Cross-linguistic differences in expressing time and universal principles of utterance and...

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Cross-linguistic differences in expressing time

and universal principles of utterance interpretation

Kasia M. Jaszczolt

University of Cambridge

This chapter addresses the question how linguistic diversity and universalism in the

domain of representing time can be reconciled. It is demonstrated how the

contextualist theory of Default Semantics (Jaszczolt 2005, 2009, 2010a) accounts for

cross-linguistic differences in conveying temporal location, utilising at the same time

universal pragmatic principles. This is achieved by allocating information about

temporality to different but universally available sources of information about

meaning and to different universal processes which interact in producing a

representation of the primary, intended meaning. It offers some examples of how

lexicon/grammar/pragmatics trade-offs in conveying temporality can be represented

in merger representations of Default Semantics, at the same time reflecting the

underlying universal principles of the composition of meaning.

Keywords: Default Semantics, epistemic modality, linguistic relativity, semantic and

pragmatic universals, temporality

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1. Time concept and time talk

Languages afford a variety of ways in which referring to the past, present, and future

can be accomplished. Equally, relative temporal ordering of events can be conveyed

in a variety of ways. One temporal concept can be expressed by different means

across languages, and equally, there are various means available for speaking about

time within one single language. These ways range from the use of lexical and

grammatical markers of time, through automatically assigning salient interpretations

to overtly tenseless expressions, to relying on the addressee’s active, conscious

inference of the temporality of the situation in the particular context. In the context of

these significant cross-linguistic differences in conveying temporal location (see also

other contributions to this section), this chapter addresses the question whether there

are universal pragmatic principles beyond the linguistic diversity of expressing

temporality and if so, how the diversity and the universalism can be reconciled.

It is widely acknowledged that the conceptualization of time has both

universal and culture-dependent aspects (see e.g. Nishi, Yoshioka and Hilberink-

Schulpen, or Gladkova – all in this collection).1 In what follows I further develop the

view, following my earlier enquiry in Jaszczolt (2009), that the human concept of

time is universal but it is not primitive. The property of temporality supervenes, in the

sense of its dependence, providing definitional characteristics, on the property of

epistemic commitment, where the latter is taken to be a psychologically basic concept.

I defend a contextualist approach to meaning and demonstrate how the contextualist

theory of Default Semantics (Jaszczolt 2005, 2009, 2010a) accounts for cross-

1 On the co-existence of universal and language-specific aspects of conceptualisation in the

domain of space see e.g. Levinson (2003), Filipović (2010), and Marotta and Meini, this

collection, Filipović and Geva in this collection.

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linguistic differences in conveying temporal location, utilising at the same time

universal pragmatic principles. This is achieved by allocating information about

temporality to different but universally available sources of information about

meaning and to different universal processes which interact in producing a

representation of the primary, intended meaning. I give some examples of the

application of this analysis.

Memories, current experiences, and anticipations, as well as mental ordering

of events and states, constitute a large part of the subject matter of human discourse.

We talk about what happened or will happen, or we talk about current states of affairs,

either as known facts or as possibilities. What is fascinating in the ‘time talk’ from the

linguistic point of view is that languages afford a diverse array of means for referring

to the past, the present, and the future. Moreover, even within one natural language

there are often various options for expressing temporality. These means include

grammatical markers of time such as tense, aspect, or modality, lexical markers such

as temporal adverbs, temporal connectives, and other particles, as well as evidential

markers.2 In addition to overt devices present in the lexicon and grammar, there are

also what we can call pragmatic devices. These pertain to the principles on which

discourse is organised. Overtly tenseless expressions can obtain tensed interpretations

either due to the fact that such interpretations are salient to the interlocutors in the

particular context or salient and default for that construction in that language in

general. Securing a recovery of such a reading can be achieved either by relying on

the addressee’s active, conscious inference of the temporality of the situation in the

particular context or by relying on the automatic, unconscious assignment of the

reading by the addressee.

2 See (8) below for an example of the interaction between evidentiality and tense.

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These pragmatic devices can be of two types: some are universal, and some

are specific to the particular language and culture. In this chapter I address the

question of the universal status of the mechanisms governing the recovery of

temporality of a speaker’s expression, but rather than focusing on pragmatic devices

per se, as contrasted with lexical and syntactic ones, I ask whether one can discern

universal discourse principles on which such a selection, or trade-off, between the

types of devices can proceed. English, for example, relies predominantly on tense and

temporal adverbials in expressing temporality. Thai, on the other hand, has optional

markers of tense and aspect, random use of adverbials, and relies largely on situated

meanings, inferred from the shared background assumptions or assigned

subconsciously as default interpretations.3

In the context of the significant cross-linguistic differences in conveying

temporal location, one would naturally start by asking whether the human concept of

time is a universal concept, and if so, whether it is primitive. Having adopted a

universal but modality-based approach, this universal concept of time is confronted

with the intra- and inter-language diversity of expressing temporality. The question to

pose is then how the empirically demonstrable linguistic diversity reconciles with the

idea of language universals. In order to address this question, I defend a contextualist

approach to meaning and demonstrate, with the help of some examples from diverse

languages, how the contextualist theory of Default Semantics allows for representing

temporality as the result of processing of various overt and covert linguistic devices

discussed above. I demonstrate how we can account for cross-linguistic differences in

conveying temporal location by allocating information about temporality to different

sources of information about meaning and to different processes that interact in

3 See Srioutai (2006); Jaszczolt and Srioutai (2011).

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producing a representation of the primary, intended meaning. It is the universal

applicability of these sources, their mutual trade-offs, as well as the universal status of

the pragmatic processes that allow us to reconcile diversity and universalism about

language. In the process I also defend the methodological assumption of the

compositionality of utterance meaning, also known as pragmatic compositionality

(Recanati 2004; Jaszczolt 2005).

