Towards a Typology of Defaults
in Utterance Interpretation
K. M. Jaszczolt
University of Cambridge
http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~kmj21
1
(1) Picasso’s painting was of a crying woman.
(2) The painting executed by Picasso was of a crying
woman.
(3) Many people liked Peter Carey’s new novel.
(4) Many, but not all, people liked Peter Carey’s new
novel.
(5) The baby cried and the mother picked it up.
(6) The baby cried and the the baby’s mother picked it
up.
2
Grice (1975): generalized conversational
implicature (GCI), context-independent
pragmatic inference
3
The process through which the enriched meaning is
arrived at by the addressee:
 Salient, unmarked meaning occurs independently of
the context (Horn, e.g. 1984, 2004, 2006; Levinson,
e.g. 1995, 2000; Recanati, e.g. 2003, 2004; Jaszczolt,
e.g. 1999, 2005, 2006a,b);
 Context-dependent pragmatic inference (Sperber and
Wilson, e.g. 1995; Carston, e.g. 1988, 2002)
4
Such pragmatic contributions are classified as:
 implicatures (Levinson);
 pragmatic input to what is said (Recanati, Jaszczolt);
 development of the logical form resulting in an
explicature (Sperber, Wilson, Carston);
 implicit in what is said (impliciture: Bach 1994, 2004,
2006; Horn 2006)
5
Some instances of pragmatic enrichment are
salient to the extent that justifies classifying
them as a separate category of default
interpretations, although they don’t necessarily
arise without (i) some form of inference or (ii)
some minimal help from the context.
6
“Whatever the theoretical status of the distinction, it is
apparent that some implicatures are induced only in a
special context (…), while others go through unless a
special context is present (…).”
Horn (2004: 4-5)
7
Some differences in using the term ‘default’:
 Cancellability (defeasibility) of salient meanings;
 Availability of salient meanings without conscious
inference (subdoxastically);
 Shorter processing time as compared with that
required for meanings recovered through inference;
 Local availability, before the processing of the
proposition has been completed (pre-propositional).
8
Default interpretation of the speaker’s utterance:
Salient meaning intended by the speaker, or presumed
by the addressee to have been intended, and
recovered (a) without the help of inference from the
speaker’s intentions or (b) without conscious inferential
process altogether.
9
Default interpretations in semantics and
pragmatics: a (very) brief overview
10
1. Bach’s (1984) default reasoning
‘jumping to conclusions’: context-dependent
inference is not always required; the addressee may
proceed, unconsciously, to the first available and
unchallenged alternative.




unconscious, effortless enrichment to a default
interpretation
‘shortcircuiting’ the process of conscious inference
standardisation
cancellable
11
2. Levinson’s (2000) presumptive meanings
 GCIs (but not Grice’s);
 Middle level between semantics and pragmatics;
 Arise through three heuristics: ‘What isn’t said isn’t’ (Q);
‘What is expressed simply is stereotypically
exemplified’ (I); ‘What’s said in an abnormal way isn’t
normal’ (M);
 Local
 Cancellable without contradiction (costly?)
12
3. Asher and Lascarides’ (2003) rhetorical
structure rules
Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT)
 Defaults are highly probable routes that an
interpretation of a sentence may take in a particular
situation of discourse;
 Rhetorical structure rules: e.g. Narration, Background;
 Defeasible reasoning (inference), produces strong
probabilities;
 Formal model of discourse without recourse to
speakers’ intentions;
 Defaults for actually occurring discourse (vs. Gricean);
 Relation between eventualities.
13
4. Defaults in Optimality-Theory Pragmatics
(Blutner and Zeevat 2004)
 Intention-based pragmatic constraints (formalization of
Levinson’s heuristics);
 Default interpretations arise through the optimization
procedure spelled out as a series of constraints (e.g.
STRENGTH: preference for informationally stronger
readings);
 Constraints are ranked and defeasible.
14
5. Defaults in Truth-Conditional Pragmatics
(Recanati 2002, 2003, 2004)
 Automatic, subdoxastic, direct, unreflective enrichment
of the output of syntax;
“…communication is as direct as perception”
Recanati 2002: 109);
 Produces the content that is truth-conditional (in an
interesting way);
 Context-free or context-dependent (GCIs and PCIs);
 Cancellable;
 Not inferential in the sense of processing.
15
6. Defaults in Default Semantics (Jaszczolt 2005,
2006b)
Utterance meaning is a merger of information from
the following sources:




