Beijing Normal University, 31 May 2013

1. Beijing Normal University, 31 May 2013 Interactive Semantics: Rethinking the Composition of Meaning Kasia M. Jaszczolt University of Cambridge http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/kmj21

2. Outline: • Contextualism about meaning • Default Semantics and Interactive Semantics • Example: Representing time in discourse

3. Paul Grice: Intentions ‘A meantNN something by x’: A uttered x with the intention of inducing a belief by means of the recognition of this intention. Grice (1989: 219)

4. Implicature (implicatum) Inferences that are drawn from an utterance. They are seen by the hearer as being intended by the speaker. Speakers implicate, hearers infer (Horn 2004).

5. Implicature (implicatum) Inferences that are drawn from an utterance. They are seen by the hearer as being intended by the speaker. Speakers implicate, hearers infer (Horn 2004). Inference in implicature is cancellable: ‘Tom has three cats.’ ‘Tom has three cats, if not four.’ vs. deductive inference: ((p → q) ∧ p) → q)

6. Modified Occam’s Razor: ‘Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.’ Grice (1989: 47)

7. Post-Gricean pragmatics: ? Where is the boundary between semantics and pragmatics?

8.  Contextualism (currently dominant view) ‘... what is said turns out to be, in a large measure, pragmatically determined. Besides the conversational implicatures, which are external to (and combine with) what is said, there are other nonconventional, pragmatic aspects of utterance meaning, which are constitutive of what is said.’ Recanati (1989: 98; see also Recanati 2004, 2010, 2012)

9. Some British people like cricket. Some but not all British people like cricket. Everybody read Frege. Every member of the research group read Frege.

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

11. Pragmatic enrichment of what is said is often automatic, subconscious (Dafault/Interactive Semantics: ‘default’).

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. Minimalism/contextualism debate ‘Is semantic interpretation a matter of holistic guesswork (like the interpretation of kicks under the table), rather than an algorithmic, grammar-driven process as formal semanticists have claimed? Contextualism: Yes. Literalism: No. (…) Like Stanley and the formal semanticists, I maintain that the semantic interpretation is grammar-driven.’ Recanati (2012: 148)

15. K.M. Jaszczolt, 2005, Default Semantics: Foundations of a Compositional Theory of Acts of Communication, Oxford: Oxford University Press. • K. M. Jaszczolt, 2010. ‘Default Semantics’. In: B. Heine and H. Narrog (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 215-246. • K. M. Jaszczolt, in progress, Interactive Semantics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

16. Conceptual structure in Default Semantics • Unit of analysis • Sources of information contributing to the unit • Pragmatic compositionality • Merger representations: towards a formalization

17. ? How far can the logical form be extended? ‘How much pragmatics’ is allowed in the semantic representation?

18. 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 meaningsand their representations are merger representations in Default Semantics.There is no syntactic constraint on merger representations.

19. Object of study of the theory of meaning: • Discourse meaning intended by Model Speaker and recovered by Model Addressee (primary meaning)

20. Radical contextualism DS does not recognize the level of meaning at which the logical form is pragmatically developed/modulated as a real, interesting, and cognitively justified construct. To do so would be to assume that syntax plays a privileged role among various carriers of information (contextualists’ mistake).

21. Child to mother: Everybody has a bike. (a) All of the child’s friends have bikes. (b) Many/most of the child’s classmates have bikes. (c)The mother should consider buying her son a bike. (d)Cycling is a popular form of exercise among children.

22. Child to mother: Everybody has a bike. (a) All of the child’s friends have bikes. (b) Many/most of the child’s classmates have bikes. (c)The mother should consider buying her son a bike. (d) Cycling is a popular form of exercise among children.

23. Interlocutors frequently communicate their main intended content through a proposition which is not syntactically restricted. Experimental evidence: Pitts 2005 Sysoeva and Jaszczolt 2007 Schneider 2009

24. Merger Representation  • Primary meanings are modelled as the so-called merger representations.

25. Merger Representation  • Primary meanings are modelled as merger representations. • The outputs of sources of information about meaning merge and all the outputs are treated on an equal footing.

