We study the logical properties that characterize pragmatic inferences and we show that classical understanding of notions such as entailment and defeasibility is not enough if one wants to explain infelicities that occur when a pragmatic inference is cancelled. We show that infelicities can be detected if a special kind of inference is considered , namely infelicitously defeasible inference. W...

This paper offers an analysis of metalinguistic comparatives such as more dumb than crazy in which they differ from ordinary comparatives in the scale on which they compare: ordinary comparatives use scales lexically determined by particular adjectives, but metalinguistic ones use a generallyavailable scale of imprecision or ‘pragmatic slack’. To implement this idea, I propose a novel compositi...

the present study aims to investigate the relative effectiveness of different types of pragmatic instruction including two collaborative translation tasks and two structured input tasks with and without explicit pragmatic instruction on the production of apologetic utterances by low-intermediate efl learners. one hundred and fifty university students in four experimental groups and one control ...

this study aims to delve into the unobservable dimensions of deciding and acting in a pragmatically significant speech event. utilizing a discourse completion test questionnaire, it seeks to find out the structure and pragmatic functions that lie behind efl learners’ choice of specific wording while engaged in performing a recurrent speech act in iran i.e. compliments. to this aim, 30 efl learn...

1. Preliminaries In general, for languages which allow a flexible order of major constituents, the grammatical variations of simple sentences are truth-conditionally equivalent regardless of the constituent sequences and of the intonational patterns. In Spanish, for instance, the six logically possible variations of sentences containing three constituents, namely, subject, verb, and object are ...

In Chinese language processing, the recognition and analysis for serial verb constructions (SVCs) is a fascinating research topic. Chinese language researchers each may have a different definition and interpretation of SVC since the structure of SVC makes Chinese unique to other languages and contains complex semantic and pragmatic information. This paper proposes a formal definition of SVC and...

We examine a popular practitioner methodology used in the construction of linear factor models whereby particular factors are increased or decreased in relative importance within the model. This allows model builders to customise models and, as such, reflect those factors that the client and modeller may think important. We call this process Pragmatic Bayesianism (or prag-Bayes for short) and w...

In natural communication, humans enrich their utterances with pragmatic information indicating, e.g., what is important to them or what they are not certain about. We investigate whether and how virtual humans (VH) can employ this kind of meta-communication. In an empirical study we have identified three modifying functions that humans produce and perceive in multimodal utterance, one being to ...