Processing temporal presuppositions: an event-related potential study

Abstract

The ability to efficiently process presuppositions, which contain information that the speaker believes to be in the background to the conversation, is essential for effective communication. To get a deeper understanding of the nature and the time-course of temporal presupposition processing, we examined event-related potential (ERPs) evoked by the word again in two types of sentence contexts. The word again was presented in contexts that supported a presupposition (e.g., Jake had tipped a maid at the hotel once before. Today he tipped a maid at the hotel again…) or violated it (e.g., Jake had never tipped a maid at the hotel before. Today he tipped a maid at the hotel again…). The presupposition violation was associated with increased amplitudes of the P3b/P600 but not the N400 component. We argue for the centrality of the P3b/P600 component for presupposition processing. These findings demonstrate rapid integration of lexical presuppositions with contextual knowledge.Keywords: temporal presupposition, ERPs, P3b/ P600, N400, presupposition violation 3 IntroductionNatural language is highly adaptive: the very same message can be used to convey many distinct meanings depending on the communicative context. This context-sensitivity is one of the defining characteristics of language. One important way in which communicative contexts differ is with respect to what information is already shared among the participants in a conversation. Consider the use of the definite determiner the in sentence (1).(1) Mary saw the tiger.Which tiger Mary saw is highly context-dependent. For example, if we are at a zoo, then this sentence will likely convey that Mary saw the tiger at the zoo. In contrast, if a tiger is on the loose in town, then the sentence will likely convey that Mary saw that tiger.Critically, however, the determiner the in (1) carries the presupposition that there exists a unique tiger in the context. If there is more than one salient tiger in the context, or no tigers at all, then the sentence cannot be felicitously used, and its presupposition will have been violated. More generally, presuppositions impose requirements on the conversational context. If a sentence carries a presupposition, then it will only be felicitous if the context satisfies that presupposition (Caffi, 2006;Heim, 1983;1992; Kamp, 2008; Katz, 1973;Simons, 2006; Van Der Sandt, 1992).Presuppositions are "triggered" by a distinct class of words, referred to as presupposition triggers. In English, the words the, stop, and again, among others, act as presupposition triggers. These words signal the presence of shared background knowledge. For example, in (2), the trigger word stop asserts that the action of smoking was terminated at a certain time point and presupposes that the action has taken place 4 before that point.(2) John stopped smoking last year.In (3), the sentence asserts that the action of tipping occurred at certain time point, and the word again presupposes that this action was also performed on a previous occasion.(3) Jake t...

Gricean Expectations in Online Sentence Comprehension: An ERP Study on the Processing of Scalar Inferences

“…An alternative interpretation of the positivity comes into mind when considering another area of pragmatic reasoning, namely the field of presupposition processing. In a recent study, Jouravlev et al () found a positivity for the processing of presupposition triggers such as again in sentences pairs like Jake had never tipped a maid at the hotel before . Today he tipped a maid at the hotel again, although the hotel paid its maids good wages when compared to pragmatically unmarked control conditions.…”

On the predictability of event boundaries in discourse: An ERP investigation

“…Brouwer et al, 2012;Burkhardt, 2006Burkhardt, , 2007Jouravlev et al, 2016;Schumacher, 2009, see also Donchin & Coles, 1988;Polich, 2007). More specifically, according to Brouwer et al (2012), late positive components reflect the "construction, revision, or updating of a mental representation of what is being communicated" (Brouwer et al, 2012, p. 137; see also Brouwer, Crocker, Venhuizen, & Hoeks, 2016).…”

Is Immediate Processing of Presupposition Triggers Automatic or Capacity-Limited? A Combination of the PRP Approach with a Self-Paced Reading Task

“…Drawing more demanding inferences resulted in larger P600 effects, whereas no N400 effects were observed when the context did not support the presupposition. Jouravlev et al (2016) also examined ERPs, but focused on the PSP trigger again (in English). Participants read sentences in contexts that either supported the presupposition (e.g., "Jake had tipped a maid at the hotel once before.…”

“…These effects also indicate that a presupposition trigger is considered immediately upon encountering it. However, recent studies suggest that different types of presupposition triggers differ in processing (Abrusán 2011;Domaneschi et al 2014;Domaneschi and Di Paola 2018;Jouravlev et al 2016;Tiemann et al 2015). Against this background, it is unfortunate that Tiemann et al (2011) did not analyze reading times for the different triggers separately.…”