Abstracts from _Contexts: semantics vs. pragmatics_, Dipartimento di
Filosofia, Genoa, Oct. 25-26 2002. (From penco@unige.it, fwd. from
"Philosophy in Europe", philos-l@liverpool.ac.uk).
Cheers,
JL
===
Speakers: K Bach, A Bezuidenhout, M Carpintero, R Carston, S Neale, S
Predelli, F Recanati, K Taylor. Discussants: J Berg, E Borg, P Bouquet, G
Chierchia, E Corazza, Eva Picardi, S. Zucchi, D. Marconi.
Abstracts:
K. Bach, 'Semantic Illusions'. "Even though nowadays people see through the
old Wittgensteinian slogan that the meaning is the use, there is still a
tendency to let judgments about meaning be contaminated by considerations
of use, hence for pragmatic phenomena to be confused with semantic ones.
There are several reasons for this: 1. If the semantic-pragmatic
distinction is not adequately appreciated, information conveyed by the act
of uttering a sentence can be confused with the sentence's semantic
content. In fact, figuring out what a speaker means in uttering a sentence
generally requires taking into account the circumstances in which he is
uttering it and possible alternatives to what he uttered, and clearly this
goes beyond semantics. 2. It is often supposed that a standard use of an
expression or construction is automatically a literal use. This ignores the
effect of pragmatic regularities, of which there is a great variety. 3. It
is is often thought that an account of the meaning of a sentence must
explain our "intuitions" about its truth or falsity under various
circumstances. However, these intuitions are semantic data, not semantic
facts. They tend to be insensitive to the distinction between what is said
and what is implicit in what is said (or, rather, in the speaker's act of
saying what he says). These intuitions are, in effect, subject to 1. and 2.
above. Semantics should not ignore intuitions, but with help from
pragmatics, rather than explain them it can often explain them away. The
illicit intrusion of pragmatics into semantics is aided and abetted by a
number of semantic illusions: that the semantic-pragmatic distinction is
itself an illusion that regularities of use must be symptomatic of semantic
conventions that if a speaker utters an indicative sentence and means
something that he doesn't say, he must be implicating it that semantics
concerns utterances rather than sentences that an unambiguous indicative
sentence must express a complete proposition that an unambiguous indicative
sentence must express at most one proposition that sentences can have
presuppositions that utterances of some sentences have conventional
implicatures that context even partly determines what an expression means
that quantifier phrases have semantically restricted domains that definite
descriptions can semantically refer that indexicals, demonstratives, and
proper names are inherently referential that the 'that'-clause of a true
belief report must specify something believed I will describe and diagnose
these illusions, and identify the theoretical and empirical benefits of
seeing through them."
A. Bezuidenhout, 'Dynamic semantics vs. dynamic interpretation: How does
"procedural" meaning fit in?' "Understanding and producing sentences of a
natural language are, or at least involve, temporal-linear processes. (I
will focus on spoken language production and comprehension and will
sometimes lapse into an even narrower focus on spoken language
comprehension). The process of articulation forces the speaker to utter a
string of sounds in a certain linear order, and the hearer begins
processing these in the same order. This is not to deny that at other
stages of processing there may be operations that are performed in
parallel. However, even parallel processes are temporal ones. Given the
dynamic nature of natural language understanding and production, one might
think that it is promising to study natural language from a dynamic
perspective, with an eye to describing those features of language that
enable speakers and hearers to engage in these dynamic processes. And
indeed, beginning with the work of (Kamp, 1981) on Discourse Representation
Theory (DRT) and (Heim, 1982) on File Change Semantics (FCS), it has become
increasingly popular to offer dynamic accounts of language. DRT and FCS
have been lumped together as closely related variants of something called
dynamic semantics, e.g., by (Kadmon, 2001). Furthermore, the work of
(Groenendijk & Stokhof, 1991) and (Chierchia, 1992, 1995) has been seen as
elaborating on and refining this dynamic approach to semantics. However,
(Geurts, 1995, 1999) has argued that it is a mistake to lump DRT together
with FCS and other refinements on FCS that treat the meaning of an