The chapter is structured as follows. In section 2, I discuss the diversity of

means for expressing temporality in discourse and illustrate it with pertinent

examples. In section 3, the question of universals is taken up and in particular the

proposal of pragmatic universals and processing universals. In section 4 I argue in

favour of a contextualist approach to meaning in which the linguistic diversity and

universal pragmatic principles find an explanation. Section 5 follows with a brief

presentation of sources of information about meaning and types of processes that

interact in meaning production and recovery, as proposed in the contextualist theory

of Default Semantics. It is argued that these sources and processes allow us to

adequately represent the diversity in time reference. The question that follows is that

of the principles of composing meaning when such sources and interacting processes

are involved. I address it in section 6, where I contribute to the ongoing discussion on

compositionality by supporting the view that a truly compositional approach to

meaning has to account both for overt and covert means, continuing in section 7 by

representing this variety of means in merger representations of Default Semantics.

Section 8 sums up the argument and makes some general remarks on the ‘depth’ of

diversity when confronted with the existence of universal principles of utterance

interpretation.

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2. Expressing temporality: Lexicon, grammar, and pragmatics

It can be easily observed that the diversity of ways of expressing meaning does not

only pertain to temporal reference but rather persists throughout the conceptual

system, affecting even those domains that at first glance, judging by common sense,

should not differ from language to language because they contain concepts that are in

frequent use across cultures. In short, meanings that are expressed overtly in one

language, by the lexicon or grammar, may be expressed in another through pragmatic

inference or default assignment of meaning to a construction. What is important is

that this diversity of expression is a common fact rather than an exception and

therefore should be regarded as such by any explanatorily adequate theory of

meaning. For example, basic knowledge of propositional calculus entrenches in many

people the conviction that concepts such as conjunction, disjunction, implication,

equivalence, and negation are so basic that they are necessarily lexicalised in all

languages. And yet, not all languages have clear equivalents of the English and, or,

if…then, only if, or not. In Wari’, a Chapacura-Wanham language of the Amazon, and

in Tzeltal, Mayan language spoken in Mexico, there is no direct equivalent of or. In

Maricopa, a Yuman language of Arizona, there is no direct equivalent of and. In

Guugu Yimithirr, an Australian aboriginal language, there is no direct equivalent of

if.4

Now, every student of linguistics introduced to the facts of linguistic diversity

knows that the lack of a word for a concept does not necessarily mean that the

language is unable to express that concept; if the relevant culture has a need for a

4 See Mauri and van der Auwera (2012), and Evans and Levinson (2009).

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particular concept, it can express it in some other ways. Or it can have various co-

existing means for expressing it. But what is still lacking in linguistics is a

comprehensive theory of meaning that would take this diversity seriously. When a

concept can be inferred or just ‘assigned’, so to speak, to a particular context-

dependent interpretation of a sentence in context, there is no reason not to give it

equal attention in a formal representation to that we give to words and structures.5

While some progress in this area has been achieved since the late 1970s, with the

rising awareness of the need to account for pragmatic ‘intrusions’ into the logical

form when we want the semantic representation to be in line with the intention of the

person who produced that sentence, this awareness has largely stopped at this

proposal of ‘intrusions’, ‘pragmatic enrichment’, or ‘pragmatic modulation’, or

resolving underspecification or underdetermination.6 What we need to do instead is to

address the questions: (i) if the language doesn’t have a word or grammatical structure

for expressing a certain concept, does it still have other means for expressing it, and if

so, (ii) how can we make sure that these means are given adequate attention in a

theory of meaning?

In order to exemplify the need for these research questions, let us continue

with the example of conjunction, this time closer to home, and interwoven with the

pertinent question of mental temporal ordering of eventualities (events and states, see

also Wallington, this collection). English language has lexicalised conjunction, most

commonly in the form of the word and, but the meaning expressed by and is not in a

bi-unique mapping with the logical connective of conjunction in propositional logic.

Example (1) presents a common and widely discussed scenario where and means

5 On this topic, see also Apresjan, this collection and Gladkova, this collection.

6 Literature on this topic is ample. For an overview see for example Recanati (2005); Jaszczolt

(2002); and Jaszczolt (forthcoming).

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more than conjunction; it means a temporal conjunction and then. The symbol ‘pr’

stands for, to use a theory-neutral term, ‘pragmatic elaborations’.

(1) Tom finished the chapter and closed the book.

pr Tom finished the chapter and then closed the book.

Various names have been given to this pragmatic inference of temporality that takes

place in the process of utterance interpretation. There have been intense discussions in

the literature concerning the status of such additional meanings. However, all these

discussions start with the presumption that since such additions are in principle

cancellable, they must be regarded, precisely, as ‘additions’. But it is not at all certain

that the criterion of cancellability is the appropriate one. To invoke example (1) again,

the temporal meaning may in fact be well entrenched in a particular context, to the

extent that, in some contexts, cancelling it may not be a feasible conversational move

at all. So perhaps it is not the different provenance and strength of lexical and

pragmatically conveyed meanings that we should be focusing on but rather the fact

that they are all present in, so to speak, ‘one basket’: all contributing to the meaning

of an utterance in a discourse situation. Moreover, it has to be noted that English

allows for the explicit expression of temporality as well, through and then, next, and

so forth. It would take a strong argument to maintain that there is a difference,

relevant for the interpretation of discourse, between lexical and pragmatic means of

expressing temporal ordering of events.

To continue with example (1), temporality is not even most accurately

described as a form of enrichment of and, nor is it well introduced when we speak

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about it as a form of shift, modulation, of the meaning of (1). It arises equally easily in

(2), where there is no connective.

(2) Tom finished the chapter. He closed the book.

A less controversial case would be that of disjunction, where the exclusive or

inclusive interpretation is often context- or content-driven as evidenced in the

obviously inclusive reading of (3).

(3) In order to qualify you have to be a citizen or a permanent resident.

Continuing on the topic of conjunction, contrary to English, in Swahili and

then is fully grammaticalised as the consecutive tense marker ka that replaces the

tense marker in all but the first clause. For example, in (4), the past time reference is

signalled in the first phrase by li, after which it is assumed, or inferred,7 from the

presence of the consecutive ka.

