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18.324
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Wed Jan 31 2007
Review: Semantics: Jaszczolt
(2005)
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1. Alexander
Onysko, Default
Semantics
Message 1: Default
Semantics |
Date:
30-Jan-2007
From: Alexander Onysko
<alexander.onyskouibk.ac.at>
Subject:
Default Semantics
Announced at
http://linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-638.html
AUTHOR:
Jaszczolt, Kasia M.
TITLE: Default Semantics
SUBTITLE:
Foundations of a Compositional Theory of Acts of Communication
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2005
ISBN: 0199261989
ANNOUNCED IN: http://linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-638.html
Alexander Onysko, University of Innsbruck, Austria
This book proposes an integrative semantic theory
of acts of communication
by merging two distinct
approaches to meaning construction and analysis:
dynamic
truth-conditional semantics and truth-conditional pragmatics.
Kasia
Jaszczolt specifically draws from the formal
language of Discourse
Representation Theory (DRT), which
she adapts to be able to encode
pragmatic information in
her formal representations of Default Semantics
Theory.
The theory offers a cognitively plausible account of how
utterance
meaning is composed and interpreted in
discourse.
SUMMARY
The book is structured
in two parts. Part 1 determines the theoretical
foundations of Default Semantics Theory and Part 2
discusses applications
of the theory for explaining the
semantics of definite descriptions,
propositional attitude
reports, futurity, anaphora, sentential connectives,
and
number terms. The individual applications are exemplified from
the
perspective of the English language.
In the
introduction Kasia Jaszczolt comes straight to the point and
describes the essential claims of Default Semantics
(repeated below in
abbreviated form of the original, cf.
xvi-xvii):
- The theory of discourse meaning is truth
conditional and dynamic.
- Pragmatic information
contributes to truth-conditional content.
- The
representation of truth-conditional content is a merger of
information from
(i) word meaning and sentence
structure
(ii) conscious pragmatic processes
(iii)
default meanings
- Default meanings are conceived of
as
(i) cognitive defaults (properties of the human
thinking process)
(ii) social-cultural defaults (stemming
from the way society and
culture are organized)
-
Default Semantics applies a dynamic approach to mergers in
order to
represent the meaning of multi-utterance
discourse.
-Default Semantics uses an adapted and
extended formalism of DRT, which is
applied to the product
of the merger, i.e. the merger representation.
-
Merger representations are 'abstracts over thoughts'.
Thus, Default Semantics (hence DS) falls in line with
the major views of
neo-Gricean pragmatics, relevance
theory, and optimality theory pragmatics
that linguistic
meaning underdetermines the content or proposition
expressed and that pragmatic information is necessary for
meaning
completion. DS aims to achieve this holistic
approach to meaning through
merger representations which
unite information from word meaning and
sentence structure
(WS), cognitive defaults (CD), social-cultural defaults
(SCD), and from conscious pragmatic processes (CPI).
Following the introduction Chapter 1 discusses some
fundamental questions
that lie at the heart of DS. First
of all, a merger of the
semantic/pragmatic, the
pragmatic/syntactic and the syntactic/semantic
interfaces
is postulated because in DS the interaction of the sources of
meaning formation (e.g. WS as contributing syntactic
information) are part
of forming a compositional
representation which appears as unified meaning
on the
level of merger representation. So for Jaszczolt, the relevant
question in semantics is not what levels of meaning can be
distinguished
but where does meaning come from? However,
DS also operates on a set of
contributors to utterance
meaning that is WS, CD, SCD, and CPI confined in
merger
representations (MRs) so that the question arises as to what
extent
these components contribute to the meaning of MRs.
At the present stage of
the theory all sources of
information are conceived to contribute to
meaning '''on
an equal footing' that is by a 'conspiracy', an interaction
whose mechanism is for the moment beyond our interest''
(p. 8). To
investigate this interaction is actually a
crucial question to solve within
the framework of DS.
Instead, the author moves on to contend that by
putting the construction of
meaning on the level of MRs
the dilemmas of ambiguity and
underspecification vanish in
the theory of DS. This claim is partly
supported by the
application of the modified Occam's Razor which denies the
formation of unnecessary ambiguities. In turn, this leads
to the assertion
of parsimony of levels (PoL) meaning that
''levels of senses are not to be
multiplied beyond
necessity'' (p. 14). To complement the basic outline of
DS, Jaszczolt touches upon the issue of why to apply a
formal logical
language for semantic representations.
Furthermore, she critically
discusses the notion of what
is said and denounces the middle level of
meaning which
for lack of evidence can be sacrificed by Occam's Razor. The
author also falls in line with proponents of direct
communication (cf.
