Reviewed by Michael Haugh, Griffith University

The issue of how we understand what speakers mean when communicating is central to the field of pragmatics, but has increasingly been adopted as also being crucial to the field of semantics. In this volume, Jaszczolt argues that insights from truth-conditional pragmatics should be combined with discourse representation theory to yield an account of meaning as constituting dynamic, compositional, and truth-conditional merger representations of word meaning, sentence structure (semantic information), default meanings, and conscious inference (pragmatic information).

The book is divided into two main parts.  Part 1, ‘Foundations’, consists of three chapters that outline J’s theory of default semantics. In Ch. 1, ‘Meaning representation: Setting the scene’ (3– 39), J argues that the various levels of meaning representation proposed in semantics and pragmatics can be superseded by a single level of ‘merger representation’. Ch. 2, ‘Default meanings’ (40–69), then outlines previous approaches to the place of defaults in communicating meaning, before introducing J’s important distinction between ‘cognitive defaults’ and ‘sociocultural defaults’. In Ch. 3, ‘Compositionality and merger representations’ (70–102), J goes on to outline another core proposal in her theory of default semantics, namely, that compositionality is best understood at the level of (dynamic) merger representations.

In Part 2, ‘Some applications’, the theory of default semantics is applied to a number of semantic phenomena and expression in English. Chs. 4–6 focus on phenomena traditionally analyzed in semantics, while Chs. 7–9 discuss phenomena that have traditionally been of concern in pragmatics. Ch. 10, ‘Concluding remarks and future prospects’ (239–42), briefly summarizes the key features of default semantics and some of the possible limitations of such an approach.

Ch. 4, ‘Defaults for definite descriptions’ (105–19), focuses on expressions involving the + nominal that are used about objects. J moves from a discussion of previous approaches to definite descriptions to outlining how default semantics can be utilized in explicating referential and attributive interpretations. In Ch. 5, ‘Default semantics for propositional attitude reports’ (120–46), J focuses on how default semantics applies to the analysis of how speakers represent the state of mind of other people, in particular, belief reports involving expressions such as believe and think. Ch. 6, ‘Futurity and English will’ (147–86), goes on to discuss future tense/aspect in English, with a particular focus on the use of the modal will. It is proposed by J that time and modality are closely connected, so that the semantic category of temporality may be a misnomer.

Ch. 7, ‘Default semantics for presupposition as anaphora’ (187–204), builds on previous proposals that presuppositions be analyzed as anaphoric expressions rather than pragmatic phenomena, while Ch. 8, ‘The myth of sentential connectives?’ (205–21), argues that the apparent controversy surrounding sentential connectives such as and in neo-Gricean and relevance theoretic pragmatics is based on the (misleading) assumption that such connectives form a natural category. Finally, in Ch. 9, ‘Default semantics for number terms’ (222–38), J outlines how default semantics produces a punctual ‘exactly’ semantics of number terms that obviates the complications of neo-Gricean approaches to cardinals.

J’s study contains important insights for researchers in the fields of semantics and pragmatics, and an interesting proposal for how many of the ‘border disputes’ between semantics and pragmatics might be resolved.