Pragmatics and word meaning

TLDR

Linguistic processing is informationally encapsulated and relies on simple taxonomic lexical semantics, whereas pragmatic inference is open‑ended and draws on arbitrary real‑world knowledge. In this paper, we explore the interaction between lexical semantics and pragmatics. Defeasible lexical generalisations provide defeasible parts of logical form, and two axioms determine when pragmatic defaults override lexical ones. We demonstrate that modelling this interaction yields a more refined interpretation of words in discourse than either the lexicon or pragmatics alone.

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the interaction between lexical semantics and pragmatics. We argue that linguistic processing is informationally encapsulated and utilizes relatively simple ‘taxonomic’ lexical semantic knowledge. On this basis, defeasible lexical generalisations deliver defeasible parts of logical form. In contrast, pragmatic inference is open-ended and involves arbitrary real-world knowledge. Two axioms specify when pragmatic defaults override lexical ones. We demonstrate that modelling this interaction allows us to achieve a more refined interpretation of words in a discourse context than either the lexicon or pragmatics could do on their own.