Experimental Investigations of Semantic-Pragmatic Inferences

Experimental Investigations of Semantic-Pragmatic Inferences

A 30 Month AHRC-Funded Project

April 2007 - September 2009

Summary:

Until very recently, pragmatic phenomena like conversational implicatures have been investigated more or less
exclusively with the traditional methodologies of theoretical linguistics - employing reflective intuitions and conceptual
arguments. As a result, theoretical positions in semantics-pragmatics have had to rest on very subtle reflective
judgements about truth or felicity and, worse still, on meta-linguistic intuitions about what may or may not be a default
interpretation. So as theoretical accounts of pragmatic phenomena have become ever more sophisticated, covering an
ever greater array of intricate data, the ground on which the accounts stand has become less stable. By contrast,
experimentally oriented research in language processing has relied on relatively crude accounts of semantic-pragmatic
phenomena - where it has looked at language interpretation at all. Nevertheless, the data which is gathered by
experimental methods - particularly on-line studies - is far more reliable and less prone to reflective biases. It seems clear
that progress in theoretical semantics-pragmatics would be enhanced were the sounder experimentalists' methodology to
be somehow recruited to test theoretical positions and to give some idea of the overall architecture of the semanticspragmatics
interface.

It is only in the recent past few years that researchers interested in theoretical questions have looked to the experimental
disciplines for alternative methods. This experimental research has focussed on common quantity implicatures, the socalled
'scalar implicatures' (SIs). Our proposal aims to extend our own previous work on quantity implicatures by
developing new methods to explore on-line access to these implications. Our aim is explore the extent to which
generalisations based on introspective judgements about implicatures are supported by data taken from unreflective
interpretation of utterances. We also aim to take the first steps toward building up a model of on-line pragmatic inference
and contribute to a cognitive theory of pragmatic competence.

The results of our work will not only be of interest to researchers in the fields of theoretical and pragmatics, but also to the
rapidly growing field of research into the acquisition of semantic-pragmatic competence, to research into language
pathology, to psycholinguistics and to philosophy of language.

Outputs:

References (full references given in Outputs & Outcomes)
[1] Breheny, R., H.J. Ferguson & N. Katsos 'How quantity implicatures are accessed in incremental utterance interpretation: Evidence for full-blown Gricean inferencing'
[2] Breheny, R., H.J. Ferguson & N. Katsos, 'Investigating the time course of accessing conversational implicatures during incremental sentence interpretation'
[3] Breheny, R., H. Ferguson & N. Katsos, 'Taking the Epistemic Step'
[4] Breheny, R. 'Experimentation-Based Pragmatics'
[5] Katsos, N. & R. Breheny 'Two Experiments and Some Conclusions on the Meaning of Scalars and Numerals'

[6] H. Ferguson & Breheny, R. 'Eye movements reveal the time-course of anticipating behaviour based on complex, conflicting desires'
[7] H. Ferguson & R. Breheny, 'What do listeners' eyes reveal about communicating false beliefs?'
[8] Cummins, C. & Katsos, N. 'Comparative and Superlative Quantifiers: Pragmatic Effects of Comparison Type'