Word meaning and sentence structure (WS)
(Conscious) pragmatic inference (CPI)
Cognitive defaults (CD)
Social-cultural defaults (SCD)
16
Default interpretations are the most salient (and
normally non-defeasible) interpretations arrived at by
a model speaker in a situation of discourse.
17
Stage I
combination of word meaning
and sentence structure
compositional
merger representation
conscious pragmatic inference1
social-cultural defaults1
cognitive defaults
Stage II

social-cultural defaults2

conscious pragmatic inference2
(7) You are not going to die.
(8) You are not going to die from this cut.
(9) There is nothing to worry about.
19
Cognitive defaults
(10) The architect who designed St Pauls’s cathedral was
a genius.
(11) Sir Christopher Wren was a genius.
20
xy
[Sir Christopher Wren]CD (x)
[St Paul’s cathedral]CD (y)
[[x]CD designed [y]CD]WS
Social-cultural defaults
(12) The baby cried and the mother picked it up.
(13) The baby cried and the baby’s mother picked it up.
22
 Automatic (subdoxastic) or using minimal inference;
 Context-free or context-dependent defaults (GCIs and
PCIs);
 Originate in the lexicon, grammar, the way human
cognition works; the way speakers construct their
social and cultural reality;
 Global, post-propositional;
 Not normally cancellable (non-defeasible).
23
Definitional Characteristics
of Default Interpretations
(1a)
(1b)
Defaults belong to competence.
Defaults belong to performance.
(2a)
(2b)
Defaults are context-independent.
Defaults can make use of contextual information.
(3a)
(3b)
Defaults are easily defeasible.
Defaults are not normally defeasible.
(4a)
(4b)
Defaults are a result of a subdoxastic, automatic process.
Defaults can sometimes involve conscious pragmatic
inference.
24
(5a)
(5b)
(6a)
(6b)
(7a)
(7b)
Defaults are developments of the logical form of the uttered
sentence.
Defaults need not enrich the logical form of the sentence
but may override it.
Defaults can all be classified as one type of pragmatic
process.
Defaults come from qualitatively different sources in
utterance processing.
Defaults are always based on a complete proposition.
Defaults can be ‘local’, ‘sub-propositional’, based on a word
or a phrase.
25
(8a)
(8b)
Defaults necessarily arise quicker than non-default
meanings. Hence they can be tested for experimentally by
measuring the time of processing of the utterance.
Defaults do not necessarily arise quicker than nondefault meanings because both types of meaning can be
based on conscious, effortful inference. Hence, the
existence of defaults cannot be tested experimentally by
measuring the time of processing of the utterance.
e.g. Levinson’s presumptive meanings are (1a), (3a), (7b), (8a).
26
Topics in need of investigation:
 Locality of defaults:
locality triggers greater cancellability and therefore
greater processing effort (Jaszczolt 2006a);
locality may come from the computational power of
grammar (Chierchia 2004; Landman 2000);
 Experimental testing for default interpretations:
current tests, e.g. Noveck 2001; Papafrafou and
Musolino 2003; Musolino 2004; Noveck 2004;
Bezuidenhout and Morris 2004) test only for ‘the
Default Model’ (Levinson’s presumptive meanings)
whereas, as (1)-(8) demonstrate, there is no single
‘default model’ to be discerned.
27
 Full typology of salient interpretations -- in view of their
different characteristics (1)-(8) and provenance (CD,
SCD).
28
There are no compelling arguments for a unitary
analysis of default meanings called ‘The Default View’
(e.g. Noveck and Sperber 2004). Instead, there are
many types of shortcuts through costly pragmatic
inference and they exhibit different properties.
Experimental pragmatics will have to take these
properties into consideration in designing experiments
for testing the default status of interpretations.
29
It is much harder to provide experimental evidence for
or against salient meanings that are so constructed
that they draw on some contextual information, arise
late in utterance processing, and are not normally
cancellable (i.e., unmarked meanings for the context).
30
Interim conclusions:
 There is no single category of default, salient, presumed
meanings. Default interpretations may exhibit various
combinations of the properties in (1)-(8).
 Default meanings have different sources such as (i) the properties
of human cognition (intentionality of mental states) or (ii) shared
cultural and social environment.
 All these characteristic features have to be represented in an
account of utterance interpretation.
 Merger representations of Default Semantics can account for
these properties and provenance of salient meanings.
31
Prediction
It may prove to be the case that salient interpretations
are just a polar end on the scales of degrees of
inference and degrees of context-dependence, rather
than being qualitatively different from clearly inferencebased and context-based interpretations.
***
This, however, does not undermine their raison d’être.
32
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