Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Approaches on Implicatures and Presuppositions

Pistoia-Reda, Salvatore; Domaneschi, Filippo

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-50696-8

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…As Magri (2009Magri ( , 2011Magri ( , 2017 emphasizes, to understand how scalar implicatures are computed, we need to examine not only cases in which enriched readings increase the informativity or coherence of assertions, but also those in which scalar enrichments seem to misfire and generate oddness. Magri argues persuasively that examples like (4a) and (4b) are instances of the latter phenomenon.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This section presents Magri's (2009Magri's ( , 2011Magri's ( , 2017 grammatical theory of exhaustification, focusing on how it explains the oddness of cases like (4a)-(4b). 4 Magri's theory modifies the standard grammatical view of both the formulation and distribution of Exh.…”

Section: Oddness and Blind Exhaustificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Blind-mismatch hypothesis. If the blind strengthened meaning of φ is a contradiction relative to the common ground C, then φ is odd in C: if Exh(φ) ∩ C = ∅, then φ = # in C (Magri 2009(Magri , 2017 Call Magri's account, which consists of blind Exh implemented as in (12), the parallel entry for the overt exhaustifier only, and the blind-mismatch hypothesis in (16), the 'blindness package'. The blindness package, we have seen, predicts the oddness patterns in (9)-(10).…”

Section: Oddness and Blind Exhaustificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…informative. Magri (2009Magri ( , 2011Magri ( , 2017 argues that, to fully understand the computations triggered by exhaustification, we also have to explore whether enriched readings can systematically misfire. According to Magri, there is a class of examples, such as (4a)-(4b), in which automatically triggered scalar implicatures generate readings that conflict with the common ground, which explains their perceived oddness (even though the non-exhaustified interpretation is in each case compatible and informative given the common ground): 4Common ground: normal (adult) background beliefs a.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Oddness, modularity, and exhaustification

Pinal

2021

Nat Lang Semantics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

According to the 'grammatical account', scalar implicatures are triggered by a covert exhaustification operator present in logical form. This account covers considerable empirical ground, but there is a peculiar pattern that resists treatment given its usual implementation. The pattern centers on odd assertions like #Most lions are mammals and #Some Italians come from a beautiful country, which seem to trigger implicatures in contexts where the enriched readings conflict with information in the common ground. Magri (2009, 2011) argues that, to account for these cases, the basic grammatical approach has to be supplemented with the stipulations that exhaustification is obligatory and is based on formal computations which are blind to information in the common ground. In this paper, I argue that accounts of oddness should allow for the possibility of felicitous assertions that call for revision of the common ground, including explicit assertions of unusual beliefs such as Most but not all lions are mammals and Some but not all Italians come from Italy. To adequately cover these and similar cases, I propose that Magri's version of the Grammatical account should be refined with the novel hypothesis that exhaustification triggers a bifurcation between presupposed (the negated relevant alternatives) and at-issue (the prejacent) content. The explanation of the full oddness pattern, including cases of felicitous proposals to revise the common ground, follows from the interaction between presupposed and at-issue content with an independently motivated constraint on accommodation. Finally, I argue that treating the exhaustification operator as a presupposition trigger helps solve various independent puzzles faced by extant grammatical accounts, and motivates a substantial revision of standard accounts of the overt exhaustifier only.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Oddness and Blind Exhaustificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Oddness and Blind Exhaustificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Oddness, modularity, and exhaustification

Pinal

2021

Nat Lang Semantics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Yet most views agree that Alt(φ) will usually include expressions obtained by replacing any focused scalar terms in φ with their scale mates. Furthermore, there is increasing agreement that contextually salient ad hoc scales and alternatives which are not strictly structural alternatives of φ can also enter into Alt(φ) (Katzir, 2014;Magri, 2017). This is basically what I will assume here.…”

Section: Evidential Uses As Default Implicaturesmentioning

confidence: 75%

Probabilistic semantics for epistemic modals: Normality assumptions, conditional epistemic spaces and the strength of must and might

Pinal

2021

Linguist and Philos

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The epistemic modal auxiliaries must and might are vehicles for expressing the force with which a proposition follows from some body of evidence or information. Standard approaches model these operators using quantificational modal logic, but probabilistic approaches are becoming increasingly influential. According to a traditional view, must is a maximally strong epistemic operator and might is a bare possibility one. A competing account-popular amongst proponents of a probabilisitic turn-says that, given a body of evidence, must φ entails that P r(φ) is high but non-maximal and might φ that P r(φ) is significantly greater than 0. Drawing on several observations concerning the behavior of must, might and similar epistemic operators in evidential contexts, deductive inferences, downplaying and retractions scenarios, and expressions of epistemic tension, I argue that those two influential accounts have systematic descriptive shortcomings. To better make sense of their complex behavior, I propose instead a broadly Kratzerian account according to which must φ entails that P r(φ) = 1 and might φ that P r(φ) > 0, given a body of evidence and a set of normality assumptions about the world. From this perspective, must and might are vehicles for expressing a common mode of reasoning whereby we draw inferences from specific bits of evidence against a rich set of background assumptions-some of which we represent as defeasible-which capture our general expectations about the world. I will show that the predictions of this Kratzerian account can be substantially refined once it is combined with a specific yet independently motivated 'grammatical' approach to the computation of scalar implicatures. Finally, I discuss some implications of these results for more general discussions concerning the empirical and theoretical motivation to adopt a probabilisitic semantic framework.

show abstract

Presuppositions are more persuasive than assertions if addressees accommodate them: Experimental evidence for philosophical reasoning

Thoma,

Becker,

Kißler

2023

Applied Psycholinguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Best practice and descriptive research claim that presuppositions, such as the “too” in “#MeToo,” increase the persuasiveness of arguments. Surprisingly, there is hardly any causal evidence for this claim. Therefore, we tested experimentally if advertisements and political statements with presuppositions are more persuasive than equivalent assertions. In 1999, Sbisà already theorized that “persuasive presuppositions” incidentally urge addressees to extend their (ideological) knowledge to make true the unstated assumptions writers have about what their addressee knows, which leads to greater agreement. Following Sbisà, we hypothesized that the persuasiveness depends on the addressee’s need and willingness to accommodate the presupposed content. In three experiments, we manipulated (a) the presupposition trigger using either the German additive particle auch “too,” the iterative particle wieder “again,” or factive verbs compared to assertive equivalents and (b) the preceding discourse context which supported the presupposition or not. Results show that presuppositions are perceived as more persuasive if they convey discourse-new information, largely irrespective of addressees’ ideological involvement. Also considering eye-tracked reading, we suggest that the integrative cognitive process of presupposition accommodation initiates their persuasive edge. The findings imply that persuasive communication benefits from the use of lexically conveyed presuppositions if they are sufficiently informative to trigger accommodation.

show abstract

Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Approaches on Implicatures and Presuppositions

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Oddness, modularity, and exhaustification

Oddness, modularity, and exhaustification

Probabilistic semantics for epistemic modals: Normality assumptions, conditional epistemic spaces and the strength of must and might

Presuppositions are more persuasive than assertions if addressees accommodate them: Experimental evidence for philosophical reasoning

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About