Robert van Rooij

We investigate to what extent it is possible to determine a reasonable default pragmatic value of complex sentences in a compositional manner, and --when combined with a Boolean semantics --to see under which conditions it gives rise to reasonable predictions. We discuss several notions of pragmatic value, or relevance, and compare their behavior over complex sentences. Although the goal-oriented notions of relevance give rise to the same ordering relations between propositions,the conditions under which they behave 'compositionally' vary significantly.

In this paper, Universal any and Negative Polarity Item any are uniformly analyzed as ‘counterfactual’ donkey sentences (in disguise). Their difference in meaning is reduced here to the distinction between strong and weak readings of donkey sentences. It is shown that this explains the universal and existential character of Universal- and NPI-any, respectively, and the positive and negative contexts in which they are licensed. Our uniform analysis extends to the use of any in command and permission sentences. It predicts that whereas the use of any in permission sentences is licensed and gives rise to a universal reading, it is not licensed in command sentences

This paper combines a survey of existing literature in game-theoretic pragmatics with new models that fill some voids in that literature. We start with an overview of signaling games with a conflict of interest between sender and receiver, and show that the literature on such games can be classified into models with direct, costly, noisy and imprecise signals. We then argue that this same subdivision can be used to classify signaling games with common interests, where we fill some voids in the literature. For each of the signaling games treated, we show how equilibrium-refinement arguments and evolutionary arguments can be interpreted in the light of pragmatic inference.

The principle of tolerance characteristic of vague predicates is sometimes presented as a soft rule, namely as a default which we can use in ordinary reasoning, but which requires care in order to avoid paradoxes. We focus on two ways in which the tolerance principle can be modeled in that spirit, using special consequence relations. The first approach relates tolerant reasoning to nontransitive reasoning; the second relates tolerant reasoning to nonmonotonic reasoning. We compare the two approaches and examine three specific consequence relations in relation to those, which we call: strict-to-tolerant entailment, pragmatic-to-tolerant entailment, and pragmatic-to-pragmatic entailment. The first two are nontransitive, whereas the latter two are nonmonotonic.

Cimpian et al. observed that we accept generic statements of the form ‘Gs are f’ on relatively weak evidence, but that if we are unfamiliar with group G and we learn a generic statement about it, we still treat it inferentially in a much stronger way: all Gs are f. This paper makes use of notions like ‘representativeness’, ‘contingency’ and ‘relative difference’ from psychology to provide a uniform semantics of generics that explains why people accept generics based on weak evidence. The spirit of the approach has much in common with Leslie’s cognition-based ideas about generics, but the semantics will be grounded on a strengthening of Cohen’s relative readings of generic sentences. In contrast to Leslie and Cohen, we propose a uniform semantic analysis of generics. The basic intuition is that a generic of the form ‘Gs are f’ is true because f is typical for G, which means that f is valuably associated with G. We will make use of Kahneman and Tversky’s Heuristics and Biases approach, according to which people tend to confuse questions about probability with questions about representativeness, to explain pragmatically why people treat many generic statements inferentially in a much stronger way.

According to standard linguistic theory, the meaning of an utterance is the product of conventional semantic meaning and general pragmatic rules on language use. We investigate how such a division of labor between semantics and pragmatics could evolve under general processes of selection and learning. We present a game‐theoretic model of the competition between types of language users, each endowed with certain lexical representations and a particular pragmatic disposition to act on them. Our model traces two evolutionary forces and their interaction: (i) pressure toward communicative efficiency and (ii) transmission perturbations during the acquisition of linguistic knowledge. We illustrate the model based on a case study on scalar implicatures, which suggests that the relationship between underspecified semantics and pragmatic inference is one of coevolution.

We give derivations of two formal models of Gricean Quantity implicature and strong exhaustivity in bidirectional optimality theory and in a signalling games framework. We show that, under a unifying model based on signalling games, these interpretative strategies are game-theoretic equilibria when the speaker is known to be respectively minimally and maximally expert in the matter at hand. That is, in this framework the optimal strategy for communication depends on the degree of knowledge the speaker is known to have concerning the question she is answering. In addition, and most importantly, we give a game-theoretic characterisation of the interpretation rule Grice (formalising Quantity implicature), showing that under natural conditions this interpretation rule occurs in the unique equilibrium play of the signalling game.

Many generic sentences express stable inductive generalizations. Stable inductive generalizations are typically true for a causal reason. In this paper we investigate to what extent this is also the case for the generalizations expressed by generic sentences. More in particular, we discuss the possibility that many generic sentences of the form ‘ks have feature e’ are true because kind k have the causal power to ‘produce’ feature e. We will argue that such an analysis is quite close to a probabilistic based analysis of generic sentences according to which ‘relatively many’ ks have feature e, and that, in fact, this latter type of analysis can be ‘grounded’ in terms of causal powers. We will argue, moreover, that the causal power analysis is sometimes preferred to a correlation-based analysis, because it takes the causal structure that gives rise to the probabilistic data into account.

According to Adams, the acceptability of an indicative conditional goes with the conditional probability of the consequent given the antecedent. However, some conditionals seem to be inappropriate, although their corresponding conditional probability is high. These are cases with a missing link between antecedent and consequent. Other conditionals are appropriate even though the conditional probability is low. Finally, we have the so-called biscuit conditionals. In this paper we will generalize analyses of Douven and others to account for the appropriateness of conditionals in terms of evidential support. Our generalization involves making use of Value, or intensity. We will show how this generalization helps to account for biscuit conditionals and conditional threats and promises. Finally, a link is established between this analysis of conditionals and an analysis of generic sentences.

