Indefeasible Semantics and Defeasible Pragmatics

TL;DR

This paper proposes a framework for understanding how discourse context influences interpretation preferences, especially for pronouns, using defeasible rules within a discourse processing model that separates grammar and pragmatics.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed structure of pragmatic interpretation based on defeasible rule interactions, supported by empirical survey data on pronoun preferences.

Findings

Discourse context controls interpretation preferences.

Default preferences interact through defeasible rules.

Survey data supports the proposed interpretative framework.

Abstract

An account of utterance interpretation in discourse needs to face the issue of how the discourse context controls the space of interacting preferences. Assuming a discourse processing architecture that distinguishes the grammar and pragmatics subsystems in terms of monotonic and nonmonotonic inferences, I will discuss how independently motivated default preferences interact in the interpretation of intersentential pronominal anaphora. In the framework of a general discourse processing model that integrates both the grammar and pragmatics subsystems, I will propose a fine structure of the preferential interpretation in pragmatics in terms of defeasible rule interactions. The pronoun interpretation preferences that serve as the empirical ground draw from the survey data specifically obtained for the present purpose.