Default Semantics Workshop
University of Pisa, 8 May 2012
Kasia M. Jaszczolt
University of Cambridge
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/kmj21
1
 Part 1
Default Semantics and Interactive Semantics:
An introduction
 Part 2
Selected applications: Temporal reference in discourse
 Part 3
Selected applications: First-person reference in discourse
and beliefs de se
2
 Part 1
Default Semantics and Interactive Semantics:
An introduction
 Part 2
Selected applications: Temporal reference in discourse
 Part 3
Selected applications: First-person reference in discourse
and beliefs de se
3
Outline
 The Gricean legacy
 Minimalism vs. contextualism debates
 Interactive Semantics as a radical contextualist theory
4
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 1957 in 1989, p. 219
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).
6
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 children.’
‘Tom has three children, if not four.’
vs. deductive inference: ((p → q) ∧ p) → q)
7
Modified Occam’s Razor:
‘Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.’
Grice 1978 in 1989, p.47
8
Post-Gricean pragmatics:
?
Where is the boundary between semantics and
pragmatics?
9
 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 2005, 2010)
10
Some British people like cricket.
Some but not all British people like cricket.
Everybody read Frege.
Every member of the research group read Frege.
11
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.
12
Pragmatic enrichment of what is said is often automatic,
subconscious (Dafault/Interactive Semantics: ‘default’).
13
Truth-Conditional Pragmatics (Recanati 2004, 2010)
Truth conditions of an utterance are determined not only
by the assignment of values to indexicals (saturation) but
also by modulation (top-down pragmatic processes).
Recanati (2004: 90)
= contextualism
14
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.
15
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.
16
Beyond contextualism
?
How far can the logical form be extended? ‘How much
pragmatics’ is allowed in the representation of the primary
intended meaning of an utterance?
17
Semantic Minimalism
Minimal Semantics, Emma Borg (e.g. 2004, 2007)
Semantic theory must remain unaffected by pragmatic
considerations. Semantics is confined sentence meaning and to
accounting for deductive, formal operations.
“The truth-conditional semantic theory is governed, not by rich
(…) inferential processes, but rather by formally triggered,
deductive operations.”
Borg (2004: 8)
18
‘That is red’ is true iff the contextually salient object is red.
‘Steel isn’t strong enough’ is true iff steel isn’t strong enough for
something or other, salient in the context.
19
Semantic Minimalism?
Insensitive Semantics, Cappelen and Lepore (e. g. 2005)
A truth condition can be produced for a sentence even if we are
not in a position to discern possible situations that would verify
it. It is a mistake to assume that a semantic theory should
account for speakers’ intuitions about the content of the
utterance, i.e. about the speaker’s meaning.
20
Semantic Minimalism ?
Insensitive Semantics, Cappelen and Lepore (e. g. 2005)
A truth condition can be produced for a sentence even if we are
not in a position to discern possible situations that would verify
it. It is a mistake to assume that a semantic theory should
account for speakers’ intuitions about the content of the
utterance, i.e. about the speaker’s meaning.
Semantically context-sensitive expressions: personal pronouns
(‘I’, ‘he’); demonstrative pronouns (‘this’, ‘that’); adverbs (‘here’,
‘there’, ‘now’, ‘today’, ‘yesterday’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘ago’, ‘henceforth’);
adjectives (‘actual’ and ‘present’); tense.
21
Radical Semantic Minimalism, Bach (e. g. 2004, 2007)
“The semantics-pragmatics distinction is not fit to be blurred. What
lies on either side of the distinction, the semantic and the pragmatic,
may each be messy in various ways, but that doesn’t blur the distinction
itself. Taken as properties of sentences, semantic properties are on a par
with syntactic and phonological properties: they are linguistic
properties. Pragmatic properties, on the other hand, belong to acts of
uttering sentences in the course of communicating.”
Bach (2004: 27)
against propositionalism
22
State of the Art:
There are several contextualist approaches to semantics
and several minimalist ones and the debate is continuing.
23
Towards radical contextualism
?
How far can the logical form be extended? ‘How much
pragmatics’ is allowed in the representation of the primary
intended meaning of an utterance?
24
Default Semantics (Jaszczolt 2005, 2009, 2010)
Interactive Semantics (Jaszczolt, in progress, OUP)
Parsimony of Levels Principle (POL):
Levels of senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.
A:
B:
I’ve cut my finger.
You are not going to die!
Primary, main meaning: ‘There is nothing to worry about.’
25
Default Semantics abandons the syntactic constraint adopted on
other post-Gricean contextualist accounts according to which the
explicit content (explicature, what is said) has to be the
development of the logical form (i.e. has to be added to the output of
syntactic processing) of the sentence.
Primary meaning is defined as the most salient meaning intended
by the speaker and recovered by the addressee and it may
sometimes override the logical form of the sentence, as in B above.
26
Primary Intention Principle (PI):
The primary role of intention in communication is to secure the referent
of the speaker's utterance.
‘The winner of the Nobel Prize for literature 2010 is a good writer.’
referential (Mario Vargas Llosa) > attributive (whoever received the
prize)
27
Degrees of Intentions Principle (DI):
Intentions come in various strength, i.e. they allow for degrees.
‘Ralph believes that the best architect designed Sagrada Família.’
de re (Antoni Gaudí) > de dicto1 (Simon Guggenheim) > de dicto2
(whoever designed that church)
28
Merger representations
What is expressed in the lexicon in one
language may be expressed by grammar in
another.
29
Merger representations
What is expressed in the lexicon in one
language may be expressed by grammar in
another.
What is expressed overtly in one language may
be left to pragmatic inference or default
interpretation in another.
30
e.g. sentential connectives:
Wari’ (Chapacura-Wanham, the Amazon)
Tzeltal (Mayan, Mexico)
no ‘or’
Maricopa (Yuman, Arizona)
Guugu Yimithirr (Australian Aboriginal)
no ‘and’
no ‘if’
cf. Mauri & van der Auwera 2012.; Evans & Levinson 2009
31
English ‘and’
Tom finished the chapter and closed the book.
and +> and then
Tom finished the chapter and then closed the book.
Tom finished the chapter. He closed the book.
32
rhetorical structure rules, Asher and Lascarides 2003
Narration:
Tom finished the chapter. He closed the book.
e1

