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Northeast Normal University, Changchun, 29 May 2013

Northeast Normal University, Changchun, 29 May 2013. Defaults, Inferences, and the Limits of Contextualism Kasia M. Jaszczolt University of Cambridge http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/kmj21. Primary/secondary meaning distinction cuts across the explicit/implicit divide

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Northeast Normal University, Changchun, 29 May 2013

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  1. Northeast Normal University, Changchun, 29 May 2013 Defaults, Inferences, and the Limits of Contextualism Kasia M. Jaszczolt University of Cambridge http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/kmj21

  2. Primary/secondary meaning distinction cuts across the explicit/implicit divide • Cancellability tests (Jaszczolt 2009b)

  3. Sources of information for  (i) world knowledge (WK) (ii) word meaning and sentence structure (WS) (iii) situation of discourse (SD) (iv)properties of the human inferential system (IS) (v) stereotypes and presumptions about society and culture (SC)

  4. sources of information types of processes

  5. Mapping between sources and processes WK  SCWD or CPI SC  SCWD or CPI WS  WS (logical form) SD  CPI IS  CD DS makes use of the processing model and it indexes the components of  with a subscript standing for the type of processing.

  6. Two examples of applications

  7. Example 1 First-person reference in discourse

  8. Jaszczolt, K. M. 2013. 'First-person reference in discourse: Aims and strategies'. Journal of Pragmatics 48. 57-70. • Jaszczolt, K. M. in press. 'Contextualism and minimalism on de se belief ascription'. In: A. Capone and N. Feit (eds). Attitudes De Se: Linguistics, Epistemology, Metaphysics. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

  9. The scenario: (1) The person who agreed to organise the drinks is to blame. (2)I am to blame. I completely forgot I was put in charge. after Perry (1979: 3)

  10. De se reading

  11. referential semantics conflates (1) with (2): (1) The person who agreed to organise the drinks is to blame. (2) I am to blame. x [to-blame(x)] (kasia jaszczolt)

  12. ? Grammar produces the self-referring function Chierchia (1989: 28): The cognitive access to oneself is ‘systematically excluded from the interpretation of (non-pronominal) referential expressions. It is systematically present in the interpretation of overt pronouns. It is systematically and unambiguously associated with the interpretation of PRO the null subject of infinitives and gerunds. It is associated with the interpretation of long-distance reflexives (at least in some languages)’.

  13. ? Grammar produces the self-referring function Chierchia (1989: 28): The cognitive access to oneself is ‘systematically excluded from the interpretation of (non-pronominal) referential expressions. It is systematically present in the interpretation of overt pronouns. It is systematically and unambiguously associated with the interpretation of PRO the null subject of infinitives and gerunds. It is associated with the interpretation of long-distance reflexives (at least in some languages)’.

  14. The cognitive access to the self is present in the semantics (in some form or other).

  15. An argument from non-pronominal expressions (but not the one you expect) xPace Chierchia, cognitive access to oneself is not so ‘systematically’ excluded from the interpretation of non-pronominal expressions: (3) Sammy wants a biscuit. (4) Mummy will be with you in a moment.

  16. Honorifics: • Japanese and Thai: the first-person marker has the characteristics of both a pronoun and a noun. Pronouns and nouns are not morphologically different: like nouns, pronouns do not form a closed class; like nouns, they form the plural by adding a plural morpheme; • also e.g. Burmese, Javanese, Khmer, Korean, Malay, or Vietnamese. Typically: ‘slave’, ‘servant’, royal slave’, ‘lord’s servant’, ‘Buddha’s servant’ are used for self-reference with self-denigration; • Thai: 27 forms of first person (cf. ‘mouse’) (Siewierska 2004: 228; Heine and Song (2011)); • Japanese: 51 form (Tanaka 2012); • Mandarin Chinese

  17. Conflation of the nominal with the pronominal: • Acoma (New Mexico), Wari’ (Brazil): no personal pronouns; • Generic one and arbitrary PRO: (5) One can hear the wolves from the veranda. (6) It is scary PRO to hear the wolves from the veranda. Generic one and arbitrary (non-controlled) PRO express ‘generalizing detached self-reference.’ Moltmann (2010: 440)

  18. Counterfactuals: ‘if I were you’ conveys second-person oriented advice: (Moltmann 2010: 453) (7) If I were you I would wait a couple of days before issuing a complaint. cf. (8) Wait a couple of days before issuing a complaint.

  19. Spatial deixis: • Thai phŏm1 nii2 ( ‘one male this’); • Japanese kotira, Korean yeogi, and Vietnamese hây (‘here’) used for self-reference;

  20. Degrees of cognitive access to oneself: (9)I think I put this book back on the shelf. (10) I think I remember PRO putting this book back on the shelf. (11)I put this book back on the shelf. (12) I remember PRO putting this book back on the shelf.  Conscious awareness is present to different degrees rather than as a binary, all-or-nothing characteristic.

  21. An argument from conceptual shift (13) ‘It1+t2 believe I should have prepared the drinks party. In a way It1 also believed that It1+t2 should have done it when It1 walked into the room. The fact is, the person appointed by the Faculty Board should have done it and as It1 later realised It1+t2 was this person.’

