Pragmatics: From Theory to Experiment and Back Again

Abstract

This paper reviews some cases in which the collaboration of theoretical pragmaticians and psychologists of language has been most fruitful for all parties. Linguists have benefited from experimental data confirming the psychological validity of their observations and providing theorycritical evidence in cases beyond the reach of reflective intuition, while psychologists have benefited from having a wealth of linguistic phenomena to study as well as multiple theories furnished by semantics and pragmatics. Focusing on the much-discussed question of whether scalar implicature is a default inference, we aim to showcase the benefits of the experimental approach to pragmatics.

Processing inferences at the semantics/pragmatics frontier: Disjunctions and free choice

“…Although our own study is not directly concerned with this issue, the results that have been obtained in these studies motivate our own hypotheses and design. We will therefore briefly review some of the main findings (see also Katsos and Cummins, 2010).…”

Pragmatic inferences modulate N400 during sentence comprehension: Evidence from picture–sentence verification

“…Scalar implicature is a pragmatic phenomenon wherein a weak term such as ‘some’ is taken to mean that a stronger term is not true (e.g., ‘some’ is interpreted as not all ) [9,11,18]. ‘Some’ thus has two interpretations: a purely semantic interpretation ( at least one ) and a pragmatic interpretation ( at least one but not all ).…”

Are intermediate levels of the scale used during online comprehension of scalar implicatures?

“…This may mean that SOME is only interpreted to mean the negation of another element in a scale if that element of the scale is an expected lexical alternative in the context-in other words, SOME can only be interpreted as NOT ALL if ALL was also available in the context, and likewise SOME can only be interpreted as NOT MOST if MOST was also available in the context. Support for this notion comes from both introspective and empirical data regarding boundedness (Breheny et al, 2006;Katsos & Cummins, 2010). Such data have shown that SOME is more likely to be interpreted as NOT ALL when uttered as a response to a question where ALL would have been a relevant response (an upper-bound context), as in (7), than to a sentence where ALL would not have been relevant (a lower-bound context), as in (8); examples are from Katsos & Cummins (2010).…”

“…Support for this notion comes from both introspective and empirical data regarding boundedness (Breheny et al, 2006;Katsos & Cummins, 2010). Such data have shown that SOME is more likely to be interpreted as NOT ALL when uttered as a response to a question where ALL would have been a relevant response (an upper-bound context), as in (7), than to a sentence where ALL would not have been relevant (a lower-bound context), as in (8); examples are from Katsos & Cummins (2010).…”