(4) a. …wa-Ingereza wa-li-wa-chukua wa-le maiti,

3PL-British 3PL-PAST-3PL-take 3PL-DEM corpses

‘…then the British took the corpses,

b. wa-ka-wa-tia katika bao moja,

3PL-CONS-3PL-put.on on board one

put them on a flat board,

c. wa-ka-ya-telemesha maji-ni kwa utaratibu w-ote…

7 I shall not discuss the big question of inference vs automatic meaning assignment at this

point. See for example Carston (2007); Jaszczolt (2010b).

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3PL-CONS-3PL-lower water-LOC with order 3PL-all

and lowered them steadily into the water…’

(adapted from Givón 2005: 154)

To summarise the options, conjunction can be lexicalised or not, and when it is, one

lexical item may carry more meaning than the meaning of conjunction alone, just as

the Swahili ka does. Or it may contribute to triggering more meaning, such as in the

English example (1), without, so to speak, being ‘enriched’ by this meaning as a

lexical item, as evidenced by (2). The temporality is rather expressed pragmatically by

the juxtaposition of two sentences pertaining to events, as is well summarised in

Asher and Lascarides’ (e.g. 2003) rhetorical structure rule of Narration, which states

that if both sentences refer to events, then the event expressed by the first sentence

takes/took/will take place before the event expressed by the second sentence, as in (5):


e1 e2

There does not seem to be any reason, methodological or

epistemological/metaphysical, for giving more representation to the lexical or

grammatical way of expressing the same concept than to the pragmatic ones; as long

as the concept is expressed and conveyed, it has to figure in the representation of

meaning.

Next, let us come back to the example of Wari’, which does not have a direct

equivalent of the logical connective of disjunction, neither does it have a word closely

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related to it like the English or.8 However, the concepts of the alternatives or

disjunction are present there no less than in languages with the connective. The

absence of a disjunctive marker is compensated by the use of some irrealis marker as

for example in (6).

(6) ’am ’e’ ca ’am mi’ pin ca

perhaps live 3SG.M. perhaps give complete 3SG.M.

‘Either he will live or he will die.’

(from Mauri and van der Auwera 2012: 391).

Again, the presence of the concept of an alternative is sufficient ground for including

disjunction in the representation of meaning of such a sentence – realised as a

juxtaposition of modal phrases. To repeat, the reason is simple and overwhelming. To

use von Fintel and Matthewson’s (2008: 170) words,

while perhaps none of the logical connectives are universally lexically expressed,

there is no evidence that languages differ in whether or not logical connectives are

present in their logical forms.

Examples of linguistic diversity in connectives can be continued endlessly: not

only do we have cultural and linguistic diversity, but also frequently one language

affords us choices of means. In addition, every discourse situation creates a locum for

new pragmatic inferences as well as automatic, default meaning assignments.9 I have

addressed here the issue of overt and covert temporal ordering of eventualities by

8 ‘Closely related’ because English or can adopt inclusive () or exclusive meaning.

9 I discuss this further in section 5.

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using an example of conjunction and consecutive tense. It goes without saying that the

phenomenon of Sequence of Tense (SOT) in English occupies the central place in this

topic. For our current purpose, the ambiguities created by the SOT phenomenon such

as in (7) are yet another domain in which we find corroboration for the argument that

grammatical, lexical, and pragmatic means have to be regarded on a par, on an equal

footing, in representing meaning.10

In (7), the temporal location of Mary’s state with

respect to the time of speaking can vary depending on the pragmatic inference or

default assumptions for the context.

(7) John will think that Mary is pregnant.

(from Hornstein 1990: 86).

Therefore, the same theory of meaning that accounts for the lexicon/pragmatics mix in

the consecutivity marker ka, the English or, or, less obviously, the English and, will

have to account for the grammar/pragmatics mix in SOT.

Two more examples discussed in the remainder of this section will add more

flesh to this argument: the evidentiality/temporality mix and the tense-time

mismatches. To address the first: in Matses, a Panoan language spoken in the Amazon

region, there is an evidential system that requires that the source of information is

overtly specified whenever a past event is reported on the basis of inferential evidence

(see Fleck 2007). In particular, it is specified in a sentence how long ago the event

took place, as well as how long ago the speaker obtained evidence. Fleck calls this

inflectional solution double tense. A relevant verbal inflectional suffix in Matses

10

I stay clear of the discussion as to whether this theory of meaning should be called

semantics – in the contextualist sense, as in Relevance Theory, Sperber and Wilson (1995), or

my Default Semantics, Jaszczolt (2005) – or pragmatics, such as truth-conditional pragmatics,

see Recanati (2010). In sections 4 and 5 below I adopt the first option but this choice makes

no difference to the argument.

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combines temporal and evidential information as in (8). ERG stands for ‘ergative’, and

DIST.PAST.INF-REC.PAST.EXP for ‘distant past inferential’ combined with ‘recent past

experiential’. The conveyed temporal information is that the speaker discovered the

hut a short time ago, while it was made a long time ago.

(8) mayu-n bëste-wa-nëdak-o-şh.

non.Matses.Indian-ERG hut-make-DIST.PAST.INF-REC.PAST.EXP-3

‘Non-Matses Indians (had) made a hut.’

(from Fleck 2007: 590).

Matses has three past tenses: recent, distant, and remote, and three evidential

distinctions: direct experience, inference, and conjecture (see Fleck 2007: 589). The

marker nëdak expresses the distant past, referring to any temporal interval from

between about a month ago to the speaker’s infancy, combined with the inferential

evidence, while o marks recent past, normally from immediately before the time of

speaking to up to a month ago (although a more extended scale is also used in some

contexts), combined with experiential source. Altogether we obtain nëdak-o which

combines two items of temporal reference: distant past, that of the making of the hut,

and recent past, that of the discovery or obtaining information. Analogously, markers

for other combinations, such as that for recent past inferential or distant past

experiential, are available in the language, making up nine markers for the past time

reference in total.