expression as its context change potential. Geurts argues that DRT is an
idealized theory of language understanding, which incorporates a standard
model-theoretic semantics. Geurts goes on to criticize dynamic semantics as
incoherent. He rejects Chierchia's idea that 'certain aspects of language
use enter directly into the compositional core of a semantic system'
(Chierchia, 1995: xiii). Geurts thinks that a dynamic theory of
understanding/interpretation along with a non-dynamic semantics can
adequately deal with the phenomena that have motivated the dynamic approach
(principally phenomena involving the interpretation of indefinites and
pronouns anaphoric on them). Similar claims that a static semantics
together with a dynamic theory of interpretation are adequate to the task
have been made by (Dekker, 2002a, 2002b, Forthcoming). Dekker sees himself
as following out a project sketched in (Stalnaker, 1999). There Stalnaker,
in a clearly Gricean spirit, says: "if we get clearer about the structure
and purposes of discourse, we can better distinguish the idiosyncratic
features of particular conventional devices from more general features of
the practice that follow from assumptions about what people engaged in it
are trying to do. ...And perhaps if we are clearer about the general
structure of discourse this will help us defend simpler semantic analyses."
(1999: 112). In this paper I adopt the perspective of Geurts and use this
as a framework for discussing the notion of procedural meaning that is a
part of Relevance Theory (RT). (Blakemore, 1987, 1988, 1992) argues that
certain lexical items (in particular, discourse particles such as 'but',
'however', 'moreover' and inferential 'so') have purely procedural
meanings. These expressions encode instructions to process the propositions
expressed by the utterances of which they are a part in certain kinds of
context, namely ones giving rise to certain contextual effects. In this way
the hearer is saved processing effort in the search for an optimally
relevant interpretation of the speaker's utterance. If there are such
procedural constraints, they are constraints on processing and belong to a
performance system, such as the language understanding and production
system. It is not clear that knowledge of such constraints should be
thought of as part of the speaker-hearer's semantic competence. This would
seem to be building facts about language use into the core semantic system,
something that Geurts argues against. On the other hand, clearly these
procedural constraints are tied to the processing of specific lexical
items, and thus the hopes of accounting for them in terms of general
discourse principles may seem to be slim. One possibility is that such
procedural constraints belong to a special purpose linguistic-pragmatics
module, which interfaces between the language system proper and the system
that controls discourse-level processes. (Carston, 2000) in discussing the
work of Ellen Prince seems to entertain the possible existence of such a
subsystem. However, Carston concludes: "Nothing substantive hangs on
whether we call this subcomponent of linguistic competence 'discourse
competence', as Prince does, seeing it as that part of pragmatics which is
properly linguistic, or 'procedural semantics', as relevance theorists do,
seeing it as a component of 'linguistic semantics' (competence). On the
latter approach, the term 'pragmatics' is reserved for that part of
utterance meaning which is recovered by inferential processes dependent on
guidance of a general principle of communication." (2000: pp.100-101). This
paper will investigate whether indeed "nothing substantive" hangs on this
choice of terminology, or whether there are good reasons against putting
procedural constraints into the core semantic system of a language, as
Geurts seems to suggest. Refs: Blakemore, D. Semantic Constraints on
Relevance. Blackwell. Blakemore, D. "So" as a constraint on relevance. In
R. M. Kempson (Ed.), Mental Representations: The Interface Between Language
and Reality. Cambridge University Press. Blakemore, D. Understanding
Utterances. Blackwell. Carston, R. The relationship between generative
grammar and (relevance-theoretic) pragmatics. Language and Communication
20. Chierchia, G. Anaphora and dynamic binding. Linguistics and Philosophy,
15. Chierchia, G. Dynamics of Meaning: Anaphora, Presupposition, and the
Theory of Grammar. University of Chicago Press. Dekker, P. Meaning and use
of indefinite expressions. Journal of Logic, Language and Information, 11.
Dekker, P. (2002b). Pronouns in a pragmatic semantics. Journal of
Pragmatics. Dekker, P. Grounding Dynamic Semantics. In M. Reimer & A.
