Grice On "To": Campaign Against Davidson

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From PPQ, vol. 67, p. 17.

Grice had already considered 'to' in WoW:iii. Do we like the idea of a Fregean sense for something as brief as 'to'? Not necessarily.

On the other hand, Davidson, Grice claims, fails to note the importance of the CATEGORY of the 'preposition', as attached to verb.

Consider:

Paul went to London.
Paul went to Oxford.

Going-to.

The 'to', a preposition involving direction, makes all the difference as to the semantics of 'go'.

Yet, 'to' is, to use Grice's expression, "semantically independent" of 'go'.

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Consider

Paul went to Meiggs (nickname of his tutor Hardie)
Meiggs went to Paul.

"was done to Meiggs"

or

"did it to Meiggs"

on the other hand,

are

"not intelligible unless a directional verb [such as 'go to']
is thought of as covertly present.