Speakers, listeners and communication

2009

Research by Engelhardt, Bailey and Ferreira (2006) suggests that speakers avoid under-informativeness and listeners penalise it, but that neither of these behaviours apply to overinformativeness. We argue that what may appear as lack of sensitivity to over-informativeness is in fact preference for information that, even though it is not contributing to the unique identification of a referent, it is nevertheless addresseeoriented and pragmatically motivated because it minimizes the risk of ambiguity. In experiments 1A and 1B, where we remove the addressee-oriented motivation for over-informing that was implicit in Engelhardt et al's experiments, we document that speakers avoid and listeners penalise overinformativeness (though less than under-informativeness). This supports the Gricean prediction of some leniency towards over-informativeness relative to under-informativeness but nevertheless sensitivity to both. In a further experiment (2), increased visual salience of an attribute, typically understood as a non-Gricean, non-addressee oriented factor, was also found to contribute to increased rates of over-informativeness in production. We conclude that a careful study of the factors that affect the production and comprehension of referring expressions is needed to identify cases where over-informing is in fact the optimal choice for speakers, or for listeners, or for both. Computational modeling of the relevant constraints could lead to further testable predictions.

2020

DOI: http://doi.org/10.26333/sts.xxxiv2.05 In this paper I argue that the notions of speaker’s reference and semantic reference—used by Kripke in order to counter the contentious consequences of Donnellan’s distinction between the referential use and the attributive use of definite descriptions—do not have any application in the interpretive interaction between speaker and hearer. Hearers are always concerned with speaker’s reference. Either, in cases of cooperation, as presented as such by the speaker or, in cases of conflict, as perceived as such by the hearer. Any claim as to semantic reference is irrelevant for the purposes of communication and conversation. To the extent that the purpose of semantic theory is to account for linguistic communication, there is no reason to take definite descriptions to have semantic reference.

Language Cognition and Neuroscience, 2016

One central question in research on spoken language communication concerns how speakers decide how explicit to make a referential expression. In the present paper, we address the debate between a discourse-based approach and a listener-based approach to the choice of referring expressions by testing second language (L2) learners of English on the production of English referential expressions, and comparing their performance to a group of monolingual speakers of English. In two experiments, we found that when native speakers of English use full noun phrases, the L2 speakers tend to choose a pronoun, even when the use of a pronoun leads to ambiguity. Our results show that the pattern observed is not the result of cross-linguistic interference from the L 1. Furthermore, a clear dissociation is found between calculating the discourse information and taking the listener's perspective into account, supporting a listener's based approach to the choice of referring expressions. ARTICLE HISTORY

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2010

Philosophers of language inspired by Grice have long sought to show how facts about reference boil down to facts about speakers' communicative intentions. I focus on a recent attempt by Stephen Neale (2016), who argues that referring with an expression requires having a special kind of communicative intention—one that involves representing an occurrence of the expression as standing in some particular relation to its referent. Neale raises a problem for this account: because some referring expressions are unpro-nounced, most language users don't realize they exist, and so seemingly don't have intentions about them. Neale suggests that we might solve this problem by supposing that speakers have nonconscious or " tacit " intentions. I argue that this solution can't work by arguing that our representations of unpro-nounced bits of language all occur within a modular component of the mind, and so we can't have intentions about them. From this line of thought, I draw several conclusions. (i) the semantic value of a referring expression is not its referent, but rather a piece of partial and defeasible evidence about what a speaker refers to when using it literally. (ii) There is no interesting sense in which speakers refer with expressions; referring expressions are used to give evidence about the sort of singular proposition one intends to communicate. (iii) The semantics–pragmatics interface is coincident with the interface between the language module and central cognition.

Journal of Pragmatics, 2016

This paper challenges the view that interpreting an assertoric utterance of a declarative sentence requires representing the explicit content of the utterance, where this is understood to be a level of representation that is development of the linguistically encoded meaning of the utterance. Such a form, often referred to as an 'explicature' or 'impliciture', is assumed to be an output of pragmatic processing by both Sperber & Wilson's Relevance Theory and in Recanati's two-system model. The paper considers a number of reasons why such a level might be posited, and concludes that none of these is sufficient to require the view that utterance interpretation processes aim at identifying a level of explicit content that is arrived at by augmenting and/or adjusting the encoded meaning of the sentence uttered. Rather, the paper argues, the distinction drawn by Jary between material and behavioural implicatures better explains certain phenomena highlighted by putative tests for explicit utterance content, and provides a principled basis for the distinction between two levels of pragmatic processing.

Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, 1992

2008

Ariel (1988) proposes that the grammatical form of any referring expression can be predicted from the deemed accessibility of its referent to the intended audience. The term 'deemed' is critical: it allows the speaker an egocentric perspective and frees choice of expression from the actual contingencies of the situation in which it is uttered. We analyze 1775 first mentions of visible objects within a multi-modal corpus of cooperative task-related dialogues (Carletta et al., under revision) for effects of situation (communication modalities, actions involving the named entity) and of responsibilities assigned to speakers and listeners. Accessibility distributions show statistically significant effects of three kinds: circumstances readily available to the listener (concurrent movement of the named object); circumstances private to the speaker (hovering the mouse over the object, when the listener cannot see the mouse), and speakers' assigned roles.

In a recent paper it has been shown that observers use referential form as an indi- cation of how well acquainted interlocu- tors are. In the present study it is investi- gated if the referential form used by the speaker influences the listeners evalua- tion of the speaker. An experiment with eighty subjects was conducted. Subjects were told to imagine themselves being spoken to by a stranger and to rate how agreeable they would perceive the stranger depending upon the utterances he or she made. Sentences that referred both implicitly and explicitly to a shared experience. were employed in the experi- ment. The results indicates that listeners are rating speakers as more agreeable when the speaker is using an explicit rather than an implicit form of reference . Two explanations are suggested and the results are discussed in relation to rela- tion formation in text based computer mediated communication. It is suggested that referential form could function as a cue in this context.

2000

Ariel (1988) proposes that the grammatical form of any referring expression can be predicted from the deemed accessibility of its referent to the intended audience. The term 'deemed' is critical: it allows the speaker an egocentric perspective and frees choice of expression from the actual contingencies of the situation in which it is uttered. We analyze 1775 first mentions of