Discourse Structuring Questions and Scalar Implicatures

In K. Manktelow, D. Over & S. Elqayam (eds), The Science of Reason: A Festschrift for Jonathan St. B. T. Evans (pp. 259-81), 2010

The past decade has seen a flurry of experimental work on the psychological basis of conversational implicature, focusing in particular on the questions of whether implicature processing is automatic or effortful and whether pragmatic interpretations develop before or after logical ones. This chapter reviews this work, assesses its significance, and sets it within a wider theoretical context. In particular, it draws attention to a theoretical option largely ignored in the experimental literature. Most experimental work on implicature has been conducted within a broadly Gricean paradigm, according to which implicatures can be calculated and explained using general psycho-social principles. However, there is an alternative strand in philosophy of language, according to which many implicatures depend on convention rather than inference. We argue that this view should not be ruled out and deserves experimental testing. The chapter also makes connections with the literature on dual-process theories of reasoning, as developed by Jonathan Evans and others. Superficially at least, implicature seems made for a dual-process analysis, and we consider if this is correct. The chapter closes with some suggestions for future experimental work.

Journal of Semantics, 1996

This paper proposes a new approach to discourse directionality, a phenomenon which, as is well known, is neither well defined nor adequately accounted for. Directionality is the property of (a part of) a discourse to be directed towards a 'goal', usually implying asymmetric functional relations between the discourse units involved. The direction of such an asymmetric discourse relation depends on whether the unit that provides the goalsatisfying value precedes or follows the unit which is subservient to it. Fundamental to our proposal is an analysis of directionality in terms of the topic-comment distinction. Within this framework, directionality is defined as a recursive property assigned to higher-order and lower-order discourse relations central to which is the assumption that they are realized by explicit or implicit topic-forming questions. It will be shown that the distinction that can be made between three types of directionality is precisely a function of three different ways of quantitative/qualitative subordination realized by subquestioning. Apart from the resulting theory providing a solution to the definition problem, it also provides an answer to the determination problem which implies that we attribute a criterion to distinguish dominant discourse units from subservient ones. In addition, the theory contributes to the much discussed issue of an adequate formalization of those discourse elaboration processes that do not involve a new partial value but merely support an already introduced 'subject matter'.

Each grammatical construction serves one or more communicative functions. To express a message, multiple constructions typically need to be combined, and this requires their functions to be reconcilable. Here we provide a large-scale test of the claim that people judge sentences to be unacceptable to the extent that the discourse functions of the combined constructions conflict. Ten base constructions are combined with 3 long-distance dependency constructions. Critically, the gradient notion of backgroundedness is operationalized in two ways, via a Negation task and a new Discourse task. Results (N=680) demonstrate that both backgroundedness measures predict acceptability judgments on combinations of constructions more than the base constructions used in the backgroundedness measures themselves. Acceptability ratings on two types of wh-questions and on relative clauses all correlate highly with one another, supporting the claim that these types of long-distance dependency all foregr...

Unpublished manuscript, 2008

The Linguistic Review, 2011

In this article we present two sets of experiments designed to investigate the acquisition of scalar implicatures. Scalar implicatures arise in examples like Some professors are famous where the speaker's use of some typically indicates that s/he had reasons not to use a more informative term, e.g. all. Some professors are famous therefore gives rise to the implicature that not all professors are famous. Recent studies on the development of pragmatics suggest that preschool children are often insensitive to such implicatures when they interpret scalar terms (Cognition 78 raises two important questions: (a) are all scalar terms treated in the same way by young children?, and (b) does the child's difficulty reflect a genuine inability to derive scalar implicatures or is it due to demands imposed by the experimental task on an otherwise pragmatically savvy child? Experiment 1 addresses the first question by testing a group of 30 5-year-olds and 30 adults (all native speakers of Greek) on three different scales, koli, merikil (kall, somel), ktris, diol (kthree, twol) and kteliono, arxizol (kfinish, startl). In each case, subjects were presented with contexts which satisfied the semantic content of the stronger (i.e. more informative) terms on each scale (i.e. all, three and finish) but were described using the weaker terms of the scales (i.e. some, two, start). We found that, while adults overwhelmingly rejected these infelicitous descriptions, children almost never did so. Children also differed from adults in that their rejection rate on the numerical scale was reliably higher than on the two other scales. In order to address question (b), we trained a group of 30 5-yearolds to detect infelicitous statements. We then presented them with modified versions of the stories A. Papafragou, J. Musolino / Cognition 86 (2003) 253-282 253 Cognition 86 (2003) 253-282 www.elsevier.com/locate/cognit 0010-0277/02/$ -see front matter q (A. Papafragou).

The complex interactions between pragmatic and semantic factors during the processing of scalar implicatures are examined in the present research. Respondents' evaluations and recommendations, especially during critical trials, show a complex comprehension shaped by semantic meaning and pragmatic suitability. Differential assessments in critical trials show instances where logically valid assertions are judged to be pragmatically inaccurate hinting to possible pragmatic contradictions. Recurring themes emerge from participants' remarks on language adjustments, highlighting the need for statements that satisfy semantic accuracy requirements as well as contextual requirements. The results enhance our understanding of scalar implicatures by highlighting the significance of pragmatic factors in addition to semantic aspects.

