In this pioneering book Katarzyna Jaszczolt lays down the foundations of an original theory of meaning in discourse, reveals the cognitive foundations of discourse interpretation, and puts forward a new basis for the analysis of discourse processing. She provides a step-by-step introduction to the theory and its application, and explains new terms and formalisms as required. Dr. Jaszczolt unites the precision of truth-conditional, dynamic approaches with insights from neo-Gricean pragmatics into the role of speaker's intentions in communication. She shows that the compositionality of meaning may be understood as merger representations combining information from various sources including word meaning and sentence structure, various kinds of default interpretations, and conscious pragmatic inference. Among the applications the author discusses are constructions that pose problems in semantic analysis such as referring expressions, propositional attitude constructions, presupposition, modality, numerals, and sentential connectives. She proposes solutions to cutting edge problems in the semantics/pragmatics interface - for example, how many levels of meaning should be distinguished; the status of underspecification; how much contextual information should be placed in the representation of the speaker's meaning; whether there are default interpretations; the stage of utterance interpretation at which pragmatic inference begins; and whether compositionality is a necessary feature of the theory of meaning and if so how it is to be defined.The book is for students and researchers in semantics, pragmatics, computational linguistics, and philosophy of language at advanced undergraduate level and above.
Author(s): K. M. Jaszczolt
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 304
0199261989......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
Preface......Page 12
List of Abbreviations and Symbols......Page 14
Introduction......Page 16
Part I. Foundations......Page 22
1.1 The semantics/pragmatics merger......Page 24
1.2 Questioning underspecification......Page 33
1.3 Questioning logical form......Page 40
1.4 Questioning what is said......Page 42
1.5 Questioning the middle level of meaning......Page 45
1.6 Representations in rich dynamic semantics......Page 49
1.7 Representations and conscious inference......Page 54
2.1 Varieties of defaults......Page 61
2.2 Cognitive defaults......Page 68
2.3 Cultural and social defaults......Page 74
2.4 Staying on the semantic track......Page 82
2.5 Limitations......Page 87
3.1 Compositional meaning......Page 91
3.2 Rethinking compositional semantics......Page 94
3.3 Metacompositionality......Page 103
3.4 Foundations of a formal account......Page 106
3.5 Cognitive principles for merger representations......Page 117
Part II. Some Applications......Page 124
4.1 Default referential, non-default referential, and attributive readings......Page 126
4.2 Definite descriptions in merger representations......Page 129
4.3 Definite descriptions, proper names, and indexicals: degrees of referring?......Page 136
5.1 Context-dependent substitutivity......Page 141
5.2 Degrees of mode of presentation......Page 146
5.3 Merger representations for belief reports......Page 152
6.1 Futurity and the uses of will: two interrelated problems......Page 168
6.2 The modality of will......Page 170
6.3 Future as modality......Page 176
6.4 The analysis......Page 178
6.5 Conclusions......Page 195
6.6 Temporality as modality: some open questions and further extensions......Page 196
7.1 Binding and accommodation......Page 208
7.2 Genuine ambiguity of partial matches?......Page 210
7.3 Presupposition and focus......Page 213
7.4 Other principles for selecting anaphors......Page 214
7.5 Scales and defaults for presuppositional anaphors......Page 217
7.6 Summary......Page 223
8.1 The optimist’s approach to sentential connectives and the Gricean legacy......Page 226
8.2 Summary: the unitary DS account......Page 239
8.3 Future projections......Page 240
9.1 Number terms and number concepts......Page 243
9.2 Exact value, ‘absolute value’, and default use......Page 246
9.3 Merger representations for CD and CPI 1 readings of cardinal number terms......Page 251
9.4 Summary and further directions......Page 255
10.1 ‘Pragmatic’ truth conditions and dynamic ‘semantics’......Page 260
10.2 The scope of Default Semantics......Page 262
References......Page 264
A......Page 282
B......Page 283
C......Page 284
D......Page 285
E......Page 287
G......Page 288
I......Page 289
L......Page 290
M......Page 291
P......Page 293
R......Page 295
S......Page 296
T......Page 298
U......Page 299
Z......Page 300