e2
33
No ‘or’ in Wari’?
Absence of a disjunctive marker  presence of some irrealis marker
’am
perhaps
’e’
live
ca
’am
mi’
3SG.M. Perhaps give
pin
ca
complete 3SG.M.
‘Either he will live or he will die.’
from Mauri and van der Auwera (2012: 391)
34
‘…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)
35
Composition of meaning
 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)
36
Pragmatic, interactive compositionality (post-Gricean
contextualists, e.g. Recanati’s Truth-Conditional
Pragmatics; Jaszczolt’s Default Semantics)
37
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’.
38
 What are they?
 vF&M (2008):
(i) some universal semantic composition principles
(ii) Gricean principles of utterance interpretation
 semantic/pragmatic processing principles
39
‘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)
40
Compositionality is a semantic universal
41
Conceptual structure in Default Semantics
 Unit of analysis
 Sources of information contributing to the unit
 Pragmatic compositionality
 Merger representations: towards a formalization
42
?
How far can the logical form be extended? ‘How much
pragmatics’ is allowed in the semantic representation?
43
 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 in Default
Semantics. There is no syntactic constraint on merger
representations.
44
 Object of study of the theory of meaning:
Discourse meaning intended by Model Speaker and
recovered by Model Addressee (primary meaning)
45
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).
46
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.
47
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.
48
Child:
Mother:
(a)
(b)
Can I climb the Leaning Tower?
You are too small.
The child is too small to climb the Leaning Tower of
Pisa.
The child can’t climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
49
Child:
Mother:
(a)
(b)
Can I climb the Leaning Tower?
You are too small.
The child is too small to climb the Leaning Tower of
Pisa.
The child can’t climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
50
Interlocutors frequently communicate their main intended
content through a proposition which is not syntactically
restricted.
Experimental evidence:
Nicolle and Clark 1999
Pitts 2005
Sysoeva and Jaszczolt 2007
Schneider 2009
51
Merger Representation 
 Primary meanings are modelled as the so-called merger
representations.
52
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.
53
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.
54
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.
55
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)
56
SC
A Botticelli was stolen from the Uffizi last week.
A painting by Botticelli was stolen from the Uffizi
Gallery in Florence last week.
57
IS
The author of Wolf Hall is visiting Cambridge this
spring.
Hilary Mantel is visiting Cambridge this spring.
58
world knowledge (WK)
word meaning and sentence structure (WS)
merger representation Σ
situation of discourse (SD)
stereotypes and presumptions
about society and culture (SC)
properties of human inferential system (IS)
Fig. 1: Sources of information contributing to a merger representation Σ
59
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.
60
Primary meaning:
combination of word meaning
and sentence structure (WS)
merger representation Σ
social, cultural and
cognitive defaults (CD)
world-knowledge defaultspm (SCWDpm)
conscious pragmatic inference pm
(from situation of discourse, social and
cultural assumptions, and world
knowledge) (CPIpm)
Secondary meanings:
 Social, cultural and world-knowledge defaultssm (SCWDsm)
 conscious pragmatic inferencesm (CPIsm)
Fig. 2: Utterance interpretation according to the processing model of the revised
version of Default Semantics
61
Mapping between sources and processes
WK
SC
WS
SD
IS