Bezuidenhout (Eds.), The Semantics and Pragmatics of (In)definites. Oxford
University Press. Geurts, B. Presupposing. Unpublished Doctoral
dissertation, University of Stuttgart. Geurts, B. Presuppositions and
Pronouns (Vol. 3). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Groenendijk, J., & Stokhof, M.
Dynamic predicate logic. Linguistics and Philosophy, 14, 39-100. Heim, I.
The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases. Unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Kadmon, N. Formal
Pragmatics: Semantics, Pragmatics, Presupposition, and Focus. Oxford:
Blackwell. Kamp, H. A theory of truth and semantic representation. In J.
Groenendijk & T. Janssen & M. Stokhof (Eds.), Formal Methods in the Study
of Language. Amsterdam: Mathematical Center. Stalnaker, R. On the
representation of context, Context and Content: Essays on Intentionality in
Speech and Though. ford University Press."
M Carpintero, 'A Gricean Alternative to Williamson's Theory of Assertion'.
"In his paper "Knowing and Asserting" (included as chapter 11 of his recent
book, *Knowledge and Its Limits*, OUP), T. Williamson defends an account of
assertion, according to which it is constitutive of assertion to be
governed by the following rule: One must assert that p only if one knows
that p. This can be confusedly criticized on the basis that one can make an
assertion, and people often do, without knowing the asserted proposition.
Williamson's claim is not however that knowing that p is constitutive of
asserting that p, but only that it is constitutive of asserting that p that
the act is subject to the indicated norm. Now, Williamson's view appears to
be at odds with broadly Gricean views of the nature of acts of meaning like
assertion, according to which they are constituted by communicative
intentions. These views are often criticized (for instance, by Searle,
especially in his more recent writings) on the basis that one can make acts
of meaning without having communicative intentions; but this criticism
belies the confusion already illustrated. In my talk, I want to tentatively
defend that assertion is constitutively governed by a stronger rule, which
I find more congenial to a broadly Gricean view: roughly, that one must
assert that p only if one transmits thereby the knowledge that p. I will
argue that this view can claim the same virtues that Williamson invokes in
favor of his. I will also appeal for its defense to a form of argument that
Williamson uses to support his view. I will argue that the more Gricean
view accounts properly for what is paradoxical in the examination paradox."
R. Carston, 'Semantics & conversational implicature'. "The linguistic
semantic underdeterminacy thesis is widely recognised nowadays. According
to this thesis, the encoded meaning of the linguistic expression-type
employed by a speaker underdetermines the proposition explicitly expressed
by the utterance. Acceptance of this view necessitates certain changes to
the orthodox Gricean account of what is said and what is implicated,
according to which any instance of maxim-guided pragmatic inference results
in the communication of a conversational implicature. Different theorists
attempt to accommodate the underdeterminacy facts in different ways. In
this talk I compare the generalized conversational implicature approach of
Stephen Levinson (1988, 2000) and that of relevance theory (Sperber &
Wilson 1986/95, Carston 2002). According to Levinson, underdeterminacy
gives rise to an unacceptable circularity (which he calls 'Grice's
circle'): 'what is said seems both to determine and to be determined by
implicature' (2000, 186). Furthermore, given an equation of linguistic
meaning with the truth-conditional content of an utterance, which Levinson
assumes, 'the theory of linguistic meaning [i.e. semantics] is dependent
on, not independent of, the theory of communication [pragmatics].' His
solution to these circularity problems is to set up a notion of 'utterance
type meaning', distinct from expression type meaning, on the one hand, and
communicated content, on the other. It is a product of encoded linguistic
meaning together with a special class of default pragmatic inferences which
he calls generalized conversational implicatures. I shall argue that this
move has unwelcome results: (a) it renders the concept of 'conversational
implicature incoherent; (b) it forces an unnatural dichotomy between two
types of pragmatic inference - the generalized and the particularized -
each governed by quite distinct principles; (c) it makes false predictions
since certain of the alleged default inferences simply do not arise even
when they would be quite consistent with the context; (d) it loses the
autonomy of linguistic semantics.
