Semantics as Model-Based Science

What is the right way of thinking about the metalanguage in which natural language semantics takes place? I will eventually get to the idea that the best way of understanding the role of this language involves seeing natural language semantics as a model-based science (using ‘model’ in the general sense of a scientific model, not in the technical sense of model theory). To get there, I first critique some standard ways of thinking about how the metalanguage of semantics is to be understood.

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