In this paper I present some aspects of the controversy surrounding the semantics/pragmatics boundary and offer a possible solution in the form of Default Semantics. First, I present a brief introduction to Paul Grice...In this paper I present some aspects of the controversy surrounding the semantics/pragmatics boundary and offer a possible solution in the form of Default Semantics. First, I present a brief introduction to Paul Grice’s approach to meaning as intentional communication. Next, I address the problem of the unit og which truth conditions should be predicated, assuming after Grice that the most successful approach to meaning has to make use of truth conditions. Further, I extend the discussion to some aspects of neo-Gricean pragmatics, most notably the issue of pragmatic processing that contributes to the truth-conditional representation and the proposed shortcuts through this processing in the form of default meanings. In the main part, I present the theory of Default Semantics (Jaszczolt 2005a), assess some arguments in favour of such an interactive theory of meaning that combines information from various sources, and address the issue of compositionality of meaning so conceived. In the final part, I apply the theory of Default Semantics to expressions with future-time reference in English in order to demonstrate the advantages of a framework that combines various types of information about utterance meaning in one, merged semantic representation. The main advantage turns out to be, in this domain, the unified treatment of all expressions with future-time reference.展开更多
文摘In this paper I present some aspects of the controversy surrounding the semantics/pragmatics boundary and offer a possible solution in the form of Default Semantics. First, I present a brief introduction to Paul Grice’s approach to meaning as intentional communication. Next, I address the problem of the unit og which truth conditions should be predicated, assuming after Grice that the most successful approach to meaning has to make use of truth conditions. Further, I extend the discussion to some aspects of neo-Gricean pragmatics, most notably the issue of pragmatic processing that contributes to the truth-conditional representation and the proposed shortcuts through this processing in the form of default meanings. In the main part, I present the theory of Default Semantics (Jaszczolt 2005a), assess some arguments in favour of such an interactive theory of meaning that combines information from various sources, and address the issue of compositionality of meaning so conceived. In the final part, I apply the theory of Default Semantics to expressions with future-time reference in English in order to demonstrate the advantages of a framework that combines various types of information about utterance meaning in one, merged semantic representation. The main advantage turns out to be, in this domain, the unified treatment of all expressions with future-time reference.
