionary meaning,
since potential-speech-act descriptions such as "assert that gorillas are veg-
etarians" already presuppose a notion of propositional content and exploit
the meanings of their complement clauses. Also, as Maureen Coyle once
observed to me, sentences that share their locutionary contents can differ
violently in their illocutionary act-potentials: "Mother will eat the oyster";
"Will mother eat the oyster?"; "Mother, eat the oyster!"
154 Pragmatics and speech acts
Barker (2004) in effect heads off these objections. He avoids the first in
annaabi.ee 
