The Anonymous Letter Situation

“The anonymous letter situation is the case where an ideal speaker of a language receives an anonymous letter containing just one sentence of that language, with no clue whatever about the motive, circumstance of transmission, or any other factor relevant to understanding the sentence on the basis of its context of utterance. (...)[T]he semantic component [properly represents] only those aspects of the meaning of the sentence that an ideal speaker-hearer of the language would know in such an anonymous letter situation.”