defaultist

English

Etymology

default +‎ -ist

Adjective

defaultist (not comparable)

1. Of or relating to defaultism.

Noun

defaultist (plural defaultists)

1. (pragmatics) One who believes that scalar implicatures arise from a default association with a word, rather than arising from contextual inference.

   Antonym: contextualist

   A defaultist believes that the default interpretation of the phrase "some eels are fish" is the pragmatic interpretation "some, but not all, eels are fish".

   • 2010, Bart Geurts, Quantity Implicatures, page 87:

     Hence, there can be little doubt that Levinson is a strong defaultist.

   • 2010, Arjen Zondervan, Scalar Implicatures Or Focus: An Experimental Approach, page 191:

     For Experiment 8, the defaultists could make a similar argument about the absence of an SI-cancellation effect that I made about the absence of an SI-calculation effect.

   • 2018, Rita Finkbeiner, Ulrike Freywald, Exact Repetition in Grammar and Discourse:

     There is, however, no true conflict between defaultists and contextualists.