Rethinking Compositionality

1. Rethinking Compositionality Kasia M. Jaszczolt & Chi-Hé Elder Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics University of Cambridge

2. Frege, compositionality, and propositional attitude reports GottlobFrege, 1892, ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’

3. John believes that Mark Twain is the author of Huckleberry Finn. • Mark Twain=Samuel Clemens *Therefore, John believes that Samuel Clemens is the author of Huckleberry Finn.

4. Two expressions are identical with each other if they are substitutable preserving the truth of the sentence. (Leibniz's Law, adapted) In order to preserve compositional semantics, one has to establish under what mode of presentation (sense, guise, way of givenness) the object referred to is known to the holder of the belief.

5. Believing is a three-place relation among the believer, the proposition, and the mode of presentation under which the person believes this proposition. (Schiffer1992) John believes that Samuel Clemens is the author of Huckleberry Finn. Φ*m = a type of the mode of presentation < > = intensions (m) Φ*m & Bel (John, <SC, author-of-HF>, m))

6. Everybody read Frege. Every member of the research group read Frege. John cut the grass/cake.

7. Contextualism(currently dominant view) ‘... what is said turns out to be, in a large measure, pragmatically determined.’ Recanati (1989: 98) ‘…we don’t know in advance which expressions are context-sensitive and which aren’t.’ Recanati (2012a: 137)

8. semantic flexibility vs. semantic compositionality

9. Pragmatic enrichment of what is said is often automatic, subconscious (Default/Interactive Semantics: ‘default’).

10. Compositionality is a methodological principle: ‘…it is always possible to satisfy compositionality by simply adjusting the syntactic and/or semantic tools one uses, unless that is, the latter are constrained on independent grounds.’ Groenendijk and Stokhof (1991: 93)

11. Compositionality should be an empirical assumption about the nature of possible human languages. Szabó (2000)

12. Fodor (2008): Compositionality is to be sought on the level of referential properties (for Mentalese)

13. Lexicon/grammar/pragmatics trade-offs What is expressed in the lexicon in one language may be expressed by grammar in another.

14. Lexicon/grammar/pragmatics trade-offs What is expressed in the lexicon in one language may be expressed by grammar in another. What is expressed overtly in onelanguage may be left to pragmatic inference or default interpretation in another.

15. Conditionals GuuguYimithirr (Australian, QNL): no overt conditionals ‘The dog might bark. The postman might run away.’ Evans & Levinson (2009: 443), after Haviland 1979

16. Pragmatic, interactive compositionality

17. Default Semantics (Jaszczolt 2005, 2010)Interactive Semantics (Jaszczolt, in progress) • Unit of analysis • Sources of information contributing to the unit • Pragmatic compositionality • Merger representations: towards a formalization

18. The logical form of the sentence can not only be extended but also replaced by a new semantic representation when the primary, intended meaning requires it. • Such primary meanings give rise to merger representationsin Default Semantics. • There is no syntactic constraint on merger representations.

19. Primary meaning ‘If you are thirsty, there is beer in the fridge.’ PM: Help yourself to some beer.

21. Merger representations are compositional.

22. Conditionals in pragmatics ‘if p then q’ ‘p would, in the circumstances, be a good reason for q’ Grice (1967/1989: 58)

23. ‘Conditional perfection’: ‘if’ >> ‘only if’Fig. 2.  for ‘If you mow the lawn, I will give you five dollars.’ 

24. Delimiting conditionals No bi-unique correspondence between conditional constructions and conditional thoughts • How should conditionals be classified? • What is the relation between form and content? • How ‘conditional’ are conditionals? Direct versus indirect conditionals • What is the primary intended meaning of conditional constructions? 24

25. A corpus-based approach • Corpus-based project on classifying conditionals • Great British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB) • 300 spoken conversations • 2000 words per conversation 25

26. 46 per cent of conditional utterances use ‘if’ (ICE-GB, Elder 2012) 26

27. Two main types of conditionals: 1. Direct conditionals: • consequent is conditional on antecedent ‘If you rang her now she’d say yes.’ (ICE-GB) 2. Indirect conditionals: • consequent is not conditional on antecedent ‘Very short skirt on if you don’t mind me saying.’ (ICE-GB) 27

28. Direct conditionals with conditional primary meaning: ‘If it’s a really nice day we could walk.’ (ICE-GB) ‘If he doesn’t turn up I’ll just get some sandwiches or something.’ (ICE-GB)

29. Direct conditionals with non-conditional primary meaning: ‘If you’d listened to me you’d only be seventy behind.’ (ICE-GB) >> You should have listened to me. ‘She’d be terribly offended if we didn’t come and pick her up.’ (ICE-GB) >> We’d better go and pick her up. 29

30. Direct conditionals can convey different speech acts: ‘If you rang her now she’d say yes.’ (ICE-GB) (advice) ‘Be great if you would do that.’ (ICE-GB) (request)

31. Indirect conditionals with non-conditional primary meaning: ‘Very short skirt on if you don’t mind me saying.’ (ICE-GB) >> Your skirt is too short. ‘I would like it done on Wednesday if possible.’ (ICE-GB) >> Please do it by Wednesday.

