Aim of the paper is to discuss the extent to which pragmatics, i.e., the ability to use language and other expressive means to convey meaning in a specific interactional context, overlaps with Theory ...of Mind (ToM), i.e., the ability to ascribe mental states to oneself and the others. We present empirical data available in the current literature concerning the relation between these two faculties, with specific reference to the developmental and clinical domains. Part of the literature we take into account appears to show that ToM does correlate with pragmatic ability; however, other studies appear to show that pragmatic ability alone cannot explain the empirical differences of performance across different kinds of pragmatic tasks, and therefore that another, at least partially different faculty is required to account for human communication. We argue that to conceive pragmatics as a sort of subcomponent of ToM, and thus to conflate or reduce the notion of pragmatics into the (wider) notion of ToM, is not theoretically correct and a possible cause of methodological confusion in the relevant empirical research. It thus turns out to be necessary that the two faculties be investigated with separate theories as well as different experimental tasks.
Beliefs about the world affect language processing and interpretation in several empirical domains. In two experiments, we tested whether subjective prior beliefs about the probability of utterance ...content modulate
, that is, listeners’ inferences about speaker commitment to that content. We find that prior beliefs predict projection at both the group and the participant level: the higher the prior belief in a content, the more speakers are taken to be committed to it. This result motivates the integration of formal analyses of projection with cognitive theories of language understanding.
Language users employ creative and innovative means to refer to novel concepts. One example is place-for-event metonymy as in “How many bands played at Woodstock?” where the place name is used to ...refer to an event. We capitalize on the observation that place-for-event metonymy can on the one hand result in the conventionalization of the event reading (as is the case for “Woodstock”) but on the other hand can also be relatively short-lived as a function of the socio-cultural or historical impact of the respective event (e.g., “Egypt” to refer to one of the sites of the Arab Spring). We use place-for-event metonymy as a test case to tap into discrete stages of conventionalization and compare the processing of the place and the event reading of particular expressions, with ratings of the degree of conventionalization as predictors. In an event-related potential (ERP) reading study, we observed a modulation of the Late Positivity between 500 and 750 ms post-onset by condition (event vs. place reading) and degree of conventionalization. The amplitude of the positivity was most pronounced for event readings with a low degree of conventionalization (similar to previous findings from ad-hoc metonymy). Interestingly, place readings with a high degree of (event) conventionalization also evoked a pronounced positivity. The Late Positivity is viewed to reflect processing demands during reconceptualization required for proper utterance interpretation. Overall, the data suggest that stages of meaning evolution are reflected in the underlying neurophysiological processes.
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•Place-for-event metonymy comes with different degrees of conventionalization.•Late Positivity is modulated by condition and degree of conventionalization.•Non-conventional event readings of place names pattern with ad-hoc metonymy.•Place names with highly conventionalized events also show Late Positivity.•Stages of meaning evolution are reflected in neurophysiological signals.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Referring is one of the most basic and prevalent uses of language. How do speakers choose from the wealth of referring expressions at their disposal? Rational theories of language use have come under ...attack for decades for not being able to account for the seemingly irrational overinformativeness ubiquitous in referring expressions. Here we present a novel production model of referring expressions within the Rational Speech Act framework that treats speakers as agents that rationally trade off cost and informativeness of utterances. Crucially, we relax the assumption that informativeness is computed with respect to a deterministic Boolean semantics, in favor of a nondeterministic continuous semantics. This innovation allows us to capture a large number of seemingly disparate phenomena within one unified framework: the basic asymmetry in speakers' propensity to overmodify with color rather than size; the increase in overmodification in complex scenes; the increase in overmodification with atypical features; and the increase in specificity in nominal reference as a function of typicality. These findings cast a new light on the production of referring expressions: rather than being wastefully overinformative, reference is usefully redundant.
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CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ, UPUK
Are speakers held more accountable for what they explicitly communicate than for what they implicate? Speakers typically communicate more than they linguistically encode, thus leaving to addressees ...the task of inferring what they intend to communicate. As a result, the linguistically decoded meaning is pragmatically enriched to arrive at what the speaker says (or directly communicates) - the ‘explicated content’ of the utterance - which can serve as a premise for the derivation of further implicit meanings - ‘implicatures’. This paper experimentally explores the relationship between speaker accountability and levels of meaning. Our findings demonstrate that speakers are held more accountable, and thus suffer greater reputational costs, when they explicitly communicate a piece of false information than when they do it implicitly, independently of whether or not there is pragmatic enrichment involved at the level of the ‘explicated content’ (Study 1). Furthermore, our findings show that, in deceptive contexts, the kind of pragmatic enrichment at issue does affect speaker accountability: when the deceptive content is inferred via completion, speakers are held more accountable for what they explicitly communicate than when it is inferred via expansion (Study 2). These results provide the first empirical evidence in favour of the relevance of the distinction between completion and expansion to liability judgements in cases of dishonest communication.
•Speakers are accountable for the truth of the messages they communicate.•Speaker accountability is greater for ‘explicated’ than ‘implicated’ meanings.•The nature of the pragmatic enrichment is relevant to accountability judgements.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
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