Summer Institute of the Chinese Cognitive Linguistics Association and the Mouton journal Intercultural Pragmatics

1
Summer Institute of the Chinese Cognitive
Linguistics Association and the Mouton journal
Intercultural PragmaticsCulture,
Communication, CognitionShanghai, 15-19 June
2008

• Pragmatic Inference and Default Interpretations
  in Current Theories of Discourse Meaning
• Kasia Jaszczolt
• University of Cambridge, U.K.
• http//people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/kmj21

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Utterance meaning

• (1) A Are you coming to the meeting in London on
  Monday?
• B I will be in Shanghai.
• Primary meaning
• (1a) B is not coming to the meeting.
• implicature
• (2) Everybody is applying for this job.
• Primary meaning
• (2a) Every eligible linguist the speaker knows is
  applying for this job.
• enrichment, modulation of what is said

3
?

• Speaker s meaning or Addressees meaning?
• Is the recovery of primary meaning in (1) and (2)
  governed by the same pragmatic processes?
• Do we need the distinction between implicature
  (new thought) (1) and modulation (thought
  conveyed by the uttered sentence) (2)?

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• Lecture 1 Grice and post-Griceans on pragmatic
  inference Introduction
• Lecture 2 Contextualism vs. semantic minimalism
• Lecture 3 Salient meanings the characteristics
  of default interpretations
• Lecture 4 Principles of Default Semantics

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• Lecture 1
• Grice and post-Griceans on pragmatic inference
  Introduction

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• A meantNN something by x
• A uttered x with the intention of inducing a
  belief by means of the recognition of this
  intention
• Grice (1957 in 1989 219)

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• U meant something by uttering x is true iff,
  for some audience A, U uttered x intending
• A to produce a particular response r
• A to think (recognize) that U intends (1)
• A to fulfil (1) on the basis of his fulfilment of
  (2).
• Grice (1969 in 1989 92)

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• Implicature
• Speaker is intentionally conveying more than the
  utterances content.
• Addressee is drawing inferences from the
  speakers utterance, regarding them as intended
  by the speaker.
• Content implicatum

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• Properties of conversational implicatures
• cancellability
• non-detachability
• calculability
• non-conventionality

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• Suppose that Alice and Sarah are in a crowded
  train Alice, who is obviously able-bodied, is
  sprawled across two seats, and Sarah is standing.
  Sarah says to Alice, Im curious as to whether
  it would be physically possible for you to make
  room for someone else to sit down. The
  implicature is that Alice should make room. It is
  extraordinarily unlikely that Sarah really is
  curious about whether Alice is physically capable
  of moving, since it is mutually obvious that she
  is capable. Accordingly, Sarah has flouted
  Grices first maxim of Quality (1989 27), Do
  not say what you believe to be false she
  obviously knows that what she says is false. This
  flouting indicates that her utterance is not to
  be taken literally. This is a

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• paradigmatic implicature, in which an utterance
  conveys something beyond what is literally said
  because the speaker is flouting a conversational
  maxim.
• Suppose now that Sarah adds, Not that you
  should make room Im just curious. This has the
  form of an explicit cancellation of the
  implicature. Nevertheless, the implicature is not
  cancelled. Sarah is still suggesting, even more
  rudely, that Alice should make room.
• Weiner (2006 128),
• see also reply by Blome-Tillmann 2008

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• ?
• Are all implicatures qualitatively different
  from what is said? Are they different when they
  act as main, primary, salient meanings?

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The standard post-Gricean view on what is said
vs. what is implicated

• Questions
• What principles govern utterance interpretation?
• How does pragmatic content interact with the
  semantic content?

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• Modified Occams Razor
• Senses are not to be multiplied beyond
  necessity.
• Grice (1978 in 1989 47)
• (3) Some British people like cricket.
• (3a) Some but not all British people like
  cricket.
• (4) Tom dropped a camera and it broke.
• (4a) Tom dropped a camera and as a result it
  broke.

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Question A

• Neo-Griceans
• Horn (1984, 1988, 2004)
• The Q Principle
• Make your contribution sufficient say as much
  as you can (given R). maximization of
  information content
• The R Principle
• Make your contribution necessary say no more
  than you must (given Q). minimization of form

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• Levinson (1987, 1995, 2000)
• Q-principle
• Dont provide a statement that is
  informationally weaker than your knowledge of the
  world allows, unless providing a stronger
  statement would contravene the I-principle.
• I often take sugar in my coffee gt not always
• I believe that John is away gt not know

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• I-principle
• Say as little as necessary, i. e. produce the
  minimal linguistic clues sufficient to achieve
  your communicational ends, bearing Q in mind.
• John turned the key and the engine started. gt
  and then
• Harry and Sue bought a piano. gt together

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• M-principle
• Do not use a prolix, obscure or marked
  expression without reason.
• Relative power of the principles QgtMgtI
• (9) John caused the car to stop. MgtI

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• Sperber and Wilson (1986/95)
• The principle of Relevance
• Interlocutors preserve the balance between the
  effort and the effect in conversation by
  minimising the expenditure, the processing
  effort, and at the same time maximising the
  information gained, the cognitive effect.

