Embedded Implicatures and Optimality Theoretic Pragmatics
نویسندگان
چکیده
In a recent paper, Chierchia (2004) distinguishes global and local approaches to conversational implicatures and claims that several puzzles concerning implicatures in complex sentences can best be explained by a local approach. This conflicts with the Neo-Gricean view which is global in nature. I will argue that both approaches can coexist in optimality theoretic pragmatics where the proper place is assigned to the two approaches: a global theory describes the principal forces that direct communication – it has a diachronic dimension and allows a rational foundation of conversational implicatures; a local theory describes the actual, synchronic dimension – it explains how online, incremental interpretation of complex sentences is possible. The connection between the two views results from assuming that the results of global optimization fossilize into a local mechanism of utterance processing.
منابع مشابه
Optimality Theoretic Pragmatics and the Explicature/Implicature Distinction
Optimality Theoretic Pragmatics is a (partly) formalized theory that conforms to a dynamic neo-Gricean approach. It assumes one phase of the updating process that involves the application of the so-called Qand I/Rprinciples. Critics of the theory have maintained that such an approach does not discriminate between processes where apparent conversational implicatures enter into propositional cont...
متن کاملStrategies for Specifying Relations ∗
The generation perspective taken by optimality theoretic syntax has a lot in common with the insights gained in natural language generation. This paper explores how insights about NP generation (e.g. Reiter & Dale (2000), van Deemter (2004)) can be made fruitful for explaining the semantics and pragmatics of sentences with more than one plural NP by exploiting optimality theoretic pragmatics, a...
متن کاملOptimal Interpretation for Rhetorical Relations
This paper explores the use of a simple and computational optimality theoretic pragmatics (OT pragmatics, OTP) to the analysis of the rhetorical structure of texts. It introduces this variant of OTP briefly and then shows that it can be applied to explain coherence, rhetorical relations, discourse trees and context dependence using the occasional extra premiss. It thereby improves on existing a...
متن کاملExperimental results on embedded implicatures
This handout reviews recent experimental results concerning the prevalence of embedded scalar implicatures. The focus is on Geurts and Pouscoulous 2009 (henceforth GP09), which argues that these implicatures are marginal at best, and Chemla and Spector 2011 (CS11), which argues that they are robust. I also include brief summaries of the three commentaries on GP09 that appeared in 2010 in Semant...
متن کاملOptimality-Theoretic Pragmatics Meets Experimental Pragmatics
The main concern of this article is to discuss some recent findings concerning the psychological reality of optimality-theoretic pragmatics and its central part – bidirectional optimization. A present challenge is to close the gap between experimental pragmatics and neo-Gricean theories of pragmatics. I claim that OT pragmatics helps to overcome this gap, in particular in connection with the di...
متن کامل