University of Cambridge, U.K. Summer Institute of the Chinese Cognitive Linguistics Association and the Mouton journal Intercultural Pragmatics ‘Culture, Communication, Cognition’ Shanghai, 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

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. (2a) Every eligible linguist the speaker knows is applying for this job. = enrichment, modulation of what is said

? Speaker’ s meaning or Addressee’s 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)?

Lecture 1:. Grice and post-Griceans on pragmatic 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

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

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)

“ ‘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)

Implicature: Speaker is intentionally conveying more than the utterance’s content. Addressee is drawing inferences from the speaker’s utterance, regarding them as intended by the speaker. Content = implicatum

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

“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, ‘I’m 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 Grice’s 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

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; I’m 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

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

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?

Modified Occam’s 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.

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

Levinson (1987, 1995, 2000): Q-principle: ‘Don’t 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 +> not always I believe that John is away +> not know

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. +> and then Harry and Sue bought a piano. +> together

‘Do not use a prolix, obscure or marked expression without reason.’ M-principle: ‘Do not use a prolix, obscure or marked expression without reason.’ Relative power of the principles: Q>M>I (9) John caused the car to stop. M>I

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.

‘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)

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 sentence’s truth conditions can be assessed.

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.

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))

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))

radical pragmatics sense-generality contextualism

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

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.

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

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?

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).

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).

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

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.

(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: (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)

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.

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

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

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

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.

End of Lecture 1 Thank you!

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