TOMSK 2015

Jacques Moeschler's lectures

What is (meta)representational in metalinguistic negation?

Abstract

Studies on metarepresentation in linguistics and pragmatics (Wilson 2012) have superficially focused on the relationship between negation and metarepresentation (Carston 2002 for an exception). On another side, studies on metalinguistic negation (Horn 1985, 1989) say little on the metarepresentational properties of negation.

In this talk, I will make an explicit connection between metarepresentational properties of negation and its metalinguistic uses, by showing that metalinguistic negation is metarepresentational in its uses, but representational in its contextual effects (Sperber & Wilson 1995). I will show that three main usages of negation must be distinguished: one descriptive use, which is representational, and two metalinguistic uses, both metarepresentational and representational (Moeschler 2013). Finally, I will support the claim that negation needs to be metarepresentational in use to scope over implicit pragmatic contents, such as implicatures and presuppositions.

The consequence of this analysis is not trivial and gives rise to interesting predictions: if an utterance with content P implicates or presupposes Q, then only metalinguistic negation can defeat Q. When negation is descriptive or representational, either Q is preserved (as in presupposition) or Q is out of the scope of negation (as in implicature).

Metalinguistic negation is thus a good test to understand which metarepresentational properties of utterances are active and how much metarepresentation is, directly or indirectly, connected to speakers’ intentions and hearers’ interpretation.

References

Carston R. 2002. Thoughts and Utterance: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Oxford: Blackwell.

Horn, L.R. 1985. Metalinguistic negation and pragmatic ambiguity. Language, 61/1: 121-174.

Horn L.R. 1989. A Natural History of Negation. Chicago: The Chicago University Press.

Moeschler J. 2013. How ‘Logical’ are Logical Words? Negation and its Descriptive vs. Metalinguistic Uses, in Taboada M. & Trnavac R. (eds.), Nonveridicality, Evaluation and Coherence Relations, Leiden, Brill, 76-110.

Sperber D. & Wilson D. 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. 2^nd ed.

Wilson D. 2012. Metarepresentation in linguistic communication. In Wilson D. & Sperber D. Meaning and Relevance. Cambridge: CUP, 230-58.

With or without procedural meaning: what is different?

Abstract

Relevance Theory claims the main function of procedural meaning is to guide the interpretative process (Blakemore 1987), and as a result, to reduce its cognitive load. The cognitive effects resulting in following procedural instructions is to balance the addition of linguistic items. In this respect, the communicative principle of relevance triggers the relevance heuristics: “follow a path of least effort” (Wilson & Sperber 2004). Conversely, the achievement of relevance is dependent on specific cognitive effects launched by procedural meaning. Relevance Theory predicts that these positive effects are either the addition of new information, the strengthening or the suppression of old information (Wilson & Sperber 1986).

This paper questions the difference in achieving relevance between discourse segments with and without procedural markers, as discourse connectives. (1) contrast with (2), but produce the same cognitive effects (3) and (4):

(1) a. Abi pushed Axel. He fell.

b. Axel fell. Abi pushed him.

(2) a. Abi pushed Axel and he fell.

b. Axel fell because Abi pushed him.

(3) The event ABI PUSHED AXEL temporally precedes the event AXEL FELL

(4) The event ABI PUSHED AXEL causes the event AXEL FELL

A fine-grained analysis of the role played by procedural information in the interpretation process will be proposed, to go beyond the current picture where procedural markers make discourse interpretation easier and provides as a result one of the three cognitive effects. Two claims are made.

1. It is assumed that connectives represent additional information explaining the difference between the treatment of a single vs. two discourse segments (Carston 2002). Another assumption is that connectives are complementary to conceptual information encoded in lexical items like ‘push’ and ‘fall’, which triggers a causal ‘push-fall’ rule (Lascarides & Asher 1993). I argue that connectives are more than additional and complementary information. My assumption is that connectives constrain the interpretative process, i.e. limit the interpretation process by disregarding unintended possible interpretations, and are predicted to occur when no sufficient clues are given to ensure the intended interpretation. When, connectives are redundant with conceptual information (2), their main function is the strengthening of contextual effects that could have been achieved without them.

2. The second claim is that these contextual effects are not language specific but rather discourse marker specific, i.e. they arise in the presence of discourse markers and there is no perfect cross-linguistic correspondence among them (Zufferey & Cartoni 2012). Moreover, their cognitive effects can be ranged into different types of inferential meaning. One challenge is to define the locus of semantic and pragmatic layers meanings between close connectives. In causal connectives like ‘parce que’ (‘because’), ‘donc’ (‘so’) and ‘et’ (‘and’), the differences do not lie in their causal meaning but in their semantic and pragmatic locus, like entailment, explicature, implicature (Moeschler 2015). As an example, the causal meaning is an explicature (not defeasible) with ‘parce que’, and an implicature (defeasible) with ‘et’ and ‘donc’, whereas the set of entailments are not identical: P and Q for ‘parce que’ and ‘et’, only P for ‘donc’.

References

Blakemore D. (1987). Semantic Constraints on Relevance. Oxford, Blackwell.

Carston R. (2002). Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Oxford, Blackwell.

Lascarides A. and Asher N. (1993). “Temporal interpretation, discourse relations and commonsense entailment”. Linguistics and Philosophy 16, 437-93.

Moeschler J. (2015). “Argumentation and Connectives. How do discourse connectives constrain argumentation and utterance interpretations?”. In Capone A. and Mey J. (eds.), Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society. Cham, Springer.

Sperber D. and Wilson D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford, Blackwell.

Wilson D. and Sperber D. (2004). “Relevance theory”. In Horn L.R. and Ward G. (eds.), The Handbook of Pragmatics. Oxford, Blackwell, 607-632.

Zufferey S. and Cartoni N. (2012). “English and French causal connectives in contrast”. Languages in Contrast 12(2), 232–50.