Recanati 2002) dispensing with the idea
of constant inferencing in
communication. Alternatively,
direct, i.e. literal, communication is the
default mode of
utterance decoding and inferences are only made if there
are signals that diverge from a default utterance
interpretation.
Chapter 2 expands on the notion of
default meaning and establishes a basic
distinction in
cognitive and social-cultural defaults. Cognitive defaults
are tied to the intentionality of mental states. Based on
the principles
that ''intentions allow for degrees'' and
that ''the primary role of intention
in communication is
to secure the referent of the speaker's utterance'' (p.
51-52) three main scenarios of intentionality are
distinguished. These
correspond with three readings as
demonstrated in the following sentence:
The author of
Oscar and Lucinda is a very good writer (p. 50)
The
strongest intentionality reading is captured by reference to
the
extension in the real world, i.e. the specific
individual that has written
Oscar and Lucinda (Peter
Carey). The dispersed intentionality reading is
essentially a misattribution of the referential extension
in the real
world, e.g. the speaker refers to Roddy Doyle
while Peter Carey is the real
author of the novel.
Finally, the weak intentionality reading relates to
the
fact that the extension in the real world remains empty but
categorial
reference is made in the sense of 'whoever
wrote the novel is a very good
writer'. From these
possible scenarios of intentionality, Jaszczolt
concludes
that strongest intentionality is the communicative norm and
thus
the cognitive default in utterance interpretation.
As far as social-cultural defaults are concerned, they
can have an effect
on the formation of merger
representations dependent on the degree of
cultural
ingrainedness. Thus, the sentence ''Pablo's painting is of a
crying
woman'' will trigger, according to common cultural
knowledge in westernized
cultural areas, an interpretation
that reference is made to a painting by
Pablo Picasso.
This example shows that such an interpretation is dependent
on an individual's socially and culturally determined
belief system and
encyclopaedic knowledge which can be
easily overruled by contextually
imbued inferences. In
fact, the notion of social-cultural defaults appears
to
work on a cline of contextual specification, where inferences
based on
general knowledge, i.e. social-cultural defaults,
are inversely
proportional to contextual specification of
the utterance. Similarly,
Jaszczolt observes that ''the
boundary between […] social-cultural defaults
and
social-cultural inferences can only be assumed as
methodologically
desirable and psychologically plausible''
(p. 56). This leads her to
conclude that DS has little to
say about social-cultural defaults because
their
investigation lies outside the scope of semantic analysis and
is an
issue of anthropological linguistics and
sociolinguistics.
After discussing defaults, Chapter 3
illustrates the central claim of
Default Semantics Theory:
the formation of meaning in merger
representations. The
basis of merger representations is the compositional
nature of utterance meaning. In detail ''the meaning of
the act of
communication is a function of the meaning of
the words, the sentence
structure, defaults, and conscious
pragmatic inference'' (p.72). These
sources of meaning
form the level of merger representation which is the
unit
of meaning analysis in the processing of truth conditional
content and
which is also the formalizable level of
meaning analysis. Since
compositionality of meaning only
holds at the level of merger
representation,
compositionality is not expected on the level of sentence
structure alone. This postulate differentiates Default
Semantics Theory
from Discourse Representation Theory
(DRT, cf. Zeevat 1989) and
Optimality-theory pragmatics
(cf. Blutner and Zeevat 2004). According to
the model of
utterance interpretation in DS, a model hearer will in the
first stage process truth-conditional content from a
merger of information
of (a) combination of word meaning
and sentence structure, (b) conscious
pragmatic inference,
(c) cognitive defaults, and (d) social-cultural
defaults.
At a second stage in the process of utterance interpretation
the
hearer will resort to the processing of implicatures
based on
social-cultural defaults and conscious pragmatic
inference.
The formal language of merger
representations is based on an adaptation of
the code of
DRT with the caveat that formalization of the sources of
meaning information applies only at the level of merger
representations,
i.e. to the output of the individual
sources. Thus, ''formalization is
always epiphenomenal on
something that is in itself not formalizable'' (p. 87).
The chapters on applications of the theory in Part 2
follow the same basic
outline. Different natural language
phenomena are analyzed as merger
representations following
a differentiation of DS from the approach of
discourse
representation structure (DRS). Chapter 4 focuses on an
analysis
of definite descriptions. According to the degree
of intentionality
(strong, dispersed, and weak) expressed
in the utterance ''the best
architect designed this
church'', separate MRs are given that exemplify
default
reading (e.g. Antoni Gaudi designed Sagrada Familia),
non-default
referential reading (e.g. Simon Guggenheim
designed Sagrada Familia) and
attributive reading (whoever
designed Sagrada Familia is the best
architect). Chapter 5
extends the formalization of MRs to propositional
attitude
reports as in ''Tom believes that the best architect designed
this
church''. DS tries to account for the discrepancies
in knowledge between the
holder of the belief and the
reporter, as well as between the reporter and
the hearer
of the belief. Accordingly, a tripartite classification of
MRs,
in analogy to definite descriptions, account for
different readings of the
belief report: 'de re' which is
the default reading relating to the proper
referent in the
real world, 'de dicto' which combines default reading with
dispersed extension, and 'de dicto proper' in which both
the believe and
the attributive reading are bound to CPI.