SCWD or CPI
SCWD or CPI
WS (logical form)
CPI
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.
62
Merger representations are
compositional.
63
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)
64
or:
Compositionality should be an empirical assumption about
the nature of possible human languages.
Szabó (2000)
65
Fodor (2008)
compositionality on the level of referential
properties (for Mentalese)
66
Selected applications of DS
 Origins: Jaszczolt 1992, 1999. Parsimony of Levels (POL)
Principle: Levels of senses are not to be multiplied beyond
necessity.
 First applications: definite descriptions, proper names, and
belief reports (Jaszczolt 1997, 1999); negation and discourse
connectives (Lee 2002); presupposition, sentential connectives,
number terms (Jaszczolt 2005)
 Recent applications: temporality, and modality (Jaszczolt 2009;
Srioutai 2004, 2006; Jaszczolt and Srioutai 2012; Engemann
2008; Jaszczolt forthcoming a,b); syntactic constraint on primary
meaning (Sysoeva and Jaszczolt 2007; Schneider 2009; Jaszczolt
2012); first-person reference and de se belief reports (Jaszczolt
forthcoming c, d)
67
Definite NPs in English
The author of Wolf Hall is coming to Cambridge.

The author of Wolf Hall (whoever he or she is) is
coming to Cambridge.

Hilary Mantel is coming to Cambridge.

Michael Morpurgo is coming to Cambridge.
68
 Degrees of Intentions (DI) Principle:
Intentions and intentionality allow for degrees.
 Primary Intention (PI) Principle:
The primary role of intention in communication is to
secure the referent of the speaker’s utterance.
Jaszczolt (1999: xix)
69
x
[Hilary Mantel]CD (x)

[[x]CD is coming to Cambridge]]WS
Fig. 3: Partial merger representation for the default referential reading of ‘The
author of Wolf Hall is coming to Cambridge’.
70
x
[Michael Morpurgo]CPIpm (x)

[[x]CPIpm is coming to Cambridge]]WS
Fig. 4: Partial merger representation for the referential mistake reading of ‘The
author of Wolf Hall is coming to Cambridge’.
71
xy

[Wolf Hall]CD (y)
[the author of y]WS, CPIpm (x)
[[x]CPIpmis coming to Cambridge]]WS
Fig. 5: Partial merger representation for the attributive reading of ‘The author of
Wolf Hall is coming to Cambridge’.
72
Cancellability and the syntactic constraint (Jaszczolt 2009b)
H1
Cancellability applies equally to explicit and implicit
content.
H2
Primary meanings, be it explicit or implicit, are more
difficult to cancel than secondary meanings.
73
Cancellation of explicit meaning which functions as secondary meaning

A and B are talking about a family
dinner, remarking on the fact that it consisted of five courses.
A: Was the food good?
B: Some people liked mum’s cake.
(+>PM The food at the family dinner was not particularly
good.)
(+>SM Some but not all people liked mum’s cake.)
In fact, all of them did but this didn’t save the dinner.
= non-arising or promptly cancelled
74
(ii) Primary meaning cancelled
x
A and B are talking about a family dinner.
A: Was the food good?
B: Some people liked mum’s cake.
(+>PM The food at the family dinner was not particularly
good.)
But that is not to say that other courses were bad, I was
late and arrived only for the dessert.
= pragmatically ill-formed
75
 Potential ‘implicatures’ functioning as primary meanings
differ from potential ‘implicatures’ functioning as
secondary meanings with respect to the property of
cancellability. Potential main, intended meanings are
considerably entrenched.
76
 Cancellation supports the DS primary/secondary meaning
distinction and the rejection of the Syntactic Constraint
77
Summary
 Radical contextualism without the syntactic
constraint
 Primary/secondary distinction as orthogonal to
the explicit/implicit distinction
 Pragmatic compositionality
78
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