The appropriateness, or acceptability, of a conditional does not just ‘go with’ the corresponding conditional probability. A condition of dependence is required as well. In this paper a particular notion of dependence is proposed. It is shown that under both a forward causal and a backward evidential reading of the conditional, this appropriateness condition reduces to conditional probability under some natural circumstances. Because this is in particular the case for the so-called diagnostic reading of the conditional, this analysis might help to explain some of Douven and Verbrugge’s empirical observations.

In terms of Groenendijk and Stokhofs (1984) formalization of exhaustive interpretation, many conversational implicatures can be accounted for. In this paper we justify and generalize this approach. Our justification proceeds by relating their account via Halpern and Moses (1984) non-monotonic theory of only knowing to the Gricean maxims of Quality and the first sub-maxim of Quantity. The approach of Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984) is generalized such that it can also account for implicatures that are triggered in subclauses not entailed by the whole complex sentence.

A much discussed topic in the theory of choice is how a preference order among options can be derived from the assumption that the notion of ' choice' is primitive. Assuming a choice function that selects elements from each finite set of options, Arrow (Económica 26: 121-127,1959) already showed how we can generate a weak ordering by putting constraints on the behavior of such a function such that it reflects utility maximization. Arrow proposed that rational agents can be modeled by such choice functions. Arrow's standard model of rationality has been criticized in economics and gave rise to approaches of bounded rationality. Two standard assumptions of rationality will be given up in this paper. First, the idea that agents are utility optimizers (Simon). Second, the idea that the relation of ' indifference' gives rise to an equivalence relation. To account for the latter, Luce (Econometrica 24: 178-191, 1956) introduced semi-orders. Extending some ideas of Van Benthem (Pac Philos Q 63: 193-203, 1982), we will show how to derive semi-orders (and so-called interval orders) based on the idea that agents are utility satisficers rather than utility optimizers

In this paper an approach to the exhaustive interpretation of answers is developed. It builds on a proposal brought forward by Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984). We will use the close connection between their approach and McCarthy's (1980, 1986) predicate circumscription and describe exhaustive interpretation as an instance of interpretation in minimal models, well-known from work on counterfactuals (see for instance Lewis (1973)). It is shown that by combining this approach with independent developments in semantics/pragmatics one can overcome certain limitations of Groenenedijk and Stokhof's (1984) proposal. In the last part of the paper we will provide a Gricean motivation for exhaustive interpretation building on work of Schulz (to appear) and van Rooij and Schulz (2004)

In this paper we investigate a semantics for first-order logic originally proposed by R. van Rooij to account for the idea that vague predicates are tolerant, that is, for the principle that if x is P, then y should be P whenever y is similar enough to x. The semantics, which makes use of indifference relations to model similarity, rests on the interaction of three notions of truth: the classical notion, and two dual notions simultaneously defined in terms of it, which we call tolerant truth and strict truth. We characterize the space of consequence relations definable in terms of those and discuss the kind of solution this gives to the sorites paradox. We discuss some applications of the framework to the pragmatics and psycholinguistics of vague predicates, in particular regarding judgments about borderline cases.

This paper combines a survey of existing literature in game-theoretic pragmatics with new models that fill some voids in that literature. We start with an overview of signaling games with a conflict of interest between sender and receiver, and show that the literature on such games can be classified into models with direct, costly, noisy and imprecise signals. We then argue that this same subdivision can be used to classify signaling games with common interests, where we fill some voids in the literature. For each of the signaling games treated, we show how equilibrium-refinement arguments and evolutionary arguments can be interpreted in the light of pragmatic inference.

In this article we discuss the notion of a linguistic universal, and possible sources of such invariant properties of natural languages. In the first part, we explore the conceptual issues that arise. In the second part of the paper, we focus on the explanatory potential of horizontal evolution. We particularly focus on two case studies, concerning Zipf's Law and universal properties of color terms, respectively. We show how computer simulations can be employed to study the large scale, emergent, consequences of psychologically and psychologically motivated assumptions about the working of horizontal language transmission.

Recent experiments have shown that naive speakers find borderline contradictions involving vague predicates acceptable. In Cobreros et al. we proposed a pragmatic explanation of the acceptability of borderline contradictions, building on a three-valued semantics. In a reply, Alxatib et al. show, however, that the pragmatic account predicts the wrong interpretations for some examples involving disjunction, and propose as a remedy a semantic analysis instead, based on fuzzy logic. In this paper we provide an explicit global pragmatic interpretation rule, based on a somewhat richer semantics, and show that with its help the problem can be overcome in pragmatics after all. Furthermore, we use this pragmatic interpretation rule to define a new consequence-relation and discuss some of its properties.

In a recent paper, Barrio, Tajer and Rosenblatt establish a correspondence between metainferences holding in the strict-tolerant logic of transparent truth ST+ and inferences holding in the logic of paradox LP+. They argue that LP+ is ST+’s external logic and they question whether ST+’s solution to the semantic paradoxes is fundamentally different from LP+’s. Here we establish that by parity of reasoning, ST+ can be related to LP+’s dual logic K3+. We clarify the distinction between internal and external logic and argue that while ST+’s nonclassicality can be granted, its self-dual character does not tie it to LP+ more closely than to K3+.