The analysis of futurity in English is one of the core
chapters of Part 2.
The diverse functions of 'will' are
based on the interface of modality and
futurity
encapsulated by 'will' as epistemic modality, as dispositional
modality, and as future reference. Abstracting from
Aristotle's
classification of future as modal (cf. 1928),
DS operates on an
understanding of future as a bundle of
time lines, representative of
various undecided options
that lie ahead of the present moment of an
utterance. In
order to cater for different degrees of modality in future
time expressions, Jaszczolt introduces the Acc operator
which is modelled
on Grice's Acc operator (Grice, 2001).
In analogy to the tripartite
distinctions in previous
chapters, the Acc operator is indexed in DS
according to
three degrees of modality/intentionality ranging from 'tf' as
futurity and little modality, to 'fp' as reduced
commitment on part of the
speaker, i.e. increased
modality, and to 'rf' showing the lowest degree of
intentionality and the highest degree of modality. Since
the essence of
future is modality, the default is the most
modal of the three forms,
depicted in MRs as the regular
future. These formalized states of
modality/intentionality
are also modelled in MRs on four other ways of
expressing
futurity/modality in English: futurative progressive ('fp'),
tenseless future ('tf'), epistemic necessity 'will'
('rf'), and
dispositional necessity ('rf'). Despite the
plausible treatment of
futurity, DS is still lacking
integration of other modal expressions such
as 'would',
'could', 'can', 'may', and 'might'. It also needs to solve the
question of how formalized states of modality and
intentionality can be put
into a gradable relation to each
other.
The remaining chapters deal with DS for
presupposition as anaphora,
sentential connectives, and
the semantics of number terms. Binding and
accommodation
are central to the discussion of DS for presupposition as
anaphora. Following the basic logic of equating default
with the highest
degree of intentionality, Jaszczolt
argues that binding is the default
choice in regular
unstressed reference to topics while stressed anaphora,
i.e. focus, leads to ambiguity resolution via
accommodation in the context
of the speech situation. The
chapter on sentential connectives determines
that
conjunctions in English acquire enriched semantic meaning
post-propositionally through CPI and by way of shortcuts
through inference
by SCD. Thus, 'and' in the sentence ''I
dropped the glass and it broke''
evokes the interpretation
of a causal and sequential event according to
real world
experience, i.e. by social-cultural default. In the same
chapter, the author contradicts a dogmatic view of the
restricted
conditional reading 'iff' (if and only if) as
being the only condition upon
which the proposition in the
main clause becomes true. For example, the
condition
expressed in ''if you mow the lawn, you'll get 5 dollars''
only
holds true in the immediate space set up by the
condition and is not the
only way to get 5 dollars from
the speaker in the real world. This
observation ties in
with recent approaches to conditionals in terms of
mental
spaces (cf. Dancygier and Sweetser 2005).
The
applications of Default Semantics Theory come to a close with
an
investigation of the meaning of number terms. In
general, number terms are
scalar concepts that allow for
different readings of at most, at least, and
exactly.
Arguing in terms of intentionality, the exact reading appears
to
be the default interpretation of number terms. However,
the actual meaning
of number terms is very much dependent
on conventionalized utterance
contexts as when number
terms occur together with units of measurement,
e.g. 2 km,
2 weeks. In such cases number terms acquire an approximative
quality. To expand on these observations, the degree of
approximation seems
dependent on the precision of the
units of measurement which also function
as scalar
concepts. Thus, 2 mm generally evokes a more exact reading
than 2
km by sheer subordination of the unit of
measurement.
EVALUATION
As the summary
indicates, Jaszczolt's book is a very complex and dense
piece of work. With her theory of Default Semantics she
successfully
ventures into new ground of semantic
territory. Her advance is cognitively
plausible and the
particular strength of the theory is its holistic
approach
merging pragmatic, social-cultural, syntactic, and lexical
components of meaning. However, her exploration also stirs
up new questions
which are left unanswered at the present
stage of the theory, as the author
herself remarks. Some
of these problematic issues are broached below.
