 However, we have to be able to understand a spoken sentence to be able to determine a speaker’s intention, which we infer from what is said supplemented sometimes by contextual cues. Thus knowing the intention is not an invariable antecedent of testimonial knowledge. Understanding S’s intention is not a fourth condition on a statement’s meaningfulness from the perspective of H—except in some cases of ambiguity and indirect, figurative speech. But in those cases it is indeed crucial, and there is no way to get around the need to make it out in order to fix the meaning, which cannot be gathered at, so to say, a first pass.