Arthur Merin
Information Relevance and Social Decisionmaking:
Some Principles and Results of Decision-Theoretic Semantics
Arbeitspapiere des SFB 340, Bericht Nr. 100 (1997), 46pp.
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Abstract
This paper submits an approach to meaning with a focus on
broadly non-truth-conditional aspects of natural language. `Pragmatics'
is interpreted not as a label for aspects of meaning left residual by
`semantics', but substantively, in the way of C.S. Peirce
and F.P. Ramsey, as a synonym for decision-theory. We outline (i)
basic assumptions, (ii) some relations to other approaches, (iii)
a range of results wide enough to justify the term `approach'.
The phenomena addressed include those widely treated under labels
`conversational implicature' (both particularized and generalized
with applications to `or' and to the Jespersen/Ducrot/Horn facts on
negation in scalar predicate contexts)
and `conventional implicature' (`but', `even'), as well as
`presupposition' (`King-of-X'-sentences, `stop' and `also').
A key notion is `relevance',
explicated as a measure of epistemic context-change potential
and related to information in the traditional, stochastic way.
Another is the notion of `negotiation'---i.e. of a social situation
in which persons with locally incompatible preferences with respect
to an issue attempt to influence each other. Assumptions
guaranteeing compositionality (additivity) of relevance are seen to
militate for dichotomous issues.
Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft
Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen
Wilhelmstraße 113
72074 Tübingen
Germany
arthur@ims.uni-stuttgart.de