This paper offers a critical assessment of the grammatical view of scalar inferences by Chierchia... more This paper offers a critical assessment of the grammatical view of scalar inferences by Chierchia, Fox & Spector 2012, focusing on the inadequacies that the authors find in the Gricean account, among the most important ones, the local character that these inferences often have and the role that the maxims play in the selection of alternatives to be considered. The problems facing the notion of lexical scale, key to the grammatical account, are also discussed. It is argued that the locality of these inferences in no way compromises their pragmatic nature, but make it evident that the grammar and the inferential system interact in the construction of the compositional content of the utterance.
This paper examines Bach's proposal (Bach, Kent, 1994a. Conversational impliciture. Mind and Lang... more This paper examines Bach's proposal (Bach, Kent, 1994a. Conversational impliciture. Mind and Language 9: 124-162. Bach, Kent, 1994b. Semantic slack: What is said and more. In: S. L. Tsohatzidis, ed., Foundations of speech act theory, 267-291. London: Routledge. Bach, Kent, 1998. Standardization revisited. In: A. Kasher, ed., Pragmatics: Critical concepts, 712-722. London: Routledge.) to add a third level of representation-the 'impliciture'-to the two generally accepted levels of 'what is said' and 'what is implicated' by a certain utterance. Here, I test this proposal, looking at the overall process of interpretation in the utterances he analyzes, beginning with what he takes to be their literal meaning ('what is said' by them). I will show that Bach's distinctions give rise to semantic and pragmatic problems. In some cases, this is because the literal meanings he posits are overdetermined; in others, it is because they are underspecified. Following Carston (Bach, Kent, 1998. Standardization revisited. In: A. Kasher, ed., Pragmatics: Critical concepts, 712-722. London: Routledge.), I will argue that there does not seem to be a role for Bach's level of 'what is said' in a psychologically plausible theory of utterance interpretation. #
In this paper we look into the notion of unarticulated constituent (UC) as characterised by Relev... more In this paper we look into the notion of unarticulated constituent (UC) as characterised by Relevance theorists and the philosopher Francois Recanati. We show that postulating that constituents are added to the proposition expressed subject only to pragmatic restrictions, as they do, makes empirically wrong predictions and leaves a number of interpretation phenomena unexplained. We argue that the need for UCs arises inevitably for pragmatic approaches that subscribe to the thesis of the underdeterminacy of linguistic content --as we do --, but which view the syntax of the surface sequence as the only source of structural complexity. We defend an alternative view of how language articulates content and how it interacts with context which combines insights from both Conceptual Semantics and Dynamic Syntax which can accommodate the recovery of unpronounced constituents of the proposition expressed in terms of constraints on the construction of logical/conceptual representations along the same lines as the recovery of any content derived from overt linguistic input. We focus our discussion on three alleged major sources of UCs: implicit arguments, subsentential utterances and optional modification. (B. Vicente), [email protected] (M. Groefsema).
This paper offers a critical assessment of the grammatical view of scalar inferences by Chierchia... more This paper offers a critical assessment of the grammatical view of scalar inferences by Chierchia, Fox & Spector 2012, focusing on the inadequacies that the authors find in the Gricean account, among the most important ones, the local character that these inferences often have and the role that the maxims play in the selection of alternatives to be considered. The problems facing the notion of lexical scale, key to the grammatical account, are also discussed. It is argued that the locality of these inferences in no way compromises their pragmatic nature, but make it evident that the grammar and the inferential system interact in the construction of the compositional content of the utterance.
This paper examines Bach's proposal (Bach, Kent, 1994a. Conversational impliciture. Mind and Lang... more This paper examines Bach's proposal (Bach, Kent, 1994a. Conversational impliciture. Mind and Language 9: 124-162. Bach, Kent, 1994b. Semantic slack: What is said and more. In: S. L. Tsohatzidis, ed., Foundations of speech act theory, 267-291. London: Routledge. Bach, Kent, 1998. Standardization revisited. In: A. Kasher, ed., Pragmatics: Critical concepts, 712-722. London: Routledge.) to add a third level of representation-the 'impliciture'-to the two generally accepted levels of 'what is said' and 'what is implicated' by a certain utterance. Here, I test this proposal, looking at the overall process of interpretation in the utterances he analyzes, beginning with what he takes to be their literal meaning ('what is said' by them). I will show that Bach's distinctions give rise to semantic and pragmatic problems. In some cases, this is because the literal meanings he posits are overdetermined; in others, it is because they are underspecified. Following Carston (Bach, Kent, 1998. Standardization revisited. In: A. Kasher, ed., Pragmatics: Critical concepts, 712-722. London: Routledge.), I will argue that there does not seem to be a role for Bach's level of 'what is said' in a psychologically plausible theory of utterance interpretation. #
In this paper we look into the notion of unarticulated constituent (UC) as characterised by Relev... more In this paper we look into the notion of unarticulated constituent (UC) as characterised by Relevance theorists and the philosopher Francois Recanati. We show that postulating that constituents are added to the proposition expressed subject only to pragmatic restrictions, as they do, makes empirically wrong predictions and leaves a number of interpretation phenomena unexplained. We argue that the need for UCs arises inevitably for pragmatic approaches that subscribe to the thesis of the underdeterminacy of linguistic content --as we do --, but which view the syntax of the surface sequence as the only source of structural complexity. We defend an alternative view of how language articulates content and how it interacts with context which combines insights from both Conceptual Semantics and Dynamic Syntax which can accommodate the recovery of unpronounced constituents of the proposition expressed in terms of constraints on the construction of logical/conceptual representations along the same lines as the recovery of any content derived from overt linguistic input. We focus our discussion on three alleged major sources of UCs: implicit arguments, subsentential utterances and optional modification. (B. Vicente), [email protected] (M. Groefsema).
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