Towards a cognitively viable linguistic representation

Pragmatics and Cognition 15. 2007. 41-64. Revised and reprinted in: A. Capone, F. Kiefer & F. Lo Piparo, eds, 2016, Indirect Reports and Pragmatics: Interdisciplinary Studies, Dordrecht: Springer, 383-404

This paper is a voice in the ongoing discussion on the source and properties of pragmatic inference that contributes to the representation of discourse meaning. One of the most promising orientations in this debate is truth-conditional pragmatics (TCP, Recanati 2002. TCP recognizes so-called 'top-down' pragmatic processes that contribute to the truth-conditionally evaluable representation of meaning while not being grammatically controlled. It subscribes to contextualism, a standpoint according to which this pragmatic contribution is always present. In other words, utterances are always processed in context and this context affects their interpretation (see . In contextualism, 'there is no level of meaning which is both (i) propositional (truthevaluable) and (ii) minimalist, that is, unaffected by top-down factors'. (Recanati 2004: 90). In this paper, I start off from the contextualist standpoint and develop a proposal of representations of utterance meaning, the so-called merger representations, that incorporate the output of such pragmatic inference. The move from TCP to pragmatics-rich semantics of acts of communication is facilitated by rethinking the compositionality of meaning and predicating compositionality of such pragmatics-rich structures. I argue that the advantage of 'semanticizing' the output of pragmatic sources of meaning is that we can relax the view on compositionality of meaning and offer an algorithm of the interaction of such sources where the requirement of compositionality is imposed on the output of the interaction rather than on the output of the syntactic processing of the sentence. This proposal is applied to belief reports for which it offers representations of their various readings.

The Handbook of Pragmatics, 2006

Truth-Conditional Pragmatics, 2010

In: L. Cummings, ed., 2010, The Pragmatics Encyclopedia, London: Routledge, 458-462

Semantics and pragmatics have both developed sophisticated methods of analysis of meaning. The question to address is whether their objects of study can be teased apart or whether each sub-discipline accounts for different contributions (in the sense of qualitatively different outputs or different types of processes) that produce one unique object called 'meaning'. Traditionally, semantics was responsible for compositionally construed sentence meaning, in which the meanings of lexical items and the structure in which they occur were combined. The best developed approach to sentence meaning is undoubtedly truth-conditional semantics. Its formal methods permit the translation of vague and ambiguous sentences of natural language into a precise metalanguage of predicate logic and provide a model-theoretic interpretation to so construed logical forms. Pragmatics was regarded as a study of utterance meaning, and hence meaning in context, and was therefore an enterprise with a different object of study. However, the boundary between them began to be blurred, giving rise to the so-called semantic underdetermination view. Semantic underdetermination was a revolutionary idea for the theory of linguistic meaning. It was a reaction to generative semantics of the 1960s and 1970s which attempted to give syntactic explanations to inherently pragmatic phenomena. We have to note the importance of the Oxford ordinary language philosophers (others, in opening up the way for the study of pragmatic inference and its contribution to truth-

Philosophical Perspectives, 2018

Journal of Pragmatics, 2003

The avowed aim of this first volume in the Current Research in the Semantics/ Pragmatics Interface series is, according to its editor, ''to begin to take some steps to reducing the heat of [.. .] discussions [relating to how linguistically-conveyed meaning should be defined, and therefore studied; M.T.] and to begin to increase the light that might profitably be shed on some of the problems of interdigitating content and context'' (p. 14). It is in the light of this pronouncement that the current review will assess the contribution made by the 15 articles of this volume to the ongoing debate regarding the boundary between semantics and pragmatics, and whether there should be any such. In the 'Introduction', Ken Turner prepares the ground for the volume, if not the entire series, by tracing the development from semantics to pragmatics (and back again). Carnap's distinction between ''pure'' and ''descriptive'' studies, Montague's model theoretic semantics, Gricean pragmatics, and finally current dynamic semantic approaches serve as intellectual milestones in this broad classification of modern approaches to linguistic meaning. The boundaries of the canvas are thus set out, while the details remain to be filled in. This is no small feat, given the introduction's intended brevity (implicit in the subtitle ''seven-inch version''), and it is accomplished in an informative, critical, and entertaining fashion. In Chapter 1, 'Discourse structure and the logic of conversation', Nicholas Asher picks up the discussion where the introduction left it, arguing for a way of potentially reconciling (Gricean) pragmatics and (dynamic) semantics. Discourse structure is the key to this, as it can provide evidence for modelling (agents'/systems') cognitive states, and vice versa, allowing us to re-cast Gricean maxims in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) terms. 1 Meaning construction is incremental, drawing on clues provided by different levels of interpretation: logical forms of sentences, discourse structure analysable in SDRT terms, and agents' cognitive states. While one may question the fact that one cannot know another's intention