Now, Fleck suggests that the fact that these distinctions are present only for

referring to the past can be partly ascribed to the obvious fact that these distinctions

are less important (although perhaps not unnecessary, as Fleck suggests) in the case of

the future or the present. What is interesting for our purpose is that what is expressed

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as compulsory double tense in Matses would normally be achieved through a

grammar/lexicon means in English, or grammar/pragmatics when the time of

obtaining evidence is obvious from the context. In addition, when we also consider

the three-way distinction in marking past tense, we require an additional

grammar/lexicon or grammar/pragmatics mix in English, which may result, for

example, in a grammar/pragmatics/lexicon mix for expressing the combination from

(8), as in the rather crude attempt in (9).

(9) Tom built a house [a long time ago]. [I [have just] realised/deduced from

what you were saying that he did].

It is easy to envisage discourse scenarios in which the material in square brackets,

outer or inner, could be redundant. All such numerous differences in what languages

grammaticalise or lexicalise as far as temporal reference is concerned add more fuel to

the argument that, to put it in the form of a slogan, whatever information content there

is in an utterance has to be present in its meaning representation, independently of

how it got there, i.e. independently of what sources or what processes are responsible

for it. Finally, let us address tense-time mismatches. These are abundant in many

languages, and it is so for good reasons. For example, when a speaker uses present

tense with future-time reference, a phenomenon that is sometimes called tenseless

future, the choice is likely to be motivated by the intention to emphasise the high

probability of the future event or potential difficulty in altering the plan or schedule as

in (10).

(10) On Monday the Prime Minister is in Glasgow.

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The so-called futurate progressive as in (11) exemplifies a similar phenomenon.

(11) On Monday I am planting my hedge.

Vivid, or historic, present obtained through present tense forms used with past-time

reference as in (12) is yet another example of the discussed mix.

(12) This is what happened to me yesterday: I enter the office and see this guy

standing by my desk and smiling to me. I say to him, …

From the conceptual, or semantic, point of view, it is more appropriate to call the

phenomenon the past of narration in that the grammatical form is used to refer to past

eventualities – on analogy with the classification of (10) and (11) as examples of the

future.

In short, as is well known, future or past temporality need not map onto future

or past verb forms in English. Moreover, there are languages in which temporal

reference is not grammatically marked (Mandarin) or this marking can be optional

(Thai). I emphasise this fact as it serves as further supporting evidence that all

information about temporal reference has to be treated on an equal footing, no matter

what its provenance. In section 7 I exemplify how this representation can be

executed. What needs to be established first, in the logical order of explanation, is (i)

whether there is a ‘theoretical whip’ that would tame and subjugate this diversity

(section 3); (ii) the theoretical framework for the theory of meaning that should be

adopted in order to give us the required object of study and scope (section 4); as well

as (iii) the identification of sources and processes that contribute meaning information

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(section 5), followed by (iv) a disclaimer concerning the use we make of the principle

of compositionality (section 6).

3. Pragmatic universals?

It can be assumed that the composition of meaning must follow some universal

principles that have their provenance in the structure of the brain and operations the

brain is capable of performing, as well as in the broadly similar external environment

and purpose associated with language use. One way to proceed would be to begin by

ascribing generative capacity to syntax, following the generative syntax school, and

attempting to address all meaning composition through proposing adequate syntactic

operations. However, there are two categories of problems with this method. Firstly,

these operations would either have to be assumed to be cognitively real, or would

have to be discovered and thereby awarded a clear empirical status. If we manipulate

them in syntactic theory just to make them account for the data, we are in danger of

overgeneralising. Arguably, not all languages exhibit recursion, and even the

assumption of the universality of constituent structure poses some problems of

analysis as free-order languages such as Latin exemplify (see Evans and Levinson

2009 for a convincing argument in support of this claim). On the other hand,

conceptual universals seem to be beyond dispute: there are general patterns on which

semantic composition is founded. To quote Evans and Levinson (2009: 444),

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although recursion may not be found in the syntax of languages, it is always found in

the conceptual structure, that is, the semantics or pragmatics – in the sense that it is

always possible in any language to express complex propositions.11

Compositionality can be safely accepted as a property of conceptual structure, and

thereby, on the definition of semantics we will be accepting below, also as a property

of semantics, as it is understood on contextualist accounts. What it means is that

generative power is ascribed to semantics/pragmatics rather than to syntax. This can

be understood in a variety of ways. Richard Montague strove for a formal

representation of sentence meaning in terms of intensional logic. His followers in the

general tradition of dynamic semantics, such as Discourse Representation Theory and

Dynamic Predicate Logic, are striving for an adequate formal representation of

meaning, where meaning includes pragmatic addition such as the resolution of

anaphora and presupposition, allowing for various degrees of representationalism

while retaining the commitment to compositionality. The next step in the direction of

pragmatics is the so-called pragmatic, interactive compositionality adopted by some

post-Gricean contextualists and notably in Recanati’s (2004, 2010) Truth-Conditional

Pragmatics and Jaszczolt’s Default Semantics (2005, 2010a) and defended in section

6 below.

Let us first look at the proposal of semantic universals. Von Fintel and

Matthewson (2008) begin by invoking the Strong Effability Hypothesis and

Translatability Thesis, both attributed to Jerrold Katz. The Strong Effability

Hypothesis says that ‘Every proposition is the sense of some sentence in each natural

language.’ This is, needless to say, wishful thinking for a formal semanticist and it

doesn’t take much evidence to disprove it. Next, the more relaxed Translatability

11

On conceptual universals see also Pinker and Jackendoff (2009); on a neurobiological account of

universals see Müller (2009).

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Thesis says that ‘For any pair of natural languages and for any sentence S in one and

any sense σ of S, there is at least one sentence S' in the other language such that σ is a

sense of S’. This thesis, again, is much too strict and only workable when we

substitute the term ‘utterance’ for ‘sentence’ and construe semantics in a radical

contextualist way. On the other hand, von Fintel and Matthewson (2008: 191) note the

following:

We found that languages often express strikingly similar truth conditions, in spite of

non-trivial differences in lexical semantics or syntax. We suggested that it may

therefore be fruitful to investigate the validity of ‘purely semantic’ universals, as

opposed to syntax-semantics universals.