While
an inferentialist approach to utterance interpretation is
disclaimed
on grounds of a lack of cognitive evidence, the
postulate of direct
communication as the basic mode of
utterance production and processing
seems similarly
unfounded and merely based on a belief in cognitive
economy. This belief is also at work in the understanding
of the modified
Occam's Razor, leading to the postulation
of parsimony of levels (PoL).
Even though the claim of
direct communication seems currently preferable
due to
empirical reasons, the lack of adequate investigations thus
far
should not suffice to deny prima facie the existence
of intricate
inferential patterns in utterance processing.
This is certainly an area
where our understanding is in
dire need of appropriate psycholinguistic
research.
The depiction of merger representations as the central
element of Default
Semantics also calls for future
refinements. Despite aptly delineating the
individual
contributors to meaning (WS, SCD, CD, and CPI) and proposing
that they principally contribute to meaning on an equal
basis, the latter
claim brings up the issue of how
possible interactions of these components
can be
operationalized in different discourse situations. This is
particularly evident in the category of social-cultural
defaults, which,
even though integrated into the model of
merger representations, lack an
adequate definition within
the framework of DS. In the applications, SCDs
only
surface in the interpretation of 'and' as temporal and causal.
Furthermore, in the model of utterance interpretation,
SCD and conscious
pragmatic inference apply both at the
stage of merger representations and
at the stage of
processing implicatures. This reflects a scale of SCD and
CPI from deeply ingrained, i.e. largely invariant, to
contextually
dependent. The dividing line between
SCD1/CPI1 and SCD2/CPI2 remains fuzzy
in the present
conception of the model which leads to an erosion of Stage
II. This is emphasized in the applications of DS which
focus on the
building and interpretation of merger
representations (Stage I) only. Thus,
for future research
it would be interesting to see the interrelation
between
the processing of truth-conditional content (Stage I) and the
processing of implicatures (Stage II) at work in diverse
communicative
contexts.
According to DS, default
is related to the degree of intentionality of
mental
states whereby the highest degree of intentionality translates
into
the default state of interpretation. Again the basic
understanding seems
cognitively plausible and is in sync
with earlier claims of direct
communication, i.e.
parsimony of levels and the principle of primary
intention. However, the current depiction of three stages
of intentionality
which lead to three different types of
reading, proper extensional
reference, dispersed
extension, and categorial reference or attributive
reading
(empty extension), stand vaguely connected with strong
intentionality, weaker intentionality, and weakest
intentionality. An
operationalization of degrees of
intentionality and its mapping onto
default and other
types of readings seems essential in order to put the
understanding of default as strong degree of
intentionality on more solid
grounds and render this
principle applicable for further research.
Finally, a
note on the presentation of the arguments is necessary. Due to
the fact that the author summarizes the essence of the
theory in the first
chapter, the remaining chapters serve
to develop these initial claims. This
presupposes a
certain amount of repetition which is generally welcome
considering the complexity of the approach. However,
tedious repetition of
the main arguments (e.g. ''merger
representations are abstracts over
thoughts'', or ''DS
offers a truth-conditional compositional theory of
meaning
of acts of communication'') in the theoretical part and in
almost
every single chapter of Part 2 appears as
counterproductive to making a
convincing case for the
theory. In fact, this might give the impression
that the
author herself is not really sure of the foundations she
convincingly argued for in the initial chapters of the
book.
This argumentative dissonance should not cloud
the interest in Default
Semantics and its obvious advance
in the analysis and understanding of
utterance meaning.
Constructed on credible cognitive foundations and
successfully drawing a holistic picture of meaning
interpretation, Default
Semantics does not shy away from
laying bare the limits of our current
understanding of
utterance semantics. This is why Default Semantics is a
particularly stimulating and thought provoking theory that
will continue to
shape our vision of meaning.
REFERENCES
Aristotle. 1928. The Works
of Aristotle, Oxford University Press, London
Blutner,
R. and H. Zeevat. 2004. Optimality Theory and Pragmatics.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dancygier,
Barbara, Eve Sweetser. 2005. Mental Spaces in Grammar:
Conditional Constructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Grice, P. 2001. Aspects of Reason. Richard
Warner (ed.) Oxford: Oxford
University Press
Recanati, F. 2002. ''Does linguistic communication
rest on inference?'' Mind
and Language 17: 105-26.
Zeevat, H. 1989. ''A compositional approach to
Discourse Representation
Theory''. Linguistics and
Philosophy 12: 95-131.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Alexander Onysko is working as post-doctoral researcher and lecturer of
linguistics at the English Department of Innsbruck University, Austria. His
research interests lie in the fields of language contact, multilingualism,
and cognitive semantics.
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