What makes a default interpretation? Considerations from English attributive possession Julia Kolkmann Abstract In this paper, I discuss the notion of normality in language from the viewpoint of default interpretations: that is, salient interpretations which arise under normal circumstances and in the absence of evidence to the contrary. While the con- cept of default interpretations is unproblematic from an intuitive point of view, it is by no means well-defined, which has resulted in a plethora of accounts at- tempting to explain the source of these ‘fast and frugal’ interpretations. Using English pre-nominal possessive phrases (definite expressions of the kind John’s book, my mother, yesterday’s newspaper, etc.) as an example, I examine a type- based account attributing this source to the lexical semantics of their parts. In particular, I discuss the question of whether default interpretations are dependent on context for their derivation. I present an empirical investigation into posses- sive interpretations which uses the absence of linguistic context as a proxy for interpretability and find that type-based approaches lack in explanatory power when it comes to accounting for the broad range of interpretations elicited. In their stead, I propose a more pragmatic notion of default interpretations which affords them the influence of addressee-dependent salience considerations culled from the extra-linguistic context, as well as encyclopaedic assumptions activated when certain kinds of linguistic material are encountered. 1 Introduction As noted by Jaszczolt (e. g. 2009, 2010, 2011), certain interpretations sys- tematically arise in the absence of evidence to the contrary: (1) Some of my lecturers are brilliant. → Not all of my lecturers are brilliant. (2) John dropped a vase and it broke. → John dropped a vase and as a result it broke. (3) John’s jumper is a bit too green for my liking. → The jumper John is wearing is a bit too green for my liking. Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft 22 ⋅ © Helmut Buske Verlag 2016 ⋅ ISSN 0935-9249