PRAGMATICS AND WORD MEANING

In this paper, we explore the interaction between lexical semantics an d pragmatics. We argue that linguistic processing is informationally e ncapsulated and utilizes relatively simple 'taxonomic' lexical semanti c knowledge. On this basis, defeasible lexical generalisations deliver defeasible parts of logical form. In contrast, pragmatic inference is open-ended and involves arbitrary real-world knowledge. Two axioms sp ecify when pragmatic defaults override lexical ones. We demonstrate th at modelling this interaction allows us to achieve a more refined inte rpretation of words in a discourse context than either the lexicon or pragmatics could do on their own.