I claim that the solution to the interdependence of saying and implicating
proposed within relevance theory is preferable. According to this approach,
pragmatic inferences do not inevitably give rise to conversational
implicatures but may contribute to the propositions explicitly communicated
(explicatures). Explicatures and implicatures are derived by inferential
processes of mutual parallel adjustment and are constrained by one and the
same (relevance-based) communicative principle, without any recourse to
default rules of inference. As a result, there is a single coherent concept
of conversational implicatures which, as Grice maintained, are communicated
assumptions which do not contribute to the truth-conditional semantics of
the utterance, and linguistic semantics is both autonomous from pragmatics
and distinct from truth-conditional semantics, which applies to
propositional representations of all sorts, including both explicatures and
implicatures. References: Carston, R. 2002. Thoughts and Utterances: The
Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Oxford: Blackwell. Levinson, S. 1988.
Generalized conversational implicatures and the semantics/ pragmatics
interface. Ms. University of Cambridge.
Levinson, S. 2000. Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized
Conversational Implicature. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Sperber, D. &
Wilson, D. 1986/95. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford:
Blackwell."
S. Neale, 'Radical Contextualism means Radical Indeterminacy'. "In the
first part of this talk, I explain why we have no alternative but to view
what is said i.e. what someone, U, said by uttering (or writing) a
sentence, phrase, or word X on a particular occasion as typically
indeterminate. Cases of determinacy are no more than limiting cases in
which linguistic meaning is overbearing, and cannot be treated as "normal"
cases from which those involving indeterminacy "deviate". In a sense, this
should be unsurprising, for it is virtually dictated by something else that
is now beginning to be appreciated thanks to the work of Sperber and
Wilson, Récanati, Carston, and others: the role of pragmatic processes in
fixing what U said by uttering X is far greater than has been assumed
traditionally, going well beyond what is supplied by X's syntactic
structure, the meanings of its constituents, and the anchoring of a few
hackneyed parameters introduced by (e.g.) indexical, demonstrative and
anaphoric pronouns. To the extent that there are aspects of what is said
that are not directly traceable to particular semantic features of X,
indeterminacy is going to be inevitable at least if what is meant by
"indeterminacy" is that there are competing characterizations of what U
said among which no principled choice can be made. To this extent, the
notion of what U said is not that different from the notion of what U
conversationally implicated, which as Grice himself stressed is typically
indeterminate. The difference is that purely linguistic facts narrow down
the indeterminacy of what U said considerably more than they narrow down
the indeterminacy of what U conversationally implicated. Indeed, this is
what the saying-implicating distinction ultimately amounts to. In the
second part of the talk I turn to the matter of descriptive phrases:
definite descriptions, possessive descriptions, and descriptive pronouns in
particular. One consequence of the ubiquity of indeterminacy is that all
versions of a type of argument used by Wettstein, Récanati, Reimer,
Schiffer and others against traditional explicit (ellipsis or
expansion-based) accounts of what U said by uttering X, where X contains a
so-called incomplete description, such as "the book", are discredited: such
arguments presuppose a notion of what is said that is quite simply
unsustainable. In the final part of the talk, I turn to noun phrase
incompleteness more generally, demonstrating that attempts to construct
implicit (or domain-based) alternatives to the explicit approach, if
successful at all, are no more pointlessly and perversely formal
restatements of the explicit approach. This is so whether domain
restrictions are introduced pragmatically (in the way Récanati suggests) or
by way of elements in underlying syntax (LF) of a sentence that make no
phonetic or graphic appearance in surface syntax (PF) (as Stanley and Szabó
argue)."