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• In Relevance, we make two fundamental claims,
  one about cognition, the other about
  communication
• Human cognition tends to be geared to the
  maximisation of relevance.
• Every act of ostensive communication communicates
  a presumption of its optimal relevance.
• Sperber Wilson (1995 260)

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Question B

• What is the content of what is said (the
  explicit content) vis-à-vis implicatures?
• Grice (1978) pragmatic processes of
  disambiguation (syntactic, lexical) and reference
  assignment to indexical expressions (e.g.
  pronouns, demonstrative phrases) may have to be
  taken into consideration before the sentences
  truth conditions can be assessed.

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• Kempson (1975, 1979, 1986) and Atlas (1977, 1979,
  1989, 2005)
• Negation in English should not be regarded as
  ambiguous between narrow-scope and wide-scope but
  as semantically underdetermined.
• The king of France is not bald.

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• Kempson (1975, 1979, 1986) and Atlas (1977, 1979,
  1989, 2005)
• Negation in English should not be regarded as
  ambiguous between narrow-scope and wide-scope but
  as semantically underdetermined.
• The king of France is not bald.
• ?x (KoF (x) ? ?y (KoF (y) ? y x) ? ? Bald (x))

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• Kempson (1975, 1979, 1986) and Atlas (1977, 1979,
  1989, 2005)
• Negation in English should not be regarded as
  ambiguous between narrow-scope and wide-scope but
  as semantically underdetermined.
• The king of France is not bald.
• ?x (KoF (x) ? ?y (KoF (y) ? y x) ? ? Bald (x))
• ?? (KoF (x) ? ?y (KoF (y) ? y x) ? Bald (x))

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• radical pragmatics
• sense-generality
• contextualism

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• Semantic analysis takes us only part of the way
  towards the recovery of utterance meaning.
  Pragmatic enrichment completes the process.
• Enrichment
• and gt and then, and as a result
• some gt some but not all
• everybody gt everybody in the room, every
  acquaintance of the speaker, etc.

27

• Modulation (Recanati 2004, 2005)
• The logical form becomes enriched/modulated as a
  result of pragmatic inference and the entire
  semantic/pragmatic product becomes subjected to
  the truth-conditional analysis.

28

• Explicature (Carston, Sperber, Wilson)
• What is said (Recanati)
• Primary meaning (Jaszczolt)

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• Explicature (Carston, Sperber, Wilson)
• What is said (Recanati)
• Primary meaning (Jaszczolt)
• ? Question
• How far can the logical form be extended? How
  much pragmatics is allowed in the semantic
  representation?

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• Logical form can be developed beyond the output
  of syntactic processing. Development stops as
  soon as optimal relevance is reached.
  Implicatures are functionally independent of such
  an enriched semantic representation
  (explicature). Functional Independence
  Principle (Carston).

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• Logical form can be developed beyond the output
  of syntactic processing. Development stops as
  soon as optimal relevance is reached.
  Implicatures are functionally independent of such
  an enriched semantic representation
  (explicature). Functional Independence
  Principle (Carston).
• Aspects of meaning are added to the
  truth-conditional content (what is said) when
  they conform to our pre-theoretic intuitions.
  Availability Principle (Recanati).

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• Such additions to the logical form (expansions,
  completions) constitute a separate, middle level,
  implicit in what is said (impliciture).
  Semantic minimalism (Bach, Horn).

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• Such additions to the logical form (expansions,
  completions) constitute a separate, middle level,
  implicit in what is said (impliciture).
  Semantic minimalism (Bach, Horn).
• The logical form of the sentence can not only be
  extended but also replaced by a new semantic
  representation when the primary, intended meaning
  demands it. Such extensions or substitutions are
  primary meanings and their representations are
  merger representations. Default Semantics
  (Jaszczolt). There is no syntactic constraint on
  merger representations.

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• (11) You are not going to die, Peter.
• (11a) There is no future time at which you will
  die, Peter.
• (11b) You are not going to die from this cut,
  Peter.
• (11c) There is nothing to worry about, Peter.

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• (11) You are not going to die, Peter.
• (11a) There is no future time at which you will
  die, Peter.
• (11b) You are not going to die from this cut,
  Peter.
• (11c) There is nothing to worry about, Peter.
• Truth-conditional content modelled in semantics
• Bach, Horn (11a) minimal proposition
• Carston, Recanati (11b) extended proposition
• Jaszczolt, Sysoeva (11c) substituted
  proposition (primary meaning)

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Particularized vs. generalized pragmatic
additions

• (11) You are not going to die, Peter.
• (11b) You are not going to die from this cut,
  Peter.
• (11c) There is nothing to worry about, Peter.
• (3) Some British people like cricket.
• (3a) Some but not all British people like
  cricket.
• (4) Tom dropped a camera and it broke.
• (4a) Tom dropped a camera and as a result it
  broke.

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• ?
• Where is the what is said/what is implicated
  boundary?

38

• ?
• Where is the what is said/what is implicated
  boundary?
• Where is the semantics/pragmatics boundary?
• (Lecture 2)

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• ?
• Where is the what is said/what is implicated
  boundary?
• Where is the semantics/pragmatics boundary?
• (Lecture 2)
• Is the recovery of the speakers intended meaning
  the result of pragmatic inference or is it
  automatic, default?
• (Lectures 3, 4)

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Summary so far

• The output of syntactic processing often leaves
  the meaning underdetermined.
• The underspecified logical form is further
  modified as a result of pragmatic processes
  (inference or automatic modifications).
• According to post-Gricean contextualists, this
  pragmatically modified representation is an
  object of truth-conditional analysis.

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• End of Lecture 1
• Thank you!

42
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