ABSTRACT
The term 'theory of meaning' is a very ambiguous expression, not so much because it covers a great variety of methodologically opposed interpretations, but because the term 'meaning' is very deceptive. Theories of meaning now are mostly confined to linguistic information which is conveyed from one interlocutor to another within a linguistic and/or an extralinguistic context. In 'Quantifiers and propositional attitudes' Quine has given a very systematic expose of the by now celebrated problem of 'quantification into opaque contexts'. Quine's thesis is that 'belief contexts are refer-entially opaque; therefore it is prima facie meaningless to quantify into them'. A linguistic theory of reference, which has to be integrated in a general semiotic theory, must make the best of syntactical criteria and must avoid ambiguous and non-verifiable /falsifiable 'semantic talk'. There appears to be a systematic connection between the syntactic behaviour of certain grammatical elements and the epistemological position of certain statements 'on what there is'.