The obvious follow-up question is, what would such ‘purely semantic’ universals

have to be like? Von Fintel and Matthewson suggest (i) some universal semantic

composition principles, which, however, to sum up crudely, are problematic to

construe, or (ii) Gricean principles of utterance interpretation. If we select the latter,

then we opt for the semantics/pragmatics mix and the follow-up question is what role

universal processing principles play in such semantic/pragmatic universals. Evans and

Levinson (2009) contend that processing principles are the universals sought.12

The issue is this. What is important for the current discussion of the

provenance of universals is whether we choose to look for them in the domain of

formal semantic/pragmatic generalisations per se or rather, or also, in the domain of

processing generalisations. For example, if we were to go along with dynamic

semantics and incorporate more and more information from context into formal

representation, we would be opting for the first strategy. If we were to go along with

post-Gricean, and therefore intention-based, contextualism in semantics and

12

On universals in processing see also Hawkins (2004), (2009).

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incorporate results of pragmatic inference in the truth-conditional representation, we

could still opt for either focus on the final representation or focus on the kinds of

processes that lead to this pragmatics-rich representation. Evans and Levinson go with

the latter. As they say, “[f]or our generativist critics, generality is to be found at the

level of structural representation; for us, at the level of process” (ibid., p. 475).

To sum up, the methodological question is whether universal principles should

include generalisations about processing. There are multiple arguments in favour of

the affirmative answer.13

We need methodological assumptions about the theory of

meaning but we also have to see how they govern the production and comprehension

of meaning because, as was amply exemplified in section 2, and as is also widely

acknowledged in various current processing models, comprehension of meaning

involves the synthesis of chunks of information that come from different domains.14

Now, the main methodological assumption about the theory of meaning is the

Principle of Compositionality, which says that the meaning of a complex expression is

determined by the meanings of its parts and the structure in which they are combined.

Pursued in formal semantics by Richard Montague, Barbara Partee, and armies of

acolytes, the principle remains a Holy Grail of semanticists. There are intensional

constructs that refuse to succumb unless sophisticated changes or additions are

allowed in their logical form. Temporal reference is also in this problematic category.

The contextualist orientation in post-Gricean pragmatics is the most suitable approach

13

I argued extensively for the inclusion of processing consideration in semantic/pragmatic

theory in Jaszczolt (2008). See also Saul (2002). 14

Needless to say, the question is orthogonal to the question of lexical universals pursued in

lexical semantics: the proposal that words such as I, you, big, small stand for universal human

concepts because they are universally lexicalised feeds into the overall issue of meaning

universals but can fare independently of it as well. The universality of semantic types t,e is

also orthogonal in that when semantic/pragmatic universals allow for interaction across the

domains of lexicon, grammar, and pragmatics, neither domain has to separately exhibit

universals of this type.

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to look into for pursuing this pragmatic/semantic universal. This is the topic to which

I now turn.

4. A contextualist approach to expressing temporal distinctions

In the post-Gricean approach to utterance, and, more recently, also discourse meaning,

the focus of the debate has been on the pragmatic constituents of what is said. In other

words, since the late 1970s, the main debates have circled around the delimitation of

the propositional content as contrasted with what is truly implicit. Some pragmatic

constituents, such as the enrichment of the meaning of sentential connectives as in (1)

above or (13), the specification of the domain of quantification as in (14), the

precisification of the meaning of negation, and many others, are said to contribute to

the propositional content of the uttered sentence.

(13) You will pass the test if you practise a lot.

pr You will pass the test if and only if you practise a lot.

(14) Everybody read Frege.

pr Every member of the research group read Frege.

Whether we call them parts of explicature (Sperber and Wilson 1995), what is said

(Recanati 1989), or retain the term implicature (Levinson 2000), the common-sense

judgement remains that they are in some sense more basic and important than

implicatures, where the latter constitute separate messages to the addressee. This

pragmatics/semantics mix approach has been called radical pragmatics, sense-

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generality (in that the structure of the sentence affords only the general,

underdetermined representation of meaning), or more recently contextualism (see e.g.

Recanati 2004, 2005, 2010, 2012). The latter term is what we shall adopt.15

To sum up

the idea, semantic analysis takes us only part of the way towards the recovery of

utterance meaning and pragmatic enrichment completes the process. The standard

logical form of the sentence is enriched, or modulated, as a result of pragmatic

processing, either inferential or automatic in kind, and the entire semantic/pragmatic

product becomes subjected to the truth-conditional analysis.

Next, the question that has frequently been addressed, since it was brought to

the fore by Carston (1988, 1998), is how far the logical form can be extended. Or, in

other words, ‘how much pragmatics’ is allowed in the representation of the main

intended meaning of an utterance. According to Default Semantics, a contextualist

approach I am going to use in what follows (see Jaszczolt 2005, 2009, 2010a), the

answer is quite radical: as much as is required to faithfully depict the main, primary

message that the speaker intends to convey. This answer, albeit commonsensically

obvious, is not so easy to defend for a compositional and truth-conditional theory of

meaning because ‘as much as required’ also includes situations where the main

message is conveyed indirectly, and this happens surprisingly often and is true of

different languages and cultures (see e.g. Nicolle and Clark 1999; Pitts 2005;

Schneider 2009). Indirect main meaning means that the logical form of the intended

message may be significantly different from the logical form of the uttered sentence

and this pulls the rug from under the feet of formal semanticists who wish to retain the

backbone of sentence structure. But at the same time it opens a window for those of a

15

But note that contextualism can also be understood more broadly, to include pragmatics in

two-dimensional semantics such as Stalnaker’s approach. See Jaszczolt (forthcoming) for

discussion.

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more cognitive orientation who want to retain compositionality and at the same time

recognise the fact that meaning comes from a variety of sources and through a variety

of processes and is merged into one cognitive representation.

It is this cognitively real representation that is compositional and is the object

of study of Default Semantics (DS). It is called there merger representation and its

most distinctive feature, differentiating it from primary objects of other contextualist

accounts, is that it does not undergo a syntactic constraint. DS does not recognise the

level of meaning at which the logical form is pragmatically developed, enriched, or

modulated as a real, cognitively justified construct. To do so would be to assume that

syntax plays a privileged role among various carriers of information, which is

considered to be a contextualists’ mistake. In (15), the main intended message would

normally be as in (15c) and (15c) is therefore modelled as the merger representation

of the primary meaning in preference to its alternatives.

