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Semantically restricted inferences and non-restricted inferences

In this chapter I will analyze the specific role played by the lexicon in processes of textual understanding and interpretation. This is an important issue for a seman­tics oriented toward understanding, given that the validity of any model of repre­sentation will also, if not primarily, be evaluated on the basis of its capacity to account for the way in which words contribute to the meaning of the text in which they appear.

As we know from studies of discourse interpretation processes, the meaning of a text, whether written or oral,1 is the result of a complex process of co-opera­tion on the part of the reader, the result of numerous "inferential walks" (to use Eco's term) or implicatures (to use Grice's) that fill the white spaces of the text, its interstices. Each text is an idle machine, a trace open to numerous meanings and readings which the interpreter (whether reader or listener) is called upon to acti­vate. A text always has something more to tell us than just its "literal meaning," because all discourse is interwoven with implications, the meaning of which can be reconstructed by the inferential activity of the interpreter. We also know that this inferential activity is not casual and unpredictable, and in fact there have been various attempts at producing theoretical frameworks to define the general prin­ciples that guide our interpretations. Textual comprehension is a complex phe­nomenon involving the simultaneous activation of many different areas of knowl­edge and a multiplicity of inferential levels regarding the structure of the text, its style, membership of a particular genre, the context of utterance, etc. It is possible to isolate within this composite set a specific level of description consisting of information provided by the lexical units; this level, as I will demonstrate, involves its own rest fictions and specific responsibilities, both for the enunciator and the interpreter. The task ol Нищими semantics is to determine the specific contribution t/iitt the /evict/ level mokes to the eom/neheiisitm of the discourse its it whole.

In chapters 6 and 7 respectively, I claimed that:

1. it is possible, within the meaning of each term, to distinguish between essential properties and typical properties; and

2. it is possible to distinguish between a more restticted semantic compo­nent, which is the linguistic meaning as such, and a more general ency­clopedic knowledge.

In the following pages we will see how these two distinctions, which at present are solely theoretical, will prove productive as far as processes of textual interpretation are concerned.

Let's start with the second of these assumptions, which is that it is possible to identify a citcumscribed subset comprising a more specifically semantic-lin­guistic competence from amid the heterogeneity of our encyclopedic knowledge. This competence is not a particular kind of knowledge, different from encyclope­dic knowledge, because it is simply a subset and therefore of the same nature as the whole. There is no qualitative difference between so-called knowledge of alanguage and knowledge of the world, only a different quantitative extension. What allows us to draw a line between the two is solely the convention whereby some information is regularly associated with particular linguistic forms. Semantic competence concerns that knowledge which we assume and expect every compe­tent speaker of a given language to share. Though there may be different degrees of conventionality regarding that knowledge (cf. section 7.4.2), the fact that se­mantic judgements are widely shared by speakers of the same language demon­strates that lexical meanings are conventionally associated with terms and are thus intersubjectively defined.

I would like now to show how this specific level of knowledge, convention­ally connected to linguistic forms and forming our semantic competence, imposes particular restrictions on interpretative activity. We can take as an example an extremely simple text:

1. As soon as he shut the door, Paul realized with horror that he had forgotten his keys.

The image most likely to come to mind upon reading this sentence is that Paul, having come out of his house and closed the door behind him, realizes that he has left the keys to the door of his house inside. This scene consists of a series of assumptions (which could probably be extended) that can be listed as follows:

1. Paul is a human being.

2. Paul is male.

3. Paulis not a young baby.

4. Paulhas carried out a certain action on the door, namely that of closing it.

5. Prior to the action, there was a moment in which the door was open.

6. Paul is now outside, not inside, (he house.

7. The house in question is Paul's.

K. The door is the door ol the house in question,

9. The keys are the keys to the door that has been closed.

10. Paul realizes that he has forgotten his keys after having closed the door.

11. Paul really has forgotten the keys.

12. In a moment of time prior to the action, it passed through Paul's mind that he needed to take the keys.

13. The keys have been left inside the house.

14. Paul has not got any other house keys with him.

15. It is probably not easy to get hold of other keys.

16. The closed door cannot be opened from outside, which is where Paul now is.

17. There are no other ways of regaining access to the house.

We can consider all these assertions to be the result of inferences deriving from the base text; as we can see, interpretative activity, even when carried out on a very limited portion of text, produces a much more extensive mass of elements than is present in the initial text. What is most interesting here, however, is that not all these inferences possess the same degree of certainty; some are only probable while others are indisputable. Let's examine the inferences in more detail to see on what basis this distinction can be made.

Of the first three assumptions regarding the protagonist of our story, the first two depend on the semantics of the proper noun Paul? Independently of any other contextual information, we know that in English Paul is a male name and is therefore used to refer to male beings, generally but not necessarily human (we might come across a cat called Paul). That here we are dealing not with a cat but with a human can be deduced with certainty from the fact that only human be­ings close doors and, sometimes, forget their keys (with all the horror that may ensue). In more rigorous terms, we might say that this inference depends on the selective restrictions of the predicates close and forget, which require a human sub­ject. For the same reasons we can infer that Paul cannot be a very small child.

