The indeterminacy of translation:
"Consider Quine's example of the word 'gavagai' uttered by a native upon seeing a rabbit[1]. The linguist could do what seems natural and translate this as 'Lo, a rabbit.' But other translations would be compatible with all the evidence he has: 'Lo, food'; 'Let's go hunting'; 'There will be a storm tonight' (these natives may be superstitious); 'Lo, a momentary rabbit-stage'; 'Lo, an undetached rabbit-part.' Some of these might become less likely ? that is, become more unwieldy hypotheses ? in the light of subsequent observation. Others can only be ruled out by querying the natives: An affirmative answer to 'Is this the same gavagai as that earlier one?' will rule out 'momentary rabbit stage,' and so forth. But these questions can only be asked once the linguist has mastered much of the natives' grammar and abstract vocabulary; that in turn can only be done on the basis of hypotheses derived from simpler, observation-connected bits of language; and those sentences, on their own, admit of multiple interpretations, as we have seen."