(15) Child to mother: Everybody has a bike.

(15a) All of the child’s friends have bikes.

(15b) Many/most of the child’s classmates have bikes.

(15c) The mother should consider buying her son a bike.

(15d) Cycling is a popular form of exercise among children.

Interlocutors frequently communicate their main intended content through a

proposition that is indirect and therefore not syntactically restricted by the uttered

sentence. It is this intended proposition that post-Gricean, intention-based

contextualism should attend to. Understood as being about meaning that is intended

by the speaker and recovered by the addressee, it is important not to conflate it with

the view that meaning is to be analysed from the position from which it is assessed.

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The latter is a relativist stance (see MacFarlane 2005, 2011); the first is a contextualist

one, Gricean in spirit.

5. Sources of temporal information

In section 2 I gave several examples of sentences in the case of which temporal

information had to be retrieved from the lexicon/pragmatics, grammar/pragmatics, or

even lexicon/grammar/pragmatics mix. In order to account for this diversified

provenance and merger of outputs, DS has to be able to assign information to clearly

defined sources. In the current version of DS (Jaszczolt 2009, 2010a), the following

sources have been identified:

(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)

I will not elaborate on these sources here. In what follows some basic knowledge of

DS will prove useful but not essential. Suffice to say, as a point of explanation, that

source (iv) accounts for interpretations that stem from the standard properties of

human intentional mental states. For example, when a speaker uses a definite

description, it will be, by default, understood as associated with the strongest

referential role a definite description can play, namely the referential rather than the

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attributive one, unless some other source of information intervenes and stops this

default from arising.

The outputs of sources of information about meaning are treated on an equal

footing. To repeat, the syntactic constraint present in other contextualist accounts,

such as relevance theory or truth-conditional pragmatics, is abandoned. Merger

representations have the status of mental representations. They have a compositional

structure: they are proposition-like constructs, integrating information coming from

various sources that interacts according to the principles established by the intentional

character of discourse. While the sources of information are delineated clearly, they

are not a claim to originality in DS. Many pragmatic approaches emphasise the role of

cultural and social assumptions and the role of the architecture of the brain in meaning

production and comprehension. Levinson (2000) makes out of them a rigid theory of

generalised implicatures. In his socio-cognitive approach Kecskes (e.g. 2010)

emphasises that pragmatics has to take into account both societal (cooperation) and

individual factors (egocentrism) as context-dependency is counterbalanced by

individual tendencies. He proposes that a dialectal model of pragmatics should present

both the speaker’s and the addressee’s perspective (Kecskes 2008) – a claim that is

clearly in line with the Model Speaker–Model Addressee perspective of DS

(Jaszczolt, e.g. 2005).

Next, the model of sources of information can be mapped onto types of processes

that produce the merger representation of the primary meaning, as well as the

additional (secondary) meanings. Lexicon and grammar represent both the source and

the type of processing that is unique to them (WS). Next, structure and properties of

the brain discussed as IS above, lead to so-called cognitive defaults (CD) – automatic

interpretations that trigger for example the strong referential reading of definite

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descriptions. Sources WK and SC are responsible for social, cultural, and world

knowledge defaults (SCWD).16

But they can also pertain to a process of conscious

pragmatic inference (CPI): information from world knowledge (WK) or knowledge of

society and culture (SC) can be accessed automatically (SCWD) or they can be

consciously inferred (CPI). Situational context of discourse (SD) will, when active,

lead to CPI.

A CD is exemplified in (16). Sentence (17) exemplifies the fact that SC can result

in either an SCWD or CPI process. PM stands for ‘primary meaning’.

(16) IS CD

The author of Presumptive Meanings is coming to Cambridge next spring.

PM: Stephen Levinson is coming to Cambridge next spring.

(17) SC SCWD or CPI

A Rembrandt was sold at Christie’s last week.

PM: A painting by Rembrandt was sold at the Christie’s auction house in

London last week.

In constructing merger representations DS makes use of the processing model and it

indexes the components of the representation (symbolised by , for summation of

information) with a subscript standing for the type of processing.

‘Default’ is a notorious term in the literature in that it is used in a wide variety

of ways and for a variety of purposes.17

Therefore it is important to stress that SCWDs

and CDs are defaults for the situation, for the Model Speaker and Model Addressee.

SCWDs depend on societal and cultural factors, as well as on shared knowledge of the

physical laws of the world. CDs, when present, are triggered by the structure and

16

These are marked as SCWDpm when they pertain to primary meaning and SCWDsm when

they result in secondary meanings. Analogously for CPI discussed below. 17

See Jaszczolt (2010b) for an encyclopaedic overview.

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operations of the human brain and in particular by the property of intentionality

exhibited by the relevant mental states.

All in all, what we have in DS is a set of universally utilised sources of

information and a set of universally applicable processes in meaning construction. We

are still far from knowing how exactly the merger of information proceeds; it is

possible that for this we require evidence from neurolinguistics. Evans and Levinson

(2009: 429) define universal principles as “stable engineering solutions, satisfying

multiple design constraints, reflecting both cultural-historical factors and the

constraints of human cognition”. In DS, as we have seen, these universal principles

translate into, respectively, (i) social, cultural, and world-knowledge defaults (SCWD)

or conscious pragmatic inference from societal and cultural knowledge or knowledge

of physical (world) facts (CPI); and (ii) cognitive defaults (CD), grounded in the

properties of the human inferential system (IS), and in particular in the property of

intentionality of mental states. After a brief explanation in section 6 of how the

requirement of compositionality of meaning fares under this DS-theoretic account,

in section 7 I put the above categories to use in representing the

lexicon/grammar/pragmatics mix in temporal reference.