The first three inferences are therefore conveyed by the proper noun and the selective restrictions of the two predicates. Inferences 4 and 5 also directly depend on lexical choices: close describes the action indicated in (4) and presupposes, by virtue of its semantics, the prior state indicated in (5). In order to close something, that something must previously have been in a state of "openness." So far, every­thing we have inferred is directly dependent on the content conventionally associ­ated with the lexical units in the text. Inferences 6-9, however, are different. Their content is not conveyed linguistically, but depends both on abductive reasoning that utilizes a mass of encyclopedic knowledge about our house-inhabiting culture and corresponding habits, and also on general principles of the relevance of dis­course organization. Why, in fact, should we infer that Paul, having closed the door, is outside and not inside the place delimited by the door? And why do we think of this place as being a house, indeed, as being his house? Evidently, because we unconsciously apply an implicit general rule of interpretation thai requires us to find a unitary framework, flit- simplest one possible, win*re what the text tells

us is coherent and meaningful on the basis of our experience and knowledge of the world. From what we know about our living habits, how our houses are con­structed, the need to close them, the function of keys, the fact that one key is different from another, etc., the most probable inferences deriving from the text are the ones indicated. They are only possible within a certain culture and would probably be incomprehensible in a society that does not know what keys and locks are. Note also the role of the expression with horror in suggesting the infer­ential path I have indicated; according to a general principle of relevance, the reader is induced to think that if this expression has been used there must be a motive, and the most likely motive is the interpretation above.

Unlike the first five, these inferences suggest interpretations that are only probable and not certain. There is no guarantee that the door in question is that of Paul's house, nor that the keys are to that door and not another one. Observe here that interpretation is guided by an implicit principle of textual economy5 that could be formulated as follows: "each time a term activates a frame of reference containing particular entities, when the same kinds of entities are named in sub­sequent text, the most economic interpretation will be to operate within the already-available frame rather than activating another one with a different refer­ence." In this case the term door activates a schema that contains, among other things, house and key. House is never nominated in the text, even though, as we have seen, it is the object of a probable inference. When we come across the term key we tend to connect it to the schema already activated by door, creating a link between key and door and inferring that the key in question is the key to the previously mentioned door.

Inferences 10, 11, and 12 are once again inferences induced by the linguistic lexical level. We are certain that Paul has realized that he has forgotten the keys after having shut the door and not before by virtue of the semantics of the tem­poral adverb as soon as. We know that he actually has forgotten the keys, instead of only fearing he has, because of the presupposition of factivity' of the verb realize: "A realizes x" presupposes "it is the case that x." Similarly, we can infer (12) with certainty from the semantics of forget, which presupposes that the con­tent of the act of forgetting is present in the person's consciousness, or at any rate represents, as in this case, a known procedure.

All the remaining inferences, on the other hand, are not linguistic but ency­clopedic, in the sense that they do not directly derive from the use of a certain term, but rather from a complex set of items of knowledge and interpretative-hypotheses possessing varying degrees of probability. (There would be no reason, for example, to be horrified if the door could easily be opened from Paul's current position, etc.)

Through this detailed examination of an apparently banal case ol textual interpretation, I wanted to demonstrate not only the quantity and wealth of in­ferential activity required to give meaning 10 the simplest ol texts, but also the intrinsically differentiated nature of this activity. Inferences 1 17 are not, in fact, all on the same plane: some are linguistically determined and conveyed by lexical

choices and their semantics; others can only be made by recourse to our gen­eral culturally determined encyclopedic knowledge and to certain extratextual principles (such as principles of relevance and economy). There is a fundamental difference between these two types of inference. What we know by virtue of linguistic form is certain and cannot subsequently be challenged; it is part of the convention on the basis of which we have stipulated the meaning of the terms. However, interpretations not conveyed by language but inferred from our general knowledge possess only a degree of probability and can be contradicted at any moment.

In a hypothetical continuation of our text we might very well find that the keys in question are not those of the closed door and that they have been left somewhere completely different. The two actions, closing the door and realizing that the keys have been forgotten, would thus turn out to be independent of each other, in contrast to the most obvious interpretation which connects them and forces a coherent reading of the text on the basis of the principle of relevance.7 (Naturally, this narrative development would produce an effect of surprise, an effect envisaged and in some sense "guided" by the text itself.) It would not, how­ever, be possible for our text to continue by saying that although Paul had realized that he had forgotten the keys, he had not forgotten them. This would not pro­duce an effect of surprise but rather an anomaly; it would seem to us, in other words, that the term realize had been used inappropriately.

In brief, not all of the many inferential walks that a text invites us on have the same degree of freedom attached to them; some are more constraining than others and do not allow us to turn back. We could consider linguistic semantics to be that component of a general theory of interpretation that gives an account of restrictive inferences, those determined by linguistic convention. In other words, it specifies the linguistic contribution to the overall interpretation of a text. The usefulness of the distinction I drew between semantic competence in a nar­row sense and broader encyclopedic competence now becomes apparent; it ac­counts for specific differences in the process of comprehension, in particular the different restrictions characterizing inferences at two levels, from the point of view of both interpretation and production. If, in fact, semantic inferences are re­stricted and must necessarily be made by the reader/listener, this entails a precise responsibility on the part of the writer/speaker in relation to the sentence: what is inferred on the basis of linguistic competence (i.e., by virtue of the meaning of the words) is part of textual content and cannot be subsequently denied.

It is worth recalling the but example here. If I say:

2. John is a sailor but he is faithful.

I am also saying, by virtue of the semantics of but, that generally sailors are not faithful, and I become responsible for this assumption the moment I choose to use the term but. The interpretations conventionally associated with the linguistic

form cannot be canceled. Inferences based on encyclopedic competence, on the other hand, are different:8 in these cases the inferred content is not conveyed by the linguistic form, but is the result of an abductive process carried out by the reader, who is the only person responsible. The text and the author can always maintain a distance from these inferences: "I never said that, that is what you thought."9

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