Cognition, 2006

Recent research in semantics and pragmatics has revived the debate about whether there are two cognitively distinct categories of conversational implicatures: generalised and particularised. Generalised conversational implicatures are so-called because they seem ...

Lingua, 2005

This paper studies the distinction between subordinating and coordinating discourse relations, a distinction that governs the hierarchical structure of discourse. We provide linguistic tests to clarify which discourse relations are subordinating and which are coordinating. We argue that some relations are classified as subordinating or coordinating by default, a default that can be overridden in specific contexts. The distinction between subordinating and coordinating relations thus belongs to the level of information packaging in discourse and not to the level of information content or the semantics of the relations themselves. #

Multiple interrogatives in German involve highly thematic Wh-elements. This is captured by the notion of "Discourse-Restricted Quantification" (DRQ): discourse restrictions in German (and possibly other languages, though not English) force both Wh-elements in double questions (Multiple Wh) to move to a syntactically thematic position which is assumed to be a functional projection in an articulated CPstructure; this projection is Top(ic)P. This movement is motivated by an underlyingly complex structure assigned to the elements which in turn has overt realizations that can be found in (interrogative) partitives. The movement is instantiated similarly to pre-subject scrambling, independently taken to be topicalization. The higher Wh-topic then moves to CP in order to check the Wh-feature; the other Wh checks its Wh-feature covertly. Evidence from a number of languages shows interesting correlations of Wh-movement and Topicalization supporting this proposal. Semantically, the scope of multiple Whphrases in German is subject to DRQ: the sets of referents for both Wh-elements are limited in that they must be known to speaker and hearer. The differences between German and English will be addressed and there is also plenty of cross-linguistic discussion. A wide range of phenomena are scrutinized here, including (but not exclusively) Wh-adjuncts, Wh-islands and child language. The upshot is that a conception of Wh-topics is not only more natural than one would think at first but also superior to any other account presently made public in the minimalist literature.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2011

In this paper, we discuss dependencies between rhetorical discourse structure and relevance implicatures. We follow [3] and infer relevance implicatures from the assumption that an answer provides optimal information for solving an explicitly or implicitly given decision problem of the inquirer. Such a decision problem can be identified with a question raised in the conversation. Background questions not only depend on explicit questions under discussion but may also be raised by rhetorical relations such as Concession or Contrast. In this paper, we are especially concerned with implicatures of embedded questions. We show by some examples that determining the rhetorical relation that connects two text spans and setting up a pragmatic model that explains the implicatures of embedded sentences interact with each other.

2012

The annotations of explicit and implicit discourse connectives in the Penn Discourse Treebank make it possible to investigate on a large scale how different types of discourse relations are expressed. Assuming an account of the Uniform Information Density hypothesis, we expect that discourse relations should be expressed explicitly with a discourse connector when they are unexpected, but may be implicit when the discourse relation can be anticipated. We investigate whether discourse relations which have been argued to be expected by the comprehender exhibit a higher ratio of implicit connectors. We find support for two hypotheses put forth in previous research which suggest that continuous and causal relations are presupposed by language users when processing consecutive sentences in a text. We then proceed to analyze the effect of Implicit Causality (IC) verbs (which have been argued to raise an expectation for an explanation) as a local cue for an upcoming causal relation.

Groninger Arbeiten zur germanistischen …, 1998

Multiple interrogatives in German involve highly thematic Wh-elements. This is captured by the notion of "Discourse-Restricted Quantification" (DRQ): discourse restrictions in German (and possibly other languages, though not English) force both Wh-elements in double questions (Multiple Wh) to move to a syntactically thematic position which is assumed to be a functional projection in an articulated CPstructure; this projection is Top(ic)P. This movement is motivated by an underlyingly complex structure assigned to the elements which in turn has overt realizations that can be found in (interrogative) partitives. The movement is instantiated similarly to pre-subject scrambling, independently taken to be topicalization. The higher Wh-topic then moves to CP in order to check the Wh-feature; the other Wh checks its Wh-feature covertly. Evidence from a number of languages shows interesting correlations of Wh-movement and Topicalization supporting this proposal. Semantically, the scope of multiple Whphrases in German is subject to DRQ: the sets of referents for both Wh-elements are limited in that they must be known to speaker and hearer. The differences between German and English will be addressed and there is also plenty of cross-linguistic discussion. A wide range of phenomena are scrutinized here, including (but not exclusively) Wh-adjuncts, Wh-islands and child language. The upshot is that a conception of Wh-topics is not only more natural than one would think at first but also superior to any other account presently made public in the minimalist literature.

Journal of Linguistics, 1995

In this paper we present an alternative approach to discourse structure according to which topicality is the general organizing principle in discourse. This approach accounts for the fact that the segmentation structure of discourse is in correspondence with the hierarchy of topics defined for the discourse units. Fundamental to the proposed analysis is the relation it assumes between the notion of topic and that of explicit and implicit questioning in discourse. This relation implies that (1) the topic associated with a discourse unit is provided by the explicit or implicit question it answers and (2) the relation between discourse units is determined by the relation between these topic-providing questions.