6. Covert and overt devices and the question of compositionality

The requirement of compositionality is often considered to be a necessary condition

for any theory of meaning. However, sometimes it is overtly acknowledged that some

types of constructions, namely intensional contexts, evade it, and the claim that

natural language semantics is compositional is lifted. Schiffer’s (e.g. 1991, 1992,

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1994, 2003) way of approaching the problem is to stipulate what it would take for

semantics to be construed as compositional – for example, what it would take to

construct formal representations of propositional attitude reports that observe the

compositionality requirement (Schiffer 1992), but, nevertheless, conclude that the

natural language semantics in fact lacks these required features that would make

intensional contexts compositional. Instead, it is possible that the composition of

meaning reflects compositional reality; the structure of meaning supervenes on the

structure of the world. Next, Jerry Fodor, in his second and substantially rethought

attempt at the Language of Thought in LOT2 (Fodor 2008), proposes that

compositionality be sought on the level of referential properties. Now, if

compositionality is not to be found in traditionally understood semantics but

semantics must ‘stay close’ to the compositionality requirement by observing

referentiality and, generally, the world- dependence, then, equally, we can bring these

extra semantic components into a theory of meaning as long as we redefine semantics

as a semantics/pragmatics mix. In other words, we do not postulate slots in the logical

form of the expression that have to be filled from some extra-sentential source like

indexicalists do (see e.g. Stanley and Szabó 2000; Stanley 2002, 2007), but we say

that these sources contribute according to some still unknown principles of interaction

of processes of meaning construction and meaning recovery, as in DS. Recanati’s

‘top-down’ modulation of meaning is a middle station in this conceptual shift. It

denies indexical slots, allows free modification of sense, but does not address the

question of sources and interaction of processes. However, Recanati (2004) does

address the question of lifting compositionality to such an interaction:

compositionality belongs to modulated propositions, it is called ‘interactionist’, or

‘Gestaltist’ compositionality. Similarly, DS assumes compositionality of utterance

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meaning rather than sentence meaning. ‘Assumes’ because compositionality is here,

like in Recanati’s approach, a methodological assumption. It is at the same time an

empirical assumption, a necessary characteristic of all possible human languages, in

agreement with Szabó (2000). What remains is a colossal task of understanding the

interaction itself, through work on corpora, neurolinguistic evidence, and formal

theories. At present we can only demonstrate that a pragmatic compositional account

such as DS adequately accounts for the lexicon/grammar/pragmatics mix, and for the

syntactic-constraint-free primary meanings, keeping the identification of processes, as

well as the units on which they operate, perspicuous in the meaning representation.

7. Representing the diversity

Temporal reference that is of interest for our mixed-sources and interaction-of-

processes account was exemplified by, among others, (i) adding a temporal (and then)

meaning to a non-temporal connective in (1); (ii) adding temporal reference to

contiguous sentences in discourse in (2), juxtaposed with grammatical marking of this

relation in Swahili by the consecutive tense marker ka in (4); (iii) SOT phenomenon

with future-time reference in the main clause in (7); (iv) double-tense in Matses in (8),

contrasted with English (9) and normally analogous to a mere (9') below; and (v)

tense-time mismatches in English in (10)–(12), all repeated below for convenience.

(1) Tom finished the chapter and closed the book.


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(4) a. …wa-Ingereza wa-li-wa-chukua wa-le maiti,

3Pl-British 3Pl-Past-3Pl-take 3Pl-Dem corpses

‘…then the British took the corpses,

b. wa-ka-wa-tia katika bao moja…

3Pl-Cons-3Pl-put.on on board one

put them on a flat board…’

(7) John will think that Mary is pregnant.

(8) mayu-n bëste-wa-nëdak-o-şh.

non.Matses.Indian-ERG hut-make-DIST.PAST.INF-REC.PAST.EXP-3

‘Non-Matses Indians (had) made a hut.’

(9) Tom built a house [a long time ago]. [I [have just] realised/deduced from what you

were saying that he did. ]

(9') Tom built a house.

(10) On Monday the Prime Minister is in Glasgow.

(11) On Monday I am planting my hedge.

(12) This is what happened to me yesterday: I enter the office and see this guy standing by

my desk and smiling to me. I say to him, …

In (1), what is of interest is that the temporal meaning of and comes from the source

SCWD: since there are two events juxtaposed, the addressee automatically adds the

relation of temporal ordering 1 < 2; see Figure 1. Subscripts stand for the type of

process responsible for the contribution to utterance meaning and the square brackets

contain the material on which the process operates. To repeat, the processes can then

be easily, albeit not bi-uniquely, mapped onto sources of information. For clarity of

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presentation, the representation of past-time reference is omitted (but will be attended

to in other examples).

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Figure 1: for example (1)

Similarly, in (2), the juxtaposition of two sentences referring to events results in [1 <

2]SCWDpm. The difference is that the conjunction is present in the merger

representation qua conceptual representation but is not overtly present in the sentence,

hence we do not have [1 2]WS as in Figure 1. Instead, there is [1 2]CD as in

Figure 2. We assume that it is CD that is responsible for the conceptual conjunction

because the natural order of events happening in the world is mirrored here in the

mental states.

x y z 1 2

[1 2]WS

Tom (x)

chapter (y)

book (z)

[1 < 2]SCWDpm

1: [x finished y]WS

2: [x closed y]WS

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Example (4) demonstrates that the temporal order of events can be conveyed

with recourse to neither the lexicon (and then) nor to pragmatics (enrichment of and

with two events juxtaposed), but instead to grammar. In other words, there is

considerable variation in how the ‘order of narration’ is externalised. In Swahili, it is

the marker ka that conveys this meaning. In DS there is no difficulty in varying this

source of information about temporal sequence of events, as Figure 3 demonstrates.