32. What if there is no uttered consequent? ‘Now if you’d like to put on your helmet’ (ICE-GB) …that’d be great? …you’ll be safe? …the police won’t catch you? >> Please put on your helmet (primary meaning) There need not be one single consequent recoverable from the context/intended by the speaker

33. Primary meaning: ‘do p’ ‘Now if you’d like to put on your helmet.’ (ICE-GB) >> Put on your helmet ‘So if you could work on that one.’ (ICE-GB) >> Work on that one ‘If you can hold on just half a minute while I put these potatoes out.’ (ICE-GB) >> Hold on half a minute

34. Conditional relationship – some enrichment required ‘If anyone asks, you’re four years old.’ (ICE-GB) >> If anyone asks, sayyou’re four years old.

35. Conventionalised forms ‘Do hang your coat up if you’d like to.’ (ICE-GB) ‘Let me develop the point if I may.’ (ICE-GB) ‘I’d really love to tape it from you if you didn’t mind.’ (ICE-GB) ‘It is still peanuts if you’ll pardon the expression.’ (ICE-GB)

36. Beyond the corpus search ‘You call the cops, I break her legs.’ ‘Snowing? Let’s go skiing.’

37. Conditionals and interactive compositionality ‘If it’s a really nice day we could walk.’ DC, PMC ‘Be great if you would do that.’ DC, PMNC ‘Very short skirt on if you don’t mind me saying.’ IC, PMNC ‘You call the cops, I break her legs.’ NC, PMC ‘Now if you’d like to put on your helmet.’ incomplete, PMNC

38. Representing conditional thought (two dimensions) 1.p ?, PM ‘If you leave the tea on a wobbly table…’ 2. p ?  , SM ‘If you’d like to put on your helmet.’ PM: ‘Please put your helmet on.’

39. 3. pqWS, PM ‘If it rains, we will stay at home.’ 4.pqWS, SM ‘If you are thirsty, there is beer in the fridge.’ PM: ‘Help yourself to some beer.’

40. 5.pq, PM ‘Touch his iPad and he will scream.’ PM: ‘If you touch his iPad, he will scream.’ ?6. pq, SM ‘Please put your helmet on.’ SM: ‘If you put the helmet on, you will be safer.’

41. Fig. 3.  for 1. p?PM ‘If you leave the tea on a wobbly table…’ 

42. Fig. 4.  for 2. p ?SM‘If you’d like to put on your helmet.’PM: ‘Please put your helmet on.’ 

43. Fig. 5.  for 5. pq, PM‘Touch his iPad and he will scream.’ 

44. Endless flexibility of meaning? ‘Meaning eventually stabilizes, making compositionality possible, because the (linguistic as well as extralinguistic) context, however big, is always finite’. Recanati (2012: 190-1)

45. Conclusion The diversity of (i) uses to which a conditional sentence can be put and (ii) ways of expressing conditional meaning can be represented in one theory of meaning when compositionality is understood as interactive, pragmatic compositionality.

46. Further directions philosophy of language and corpus linguistics level of analysis at which ICE-GB, conditionals compositionality is to be sought

47. Further directions philosophy of language and corpus linguistics level of analysis at which ICE-GB, conditionals compositionality is to be sought philosophy of language and computational linguistics interactive compositionality algorithms for the composition of speaker’s intended meaning

48. Select references Bonnefon, J.-F. & G. Politzer. 2011. ‘Pragmatics, mental models and one paradox of the material conditional’. Mind & Language 26. 141-155. Declerck, R. & S. Reed. 2001. Conditionals: a Comprehensive Empirical Analysis. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Elder, C. 2012. ‘The underlying conditionality of conditionals which do not use if’. Cambridge Occasional Papers in Linguistics 6. Evans, N. and S.C. Levinson. 2009. ‘The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science’. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32. 429-492. von Fintel, K. and L. Matthewson. 2008. ‘Universals in semantics’. The Linguistic Review25. 139- 201. Fodor, J. A. 2008. LOT 2: The Language of Thought Revisited. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Grice, H. P. 1967. ‘Indicative conditionals’. Reprinted in 1989, Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 58-85. Groenendijk, J. and M. Stokhof. 1991. ‘Dynamic Predicate Logic’. Linguistics and Philosophy 14. 39-100. Jaszczolt, K. M. 2005. Default Semantics: Foundations of a Compositional Theory of Acts of Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jaszczolt, K. M. 2010. ‘Default Semantics’. In: B. Heine and H. Narrog (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 215-246. Jaszczolt, K.M. in progress. Interactive Semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Klinedinst, N. & D. Rothschild. 2012. ‘Connectives without truth tables’. Natural Language Semantics 20. 137-175.

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