Are Scalar Implicatures Computed Online?
نویسندگان
چکیده
Since Horn (1972) the notion of conversational implicature proposed by Grice has been put to use to explain certain interpretive differences between expressions in natural language and their counterparts in formal logic. For example, the sentences in (1) seem to convey more than they would be expected to if the natural language disjunction or had the same meaning as the logical disjunction∨, or if the quantificational determiner some was interpreted as the existential quantifier ∃.
منابع مشابه
Experimental Evidence for Embedded Scalar Implicatures
Scalar implicatures are traditionally viewed as pragmatic inferences which result from a reasoning about speakers’ communicative intentions (Grice 1989). This view has been challenged in recent years by theories which propose that scalar implicatures are a grammatical phenomenon. Such theories claim that scalar implicatures can be computed in embedded positions and enter into the recursive comp...
متن کاملAre generalised scalar implicatures generated by default? An on-line investigation into the role of context in generating pragmatic inferences.
Recent research in semantics and pragmatics has revived the debate about whether there are two cognitively distinct categories of conversational implicatures: generalised and particularised. Generalised conversational implicatures are so-called because they seem to arise more or less independently of contextual support. Particularised implicatures are more context-bound. The Default view is tha...
متن کاملAnother argument for embedded scalar implicatures based on oddness in downward entailing environments
In Magri 2009a, I argue that a sentence such as #Some Italians come from a warm country sounds odd because it triggers the scalar implicature that not all Italians come from a warm country, which mismatches with the piece of common knowledge that all Italians come from the same country. If this proposal is on the right track, then oddness can be used as a diagnostic for scalar implicatures. In ...
متن کاملInvestigating the timecourse of accessing conversational implicatures during incremental sentence interpretation
Many contextual inferences in utterance interpretation are explained as following from the nature of conversation and the assumption that participants are rational. Recent psycholinguistic research has focussed on certain of these 'Gricean' inferences and have revealed that comprehenders can access them in online interpretation. However there have been mixed results as to the time-course of acc...
متن کاملThe cost of being cooperative: Details of the effort in processing scalar implicature
A long-standing open question concerns the cost or effort involved in processing scalar implicatures (SIs). When we hear “Some of the boxes are red”, we go beyond the literal meaning of “some” and infer that not all of the boxes are red. According to the Default view [1] hearers compute these kinds of SIs (generalized conversational implicatures) quickly, costlessly, and automatically. In contr...
متن کاملExperimental investigations on implicatures: a window into the semantics/pragmatics interface
It is traditionally assumed in the linguistic-pragmatic literature that Scalar Implicatures (A or B >> either A or B but not both; some of the Fs>> at least one but not all of the Fs) are explicitly defeasible, structure-dependent and defeasible in context. We present three off-line studies that demonstrate the psycholinguistic reality of these properties of Scalar Implicatures (henceforth SIs)...
متن کامل