The meaning 1 < 2 is ascribed there to WS. Upper case ‘X’ stands for a plural

referent with collective reading.

x y z 1 2

[1 2]CD

Tom (x)

chapter (y)

book (z)

[1 < 2] SCWDpm

1: [x finished y]WS

2: [x closed y]WS

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Example (7) obtains two interpretations: one where is pertains to the future, as

indicated by the preceding future-tense marker will, and the other one without a shift,

with the present-time grounded is. Following the theory of time adopted in DS, the

future is represented by a modal acceptability operator ACC qualified by the degree

and superscripted by the source of information (see e.g. Jaszczolt 2009). So, ACCrf ├

Σ' means ‘it is acceptable to the degree pertaining to the regular future form that it is

the case that Σ'’, where the sources of information are WS and CD – that is the

structure, lexicon, and the default sense of will. On the shifted reading, Σ'' remains in

the future, as the CD subscript on ACC indicates. This reading is represented in

Figure 4. The superscript rf stands for ‘regular future’.

X 1 2

[wa-Ingereza]CD (X)

1: [wa-chukua wa-le maiti [X]CD]WS

2: [wa-tia katika bao moja [X]CD]WS

[1 2]WS

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Figure 4: for the default shifted reading of example (7)

The present-time reading of Σ'' is obtained via context-triggered inference that

Mary’s state of pregnancy obtains at the time of discourse. The process is then CPIpm

as in Figure 5. The superscript rn stands for ‘regular present’.

x y Σ'

[John]CD (x)

[Mary]CD (y)

[ACCrf ├ Σ']WS,CD

': [x think '']WS

Σ'': [y be pregnant]WS

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Figure 5: for the contextually triggered reading of example (7)

Example (8) has a conceptual representation as in Figure 6, where the

information ‘a long time ago’ and ‘as I have just deduced’ (or something to that

effect) is obtained via the grammatical source, and hence WS. In the English

equivalent uttered as (9'), this double temporality and source of evidence is either not

intended or, in some circumstances, may be inferred via CPIpm or taken for granted.

For the clarity of argument, we did not attend to the nuances of the ergative structure

and regarded ‘bëste-wa’ as a unit and ‘mayu-n’ as the ‘subject’ in the sense of the

actor.

x y Σ' [John]CD (x)

[Mary]CD (y)

[ACCrf ├ Σ']WS,CD

': [x think '']WS

[ACCrn

├ Σ'']WS, CPIpm

Σ'' [y be pregnant]WS

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Figure 6: Σ for example (8)

Sentences (10) and (11) normally present a problem for formal semantic

accounts, where temporal reference is dictated by the tense of the sentence, as for

example in Kamp and Reyle’s (1993) account of Discourse Representation Theory. In

DS, however, all sources of information are treated on an equal footing and are

equally able to override or prevent the potential output of other sources. So, tense-

time mismatches are not an exception but simply a case where CPI is at work. (10)

obtains the representation in Figure 7. The superscript tf stands for ‘tenseless future’.

X Σ'

mayu-n (X)

[ACCREC.PAST.EXP

[ACCDIST.PAST.INF

├ Σ']]WS

Σ' [bëste-wa (X)]WS

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Futurate progressive in (11) works analogously, with the temporality conveyed

through the CPIpm as in Figure 8. The superscript fp stands for ‘futurate progressive’.

x t Σ'

[the Prime Minister]CD (x)

on Monday (t)

[ACCtf

├ Σ']WS, CPIpm

Σ' [x be in London]WS

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Finally, the past of narration in (12) is analogously represented by taking into

account the pragmatic source of information that, in merger representations of DS,

can override the information potentially carried by the grammar. Hence, (12') obtains

the past-time reference via CPIpm as in Figure 9.

(12') I enter the office.

For the purpose of the current argument it is sufficient to represent how the past-time

reference is assigned to the present-tense form. However, we must remember that

merger representations, being the ‘pragmaticky’ offspring of the discourse

representation structures of Discourse Representation Theory (Kamp and Reyle

1993), represent entire discourses. Hence (12') is normally part of a for a larger

chunk of discourse as in (12) and the discourse condition ‘yesterday (t)’ is already

x t Σ'

[the speaker]CD (x)

on Monday (t)

[ACCfp

├ Σ']WS, CPIpm

Σ' [x plant x’s hedge]WS

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present there by virtue of processing the previous sentence. The superscript pn stands

for ‘past of narration’.

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Figure 9: Simplified for example (12') as part of (12)

All in all, having the processes identified in DS at our disposal, aided by the

requirement of treating them all on an equal footing as far as their contribution to the

compositional mental merger representation is concerned, allows us to represent the

linguistic diversity of means of expressing temporal reference and temporal ordering,

at the same time making use of universal principles of utterance interpretation.

8. Concluding remarks: The depth of diversity

In discussing the various solutions to expressing temporal reference and temporal

ordering I have demonstrated how adopting merger representations allows for

representing the linguistic diversity of means of conveying information (the

lexicon/grammar/pragmatics trade-offs) by allocating them to contributing sources

and processes. An adequate representation of this diversity requires that all

contributing sources and processes are treated on an equal footing. The commonsense

x t Σ'

[the speaker]CD (x)

yesterday (t)

[ACCpn

├ Σ']WS, CPIpm

Σ' [x enter the office]WS

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principle of efficiency in communication may require leaving some aspects of

intended meaning to pragmatic means such as the capturing of defaults or situated

inference. In searching for universal sources of information and universal processes of

discourse interpretation it was proposed that the contextualist orientation, and in

particular its radical version in DS, withstands the test for cross-linguistic

applicability set up in this chapter.

The final question to address is whether in explaining language use one ought

to focus on language diversity or rather on universal patterns. Evans and Levinson,

(2009: 436), in their debate with generative syntacticians, opt for the first. They make

a programmatic statement that languages and cultures have adaptive character, reflect

the cultural and ecological interests of the community, and it is these diversified

solutions that languages adopt for this task that should be the core of linguistic theory.

Mapping languages onto formal (whether conceptual or not) structures disposes of

this core point of interest of language study. I hope to have demonstrated in this

chapter, in the case of some simple examples of the variety of means available for

expressing temporality, that neither focusing on the variety of means nor stressing the

universality of semantic/pragmatic principles and processes is a preferable option.

They have to be considered in tandem, à la Kantian percepts and concepts, in an

adequate account of intended meaning in communication – and thereby in any

adequate, compositional theory of meaning.

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