Abstract

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.