Katarzyna Jaszczolt

Cancelability and the primary/secondary meaning distinction

Abstract Among the criteria Grice (Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard University Press, 1989: 39–40) proposed for identifying conversational implicatures, cancelability is unquestionably the most celebrated one and the one that is often used as the main, obvious test for classifying speakers meaning as implicit. Problems with fitting some rather obstinate examples under the requirement of cancelability have led some critics to proposing amendments to Grices original formulation of the test (Weiner, Analysis 66: 127–130, 2006; Blome-Tillmann, Analysis 68: 156–160, 2008). The purpose of my contribution to the debate is twofold. First, to demonstrate that, in spite of the recent criticism, Grices cancelability test remains a reliable and effective criterion. The second objective is to employ the test for the discussion and delimitation of the primary and secondary meanings vis-à-vis the what is said/implicated distinction. The test is implemented in the current paradigm of contextualism, including its arguably most radical variety of Default Semantics which models the main, most salient meaning (called here the primary meaning) as intended by the model speaker and recovered by the model addressee (Jaszczolt, Default Semantics: Foundations of a Compositional Theory of Acts of Communication, Oxford University Press, 2005, Representing Time: An Essay on Temporality as Modality, Oxford University Press, 2009, Semantics and pragmatics: The boundary issue, forthcoming a). On such a construal, cancelability is assessed separately for the domains of primary and secondary meanings, as well as for what is said and what is implicated. The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 1 introduces Grices criterion of cancelability. Section 2 critically assesses a suggestion proposed recently in the literature that the criterion is defunct, discusses an attempt to save the criterion, and concludes that it is not in need of any amendment, albeit its original formulation by Grice easily yields to misinterpretation. Section 3 adopts the “saved” criterion and applies it to the explicit/implicit distinction. Section 4 follows suit by taking up the issue of cancelation and processing, discussing the question of the stage in the incremental processing at which cancelation occurs. Section 5 is the core part of the paper. It builds on the discussions from the preceding two sections and focuses on cancelability vis-à-vis the primary meaning/secondary meaning distinction, where the distinction is construed as orthogonal to that between the explicit and the implicit content—in agreement with the assumptions of Default Semantics and the requirement of modeling salient, intentional meanings as primary meanings independently of their relation to the structure of the uttered sentence. The conclusions of the paper are then twofold: firstly, they concern the defense of Grices criterion of cancelability, and secondly, the defense of the distinction between primary and secondary meanings which cuts across that between the explicit and the implicit. The role of the criterion in these two distinctions is assessed.

Meaning in linguistic interaction : semantics, metasemantics, philosophy of language

Preface List of abbreviations and symbols Introduction 1. Wrong about meaning 2. Interactive composition of meaning 3. Defaults in context 4. Delimiting the lexicon 5. The demise of indexicals: A case study Conclusion: Dispelling semantic myths References Index

The Cambridge handbook of pragmatics

The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics adopts a broad definition of pragmatics, presenting the main orientations in pragmatic research worldwide, incorporating seminal research as well as cutting-edge state-of-the-art solutions. In addition to the well-established post-Gricean philosophical accounts of intention and inference in communication, it includes lexical pragmatics, historical pragmatics, sociopragmatics, the pragmatics of utterance processing, and empirical approaches in pragmatic research. Against these perspectives, there is a section on applications of pragmatics to various types of expressions and phenomena which are of particular importance. The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics aims to offer unbiased and accessible introductions that present the many different points of view to be found in the current literature.

The 'default de re' principle for the interpretation of belief utterances

Abstract It is widely acknowledged in the literature that reports on beliefs of the type ‘A believes that B ϕs’ are systematically ambiguous between the de re reading, when they concern a particular, known individual or object, and de dicto reading, about whoever fits the name or description. It is argued in this paper that, in conversation, the de re interpretation is the more salient or ‘default’ interpretation of belief reports. This claim is derived from the argument that the referential interpretation is the more salient, ‘default’ reading of belief expressions of the form ‘B ϕs’. The paper presents an argument for the priority of the referential/de re interpretation based on the idea of intentionality of acts of consciousness. It puts forward a tripartite distinction for the interpretation of expressions of belief (‘B ϕs’) and reports on beliefs (‘A believes that B ϕs’). It is based on the distinction between referring correctly to a known individual, referring that involves a referential mistake, and talking about an unknown individual. This distinction on the level of belief expressions has been related to the distinction on the level of belief reports. Corresponding reports are called here de re, de dicto1 and de dicto2. Both distinctions are compared to the de relde dicto distinction on the level of belief. It is argued that these three levels of analysis are mutually dependent and indispensable for a pragmatic study of utterances expressing beliefs and belief reports.