  22. Wiemt1+t2, że to jat1+t2 powinnam byłat1+t2 know1SgPres that Dem INom should1SgFPast przygotować te drinki. W pewnym sensie, prepareInf thisAccPldrinkPlMAcc In certainSgMInstr senseSgMInstr wtedy też wiedziałamt1, ponieważ miała je then also know1SgFPast because be-toSgFPast theyNMAcc przygotować osoba wybrana przez Radę Wydziału, prepareInf personSgFNomselected by BoardSgFAccFacultySgMGen a to jat1+t2byłam tą osobą. and Dem INombeSgFPastDemSgFInstr personSgFInstr

  23. An argument from 1st person pronoun Kratzer(2009): pronouns can be ambiguous between a referential and a bound-variable interpretation (14) I’m the only one around here who can take care of my children. (15)Only I admitted what I did wrong. (16) Only you can eat what you cook.

  24. Restriction: Bound-variable uses are rare, restricted, and differ from language to language. Tylko ja jeden przyznałem się do błędu. only 1Sg soleSgMNom admit1SgPastMRefl to mistakeSgMGen Tylko ja jedna tutaj potrafię zajmować się Only 1Sg soleSgFNom here can1SgPres careInf Refl swoimi dziećmi. ReflPronPl Instr childPl Instr

  25.  Grammatical foundation of self-reference cannot be excluded.

  26. An argument from PRO (but not the one you expect) (17) Lidia wants to be a scientist. no underlying ‘I’-reference ‘I want to be a scientist.’

  27. (18) Alice wants what Lidia wants. underlying ‘I’-reference (self-attribution of property) But: (19) Lidia’s mother wants what Lidia wants and that’s why she is buying her lots of scientific books. no underlying ‘I’-reference ( propositionalism)

  28. Summary so far • Self-referring that involves cognitive access to oneself does not fit into the mould of a single, systematic morphosyntactic device.

  29. Summary so far • Self-referring that involves cognitive access to oneself does not fit into the mould of a single, systematic morphosyntactic device. • Instead, the device standardly used for this purpose in English, the first-person singular pronoun, can have other uses as well, and devices that specialise for other uses, such as common nouns and proper names, can adopt the function of reference de se.

  30. Summary so far • Self-referring that involves cognitive access to oneself does not fit into the mould of a single, systematic morphosyntactic device. • Instead, the device standardly used for this purpose in English, the first-person singular pronoun, can have other uses as well, and devices that specialise for other uses, such as common nouns and proper names, can adopt the function of reference de se. • This suggests that there is no clear indexical/non-indexical distinciton. (Jaszczolt 2012)

  31. The cognitive access to oneself is ?‘systematically excluded from the interpretation of (non-pronominal) referential expressions’; ?‘systematically present in the interpretation of overt pronouns’; x ‘systematically and unambiguously associated with the interpretation of PRO the null subject of infinitives and gerunds’; ‘associated with the interpretation of long-distance reflexives (at least in some languages)’.

  32.  lexicon/grammar/pragmatics trade-offs

  33. Reports de se/de re about oneself (20) Kasia believes that she is to blame. quasi-indexical

  34. A disclaimer: non-coreferential readings Kasiax believes that shex is to blame. a strong tendency for coreference, van der Sandt’s (1992) (presupposition as anaphora) grammar delivers contextualist default contents

  35. Towards a (pragmatic) solution • self-ascription (linguistic semantic) • self-reference (linguistic pragmatic) • self-attribution (epistemic) • self-awareness (cognitive)

  36. ?Grammar conveys self-awareness Allocation of self-awareness to grammar is a matter of an agreement as to what we want the grammar to do: capture strong tendencies or capture patterns that underdetermine meaning.  minimalist or contextualist account

  37. Proposal: We should not ‘split’ the power of grammar into that pertaining to the system and that pertaining to how grammar functions in utterance processing. De se belief ascription provides strong support for a contextualist, but grammar-triggered construal

  38. De Se in Default SemanticsJaszczolt 2013, in press Bel (x,’) the individual x has the cognitive state represented as an embedded representation ’

  39. CD  default status of de re • coreference x=y (iii)  de se (= from CD, WS)

  40. ?/In a sense, It1 believed It1+t2 was to blame. It1 just didn’t know that the person It1 referred to was It1+t2.

  41. Merger representation: • coreference: condition [y=x]WS • the lack of self-awareness: differentiation of indexing on x and y (CD vs CPI) and the non-default use of the belief operator (CPI)

  42. Fig. 3. ‘I believed, in a sense, I was to blame.’ (marked reading)

  43. Fig. 4. ‘Kasia believes she is to blame.’ (default reading)

  44. Conclusions • There is substantial cross-linguistic evidence that there is no reliable representation of self-awareness in the grammar or the lexicon. Instead, there is a lexicon/grammar/pragmatics trade-off, allowing for various degrees of salience of communicating cognitive access to oneself. • Self-awareness can be construed as conveyed by the grammar only when grammar is allowed to produce cancellable interpretations. This is best achieved on a contextualist account such as Default/Interactive Semantics.

  45. Example 2 Conditional utterances and conditional thoughts (with Chi-Hé Elder)

  46. No strict correlation between the form of a conditional expression and the conditional meaning (i)Conditional sentences are not the only way to express conditional thoughts: (1) Say one word against Margaret Thatcher and David will be offended. (Ifyou say one word against MT, D will be offended.) (2) Your money or your life. (If you don’t give me your money I will take your life.)

  47. (ii) Conditional sentences can be put to a variety of uses other than to express conditional thought: (3) If you wouldn’t mind, could you close the door? (4) If that’s a real diamond I’ll eat my hat!

  48. A cross-linguistic perspective GuuguYimithirr (Australian, QNL): no overt conditionals (5) The dog might bark. The postman might run away. Evans & Levinson (2009: 443), after Haviland 1979

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