Final version available in Journal of Pragmatics 171: 200-214 , 2021

The fields of semantics and pragmatics are devoted to the study of conventionalized and context- or use-dependent aspects of natural language meaning, respectively. The complexity of human language as a semiotic system has led to considerable debate about how the semantics/pragmatics distinction should be drawn, if at all. This debate largely reflects contrasting views of meaning as a property of linguistic expressions versus something that speakers do. The fact that both views of meaning are essential to a complete understanding of language has led to a variety of efforts over the last 40 years to develop better integrated and more comprehensive theories of language use and interpretation. The most important advances have included the adaptation of propositional analyses of declarative sentences to interrogative, imperative and exclamative forms; the emergence of dynamic, game theoretic, and multi-dimensional theories of meaning; and the development of various techniques for incorporating context-dependent aspects of content into representations of context-invariant content with the goal of handling phenomena such as vagueness resolution, metaphor, and metonymy. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:285–297. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1227For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.Conflict of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

2016

The paper presents a cognitive conception of propositions as semantic contents of (some) declarative sentences. The conception expands solution spaces for previously intractable empirical problems in natural-language semantics and pragmatics, while also explaining how an agent who is unable to cognize propositions can know or believe them, and how sophisticated agents acquire the concept and believe things about them by monitoring their own cognitions. Finally, an account is given of what it is for a sentence to mean that p in a language that doesn’t require having thoughts about p or L. Nevertheless, semantics isn’t psychology; agents with different psychologies can speak semantically identical languages, while those with the same purely internal states (embedded in similar immediate environments) can speak different languages. Cognitive semantics can be realist and naturalistic without being a branch of psychology.

2003

The avowed aim of this first volume in the Current Research in the Semantics/ Pragmatics Interface series is, according to its editor, ''to begin to take some steps to reducing the heat of [.. .] discussions [relating to how linguistically-conveyed meaning should be defined, and therefore studied; M.T.] and to begin to increase the light that might profitably be shed on some of the problems of interdigitating content and context'' (p. 14). It is in the light of this pronouncement that the current review will assess the contribution made by the 15 articles of this volume to the ongoing debate regarding the boundary between semantics and pragmatics, and whether there should be any such. In the 'Introduction', Ken Turner prepares the ground for the volume, if not the entire series, by tracing the development from semantics to pragmatics (and back again). Carnap's distinction between ''pure'' and ''descriptive'' studies, Montague's model theoretic semantics, Gricean pragmatics, and finally current dynamic semantic approaches serve as intellectual milestones in this broad classification of modern approaches to linguistic meaning. The boundaries of the canvas are thus set out, while the details remain to be filled in. This is no small feat, given the introduction's intended brevity (implicit in the subtitle ''seven-inch version''), and it is accomplished in an informative, critical, and entertaining fashion. In Chapter 1, 'Discourse structure and the logic of conversation', Nicholas Asher picks up the discussion where the introduction left it, arguing for a way of potentially reconciling (Gricean) pragmatics and (dynamic) semantics. Discourse structure is the key to this, as it can provide evidence for modelling (agents'/systems') cognitive states, and vice versa, allowing us to re-cast Gricean maxims in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) terms. 1 Meaning construction is incremental, drawing on clues provided by different levels of interpretation: logical forms of sentences, discourse structure analysable in SDRT terms, and agents' cognitive states. While one may question the fact that one cannot know another's intention