Salience and defaults in utterance processing

The book addresses controversies around the conscious vs automatic processing of contextual information and the distinction between literal and nonliteral meaning. It sheds new light on the relation of the literal/nonliteral distinction to the distinction between the automatic and conscious retrieval of information. The question of literal meaning is inherently interwoven with the question of salience and defaults. This volume addresses these interconnected issues, stressing their mutual interdependence.

Meaning merger: Pragmatic inference, defaults, and compositionality

Abstract Kecskes: Linguistic underspecification of utterance content is widely accepted across different frameworks, including the neo-Gricean approaches (cf. Horn 2005; Levinson 2000) and relevance theory (Carston 2002, 2005; Sperber & Wilson 1986, 1995). There is also an agreement that if linguistic underdeterminacy is given, pragmatic inference is required if a hearer is to recover a speakers meaning successfully. In your Default Semantics, you reject the idea of underdetermined semantic representation, and offer an alternative approach in which semantic representation is established with the help of intentions in communication. This means that intentions “intrude” into the semantic representation, and the semantic and pragmatic components are interwoven. What are the advantages of this one-level semantics as opposed to the modular view? It can be argued that, in a way, Default Semantics is also a modular approach because intentions can be considered preverbal thoughts generated in the “conceptualizer” and linguistically shaped in the “formulator” using Levelts terminology (Levelt 1989, 1999). Do you agree with this line of thinking?

Relevance and infinity : Implications for discourse interpretation

Abstract The paper attempts to shed some light on two questions posed by Sperber and Wilson (1986): (1) How assumption schemas are filled out, and (2) What determines the order of accessibility of hypotheses in the process of utterance interpretation. The study brings together two theories coming from very different traditions: Relevance theory of Sperber and Wilson (1986) and the theory of conversation included in Levinass Totality and Infinity (1961). The present analysis suggests that psychological processes other than intention recognition affect the derivation and creation of assumptions and that they should be viewed as lying within the study of intention recovery. It will be demonstrated that the process of discourse interpretation is doubly dynamic : interpretation is created in-between the interlocutors and the hearer may be given freedom to create, rather than recover, assumptions.

DISCOURSE ABOUT BELIEFS

Discourse Representation Theory provides an adequate framework for representing sentences that express reports on beliefs. However, all the possible readings of a belief report which discriminate between different ways in which the individual is known to the believer are treated equally. In this paper I demonstrate that some of these readings are more salient than others to the hearer and the systematic gradation of this saliency is parallel to the degrees and types of intentions involved in uttering a belief report. I demonstrate how an account which makes use of referential, informative and communicative intentions supplements DRT and disposes of the need to postulate either ambiguities of reading of belief constructions or the underspecified semantic representation

Against ambiguity and underspecification: evidence from presupposition as anaphora

Abstract I propose a critical assessment of both the underspecification (sense-generality) and ambiguity positions. I argue that within the frameworks that espouse the dynamic approach to meaning construction, a non-ambiguous interpretation ensues. My Default Semantics that merges the logical form with the output of the intentionality of the corresponding mental states [Default semantics, pragmatics and intentions in Turner, ed. (1999); Disourse, Beliefs and Intentions (1999); The default-based context-dependence of belief reports in Jaszczolt, ed. (2000)] demonstrates that the concept of underspecification is redundant in the case of definite descriptions. In the case of apparently semantically ambiguous referring expressions, the speakers intentions interact with the logical form of the sentence and produce a unique propositional representation. The problem of ambiguity does not arise because intentions ‘intrude’ into the semantic representation. The view is compatible with pragmatic intrusionism of dynamic-semantic approaches such as Discourse Representation Theory. In this paper I present an argument against underspecification that comes from the approach to presupposition as anaphora by van der Sandt [J. Semantics (1992)] as supplemented by Krahmer and van Deemter [J. Semantics (1998)]. Van der Sandt suggests that presuppositional expressions are anaphoric expressions. When accounted for in terms of a dynamic semantic theory, they exhibit the capacity to bind to an antecedent or to accommodate in the relevant context, and these processes are aided by pragmatic factors. I propose an amendment to van der Sandts and Krahmer and van Deemters approach by demonstrating that where multiple representations are viable, they are ordered on the scale of preference that does not allow for ambiguities. I replace van der Sandts admittance of some degree of ambiguity of presuppositional anaphors with a scale of salience of possible anaphors, ranging from the default to the most unlikely one. Underspecification is not denied its theoretical status: if the theoretical discussion focuses on the theoretical question as to to what extent sentences have to be disambiguated for logical reasoning to proceed [van Deemter, J. Semantics (1998)], distinguishing the stage of underspecification is justified. Instead, I question the need for distinguishing underspecified representation as a separate stage in utterance interpretation, at least in the fragments of English that I have tested so far.

Time, perspective and semantic representation

Research leading to this paper was partially supported by The Leverhulme Trust grant Expressing the Self: Cultural Diversity and Cognitive Universals (Grant ID/Ref: RPG- 2014-017).