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The Role of Pragmatic Inferencing in Compositional Semantics

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Explicit Communication

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition ((PSPLC))

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Abstract

In her book Thoughts and Utterances, Robyn Carston has the following to say on compositionality:

There just is no escaping the fact that the propositions that may be expressed by sentences in use are a function, not only of linguistic meaning, but also of pragmatic inference. Perhaps this marks the demise of an interesting principle of semantic compositionality, or perhaps it points to the possible development of a different sort of compositionality principle, one that can accommodate an interaction of decoded and pragmatically inferred meaning in the determination of the proposition expressed (a principle of semantic/pragmatic compositionality). (2002: 73, italics in the original)

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Ā© 2010 BegoƱa Vicente Cruz

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Cruz, B.V. (2010). The Role of Pragmatic Inferencing in Compositional Semantics. In: Soria, B., Romero, E. (eds) Explicit Communication. Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230292352_4

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