26. Merger Representation  • Primary meanings are modelled as the so-called merger representations. • The outputs of sources of information about meaning merge and all the outputs are treated on an equal footing. The syntactic constraint is abandoned. • Merger representations have the status of mental representations.

27. Merger Representation  • Primary meanings are modelled as merger representations. • The outputs of sources of information about meaning merge and all the outputs are treated on an equal footing. The syntactic constraint is abandoned. • Merger representations have the status of mental representations. • They have a compositional structure: they are proposition-like, truth-conditionally evaluable constructs.

28. Sources of information for  (i) world knowledge (WK) (ii)word meaning and sentence structure (WS) (iii)situation of discourse (SD) (iv) properties of the human inferential system (IS) (v)stereotypes and presumptions about society and culture (SC)

29. SC A Botticelli was stolen from the Uffizi last week. A painting by Botticelli was stolen from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy last week.

30. IS The author of Wolf Hall is visiting Cambridge this spring. Hilary Mantel is visiting Cambridge this spring.

32. The model of sources of information can be mapped onto types of processes that produce the merger representation  of the primary meaning and the additional (secondary) meanings.

34. Mapping between sources and processes WK  SCWD or CPI SC  SCWD or CPI WS  WS (logical form) SD  CPI IS  CD In building merger representations DS makes use of the processing model and it indexes the components of  with a subscript standing for the type of processing.

35. Parsimony of LevelsPrinciple (POL): Levels of senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. A: I’ve cut my finger. B: You are not going to die! Primary, main meaning: ‘There is nothing to worry about.’

36. Merger representations What is expressed in the lexicon in one language may be expressed by grammar in another.

37. Merger representations What is expressed in the lexicon in one language may be expressed by grammar in another. What is expressed overtly in onelanguage may be left to pragmatic inference or default interpretation in another.

38. e.g. sentential connectives: Wari’ (Chapacura-Wanham, the Amazon) Tzeltal (Mayan, Mexico) no ‘or’ Maricopa (Yuman, Arizona) no ‘and’ Guugu Yimithirr (Australian Aboriginal) no ‘if’ cf. Mauri & van der Auwera 2012; Evans & Levinson 2009

39. English ‘and’ Tom finished the chapter andclosed the book. and +> and then Tom finished the chapter and then closed the book. Tom finished the chapter. He closed the book.

40. ‘…while perhaps none of the logical connectives are universally lexically expressed, there is no evidence that languages differ in whether or not logical connectives are present in their logical forms’. von Fintel & Matthewson (2008: 170)

41. Merger representations are compositional.

42. Compositionality is a methodological principle: ‘…it is always possible to satisfy compositionality by simply adjusting the syntactic and/or semantic tools one uses, unless that is, the latter are constrained on independent grounds.’ Groenendijk and Stokhof (1991: 93)

43. Compositionality should be an empirical assumption about the nature of possible human languages. Szabó (2000)

44. Fodor (2008) compositionality on the level of referential properties (for Mentalese)

45. Compositionality disputes • Ascribing generative capacity to syntax (Chomsky and followers) • Compositionality as a property of semantics • Montague and followers, e.g. DRT, DPL, representationalism • Evans and Levinson (2009), generative power of semantics/pragmatics (conceptual structure)

46. Interactive compositionality (Default Semantics/Interactive Semantics)

47. von Fintel and Matthewson (2008: 191): ‘We found that languages often express strikingly similar truth conditions, in spite of non-trivial differences in lexical semantics or syntax. We suggested that it may therefore be fruitful to investigate the validity of ‘purely semantic’ universals, as opposed to syntax-semantics universals’.

48. What are they? • vF&M (2008): (i) some universal semantic composition principles (ii) Gricean principles of utterance interpretation  semantic/pragmatic processing principles

49. ‘For our generativist critics, generality is to be found at the level of structural representation; for us, at the level of process’ Evans and Levinson (2009: 475)

50. Interactive Semantics: Compositionality is a semantic universal