S. Pedrelli, 'The Lean Mean Semantic Machine'. "According to widespread
consensus, the analysis of certain utterances must allow for unarticulated
constituents of semantic content, in violation of a principle of full
articulation. The central argument in favor of this stance starts from
premises reflecting our intuitions about the truth-conditional profile of
certain examples, and concludes that any adequate systematic account of
such intuitions must proceed along underarticulationist lines. The main aim
of this essay is that of challenging this argument, and of providing an
independently plausible account of our intuitions, compatible with the
principle of full articulation. I present what I call a 'lean' semantic
apparatus, one in which all among the relevant component of semantic
content are articulated. I then argue that such an approach is a 'mean'
one, in the complimentary sense of the term: in particular, it is able to
explain the intuitively correct semantic behavior for the utterances under
analysis, and to account for the apparent differences in their
truth-conditional profile. The defense of the principle of full
articulation is nevertheless not my main concern: whether
underarticulatedness is at all admissible within semantic analysis,
regardless of the unsoundness of the main argument in its favor, is a
question I do not intend to address. Of more immediate relevance are
certain results emerging from the response to the argument against full
articulation, pertaining to the role played by context in the analysis of a
variety of utterances. Refs: Bach, K. Conversational Impliciture. Mind and
Language 9. Borg, E. Saying what you mean: unarticulated constituents and
communication. Manuscript. Carston, R. Implicature, Explicature, and
Truth-Theoretic Semantics. In R. Kempson (ed.) Mental Representations.
Cambridge University Press. Crimmins, M. Talk About Beliefs. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Perry, J. Thought Without Representation.
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary 60. Recanati, F.
Direct Reference: From Language to Thought. Blackwell Publishers. Recanati,
F. Unarticulated Constituents. Linguistics and Philosophy 25. Stanley, J.
Context and Logical Form. Linguistics and Philosophy 23. Stanley, J. Making
It Articulated. Mind and Language 17. Taylor, K. A. Sex. Breakfast, and
Descriptus-Interruptus. Synthese 128."
F. Recanati, 'Contextualism'. "I will attempt to show that there are five
basic positions concerning the role of context in the determination of
truth-conditions, and I will provide arguments against most of them. The
five positions can be ordered on a scale from Literalism to Contextualism:
Literalism, Indexicalism, The Syncretic View, Quasi-contextualism,
Contextualism
Literalism (in its modern form) holds that the truth-conditions of a
sentence are fixed by the rules of the language independent of speaker's
meaning. This position must be rejected from the outset because the
well-documented phenomenon of semantic underdetermination makes it
unavoidable to appeal to speaker's meaning in determining truth-conditions.
According to the next two positions, we need to appeal to speaker's meaning
in determining truth-conditions, but we do so only when the sentence itself
demands it. In other words, 'optional' pragmatic processes are not allowed
to affect truth-conditional content. Indexicalism holds that " all
truth-conditional context-dependence results from fixing the values of
contextually sensitive elements in the real structure of natural language
sentences ". The Syncretic View acknowledges the fact that the intuitive
truth-conditions may be affected by primary pragmatic processes of the
optional variety; but it draws a distinction between what is said in the
intuitive sense, and what is strictly and literally said - between the
'apparent' truth-conditions and the 'real' (or minimal) truth-conditions.
The last two positions I will consider fully acknowledge the role of
pragmatic processes, including pragmatic processes of the optional variety,
in the determination of truth-conditional content. They differ from each
other in their respective attitudes towards the minimal proposition posited
by the Syncretic View. One position, which I call Quasi-Contextualism,
simply considers the minimal proposition as a theoretically useless entity
which plays no role in communication. Contextualism goes much further and
denies that the notion even makes sense."
K. Taylor, 'The Pragmatic significance of the naming relation'.
"Philosophers of language have lavished attention on names and other
singular referring expressions. But they have focussed primarily on what
might be called lexical-semantic character of names and have largely
ignored what I call the lexical-syntactic character of names. The contrast
between the lexical-syntactic character of names and the lexical-semantic
semantic character of names is meant to distinguish lexically governed or
constrained word-word relationships, on the one hand, from lexically
governed and constrained word-world relationships, on the other. By
focussing narrowly and prematurely on word-world rather than word-word
relationships, philosophers of language have been led down many mistaken
paths. This essay takes some steps toward correcting that lacuna."
==
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