Reconsidering free enrichment of noun phrases:

Yet another pragmaticist account

Abstract

    Nishiyama and Mineshima argued that free enrichment is applicable to NPs other than predicate nominals. This paper first shows that free enrichment is also inapplicable to other focal NPs, suggesting that they missed making a generalization. I next argue that their account of free enrichment of noun phrases is conceptually untenable, mainly because the listener, when applying free enrichment, cannot determine what concepts should be supplemented to the NP concept, although such added concepts have to be communicated since they constitute a part of explicature. These conundrums are solved from the standpoint of Reference File Theory, which claims that the meanings of NPs are mental representations of their referents in the listenerʼs mind estimated by the speaker.