Abstract not found

Within the philosophy of language, pragmatics has tended to be seen as an adjunct to, and a means of solving problems in, semantics. A cognitive-scientific conception of pragmatics as a mental processing system responsible for interpreting ostensive communicative stimuli (specifically, verbal utterances) has effected a transformation in the pragmatic issues pursued and the kinds of explanation offered. Taking this latter perspective, I compare two distinct proposals on the kinds of processes, and the architecture of the system(s), responsible for the recovery of speaker meaning (both explicitly and implicitly communicated meaning). 1. Pragmatics as a Cognitive System 1.1. From Philosophy of Language to Cognitive Science Broadly speaking, there are two perspectives on pragmatics: the `philosophical' and the `cognitive'. From the philosophical perspective, an interest in pragmatics has been largely motivated by problems and issues in semantics. A familiar instance of this was Grice's concern to maintain a close semantic parallel between logical operators and their natural language counterparts, such as `not', `and', `or', `if', `every', `a/some', and `the', in the face of what look like quite major divergences in the meaning of the linguistic elements (see Grice 1975, 1981). The explanation he provided was pragmatic, i.e. in terms of what occurs when the logical semantics of these terms is put to rational communicative use. Consider the case of `and': (1) a. Mary went to a movie and Sam read a novel. b. She gave him her key and he opened the door. c. She insulted him and he left the room. While (a) seems to reflect the straightforward truth-functional symmetrical connection, (b) and (c) communicate a stronger asymmetric relation: temporal sequence in (b) and a causeconse...

Current theories of context see context as composed of information that is localizable to individual utterances. Current theories of discourse grant that discourses have important global properties that are not so localizable. In this paper, I argue that context, even narrowly construed as whatever combines with a sentence to determine truth conditions, must have a discourse-global component. I identify a context-dependence phenomenon related to the linguistic concepts of topic and focus, isolate the pertinent feature of context, and show that this feature must be discourse-global in nature. I thus argue that context is as complicated as an entire discourse. The notion of context, as it appears in everyday parlance, is extraordinarily plastic. We appeal to context, for instance, when we explain the referents of indexicals and demonstratives in reported speech, as in ‘In that context, when he said ‘that woman ’ he meant Monica’. A somewhat broader notion of context appears to be at work when we appeal to context to accuse someone of

This paper has two main parts. The first is a critical survey of ways in which the explicit/implicit distinction has been and is currently construed in linguistic pragmatics, which reaches the conclusion that the distinction is not to be equated with a semantics/pragmatics distinction but rather concerns a division within communicated contents (or speaker meaning). The second part homes in on one particular way of drawing such a pragmatically-based distinction, the explicature/implicature distinction in Relevance Theory. According to this account, processes of pragmatic enrichment play a major role in the recovery of explicit content and only some of these processes are linguistically triggered, others being entirely pragmatically motivated. I conclude with a brief consideration of the language-communication relation and the limits on explicitness. Key words: what is said, explicit communication, implicit communication, Relevance Theory, free enrichment, semantics, pragmatics, 1. Introduction: Aspects of

Definite phrases are often used to introduce new entities into discourse but the conditions under which this is possible are not well understood. Evans (2005) argued that the definite article may be used to introduce an entity if it is the most relevant of its type in its local frame of reference, dubbing this the “Small world hypothesis. ” Additional arguments will be given in support of the Small world hypothesis, and the hypothesis will be developed in an attempt to understand the role of the small frame in processing novel definites. It will be argued that the definite article does not carry a familiarity presupposition, but only an existential and maximality presupposition. Maximize presupposition is also important and plays a critical role in regulating the impact of the Small world hypothesis: a definite will be favored under circumstances where it may be used unless it brings along unwanted implicatures, typically implicatures concerning number. Other types of presupposition accommodation are also considered with an eye to evaluating the claim that distinct classes of presuppositions exist.-1--2-The big fish in a small pond: Accommodation and the processing of novel definites

In this paper I offer a defence of a Russellian analysis of the referential uses of incomplete (mis) descriptions, in a contextual setting. With regard to the debate between a unificationist and an ambiguity approach to the formal treatment of definite descriptions (introduction), I will support the former against the latter. In 1. I explain what I mean by “essentially ” incomplete descriptions: incomplete descriptions are context dependent descriptions. In 2. I examine one of the best versions of the unificationist “explicit ” approach given by Buchanan and Ostertag. I then show that this proposal seems unable to treat the normal uses of misdescriptions. I then accept the challenge of treating misdescriptions as a key to solving the problem of context dependent descriptions. In 3. I briefly discuss Michael Devitt’s and Joseph Almog’s treatments of referential descriptions, showing that they find it difficult to explain misdescriptions. In 4. I suggest an alternative approach to DD as contextuals, under a normative epistemic stance. Definite descriptions express (i) what a speaker should have in mind in using certain words in a certain context and (ii) what a normal speaker is justified in saying in a context, given a common basic knowledge of the lexicon. In 5. I define a procedure running on contextual parameters (partiality, perspective and approximation) as a means of representing the role of pragmatics as a filter for semantic interpretation. In 6. I defend my procedural approach against possible objections concerning the problem of the boundaries between semantics and pragmatics, relying on the distinction between semantics and theory of meaning. 1

Cappelen & Lepore (2006a) claim that linguistic communication requires shared content and criticise Relevance Theory on the grounds that it makes content sharing impossible. I argue that this criticism rests upon two important errors. The first is a flawed understanding of Relevance Theory, which causes Cappelen & Lepore to apply the perspective of an objective, omniscient third party to parts of Relevance Theory that in fact only make reference to (and only depend upon) the subjective judgements made by the addressee of an utterance. The second is a confusion about different definitions of content. The kind of evidence that Cappelen & Lepore produce in fact involves the communication of what they term Speech Act content, a kind of content that few if any approaches require to be perfectly ‘shared’. Certainly, Cappelen & Lepore’s own (2005) position makes no such requirement. Consequently, their arguments have no more force against Relevance Theory than they would if directed at their own ideas. Having shown this, I compare Relevance Theory with Cappelen & Lepore’s semantic minimalism more generally and conclude that most of the apparent differences between them lie in terminology and rhetorical style. Instead of highlighting these spurious differences, practitioners of the two approaches have a good deal to learn from each other. In particular, I argue that relevance theorists should avoid lapsing into a brand of semantic orthodoxy that Cappelen & Lepore call moderate contextualism, something that requires them to emulate Cappelen & Lepore’s uncompromising minimalism with regard to encoded meaning. 1 1