Abstract
The brevity maxim of Gricean pragmatics states that unnecessary prolixity should be avoided. We report a case in which 5-year-old children’s performance conforms better to Grice’s maxim than adults’ behavior. Our data come from a semi-spontaneous German relative clause production study that we carried out with 5- and 7-year-old children as well as adults. In particular, we focus on the pragmatics of the passive predicates that were produced. These constituted about a third of both child and adult productions in items that targeted an object relative clause structure. Since the expression of the agent is syntactically optional with passive predicates, the brevity maxim predicts that the agent should only be expressed when it is informative. We compare two conditions to test this prediction: one where the agent is informative and one where it is not. We find that 5-year-old children display significantly greater sensitivity to the brevity maxim than adults do. In two follow-up studies, we show that adults’ violations of brevity cannot be explained by priming of by-phrases expressing the agent and that there is an effect of age within children as well.
Highlights
Competent speakers of a language use language in pragmatically efficient ways. (Grice 1975, 1989)initiated a research program to formulate general principles that he called maxims that describe what is meant by pragmatic efficiency
Since the expression of the agent is syntactically optional with passive predicates, the brevity maxim predicts that the agent should only be expressed when it is informative
Our study investigated the use of by-phrases in passive relative clauses when participants were prompted to produce object relative clauses
Summary
Competent speakers of a language use language in pragmatically efficient ways. (Grice 1975, 1989)initiated a research program to formulate general principles that he called maxims that describe what is meant by pragmatic efficiency. Grice’s maxims of quantity state that both underinformative (Quantity 1) and overinformative (Quantity 2) utterances are not felicitous. Grice’s third maxim of manner, states that shorter utterances should be preferred over longer ones. One of Noveck’s (2001) experiments shows that children as old as 10 accept underinformative sentences more frequently than adults do. Noveck applies a truth value judgment paradigm in his experiments. Underinformative sentences in this context are semantically true but pragmatically odd sentences, such as Some giraffes have long necks. For such sentences, Noveck reports higher rates of acceptance among children. Many recent experiments using different experimental techniques targeting children’s comprehension confirm Noveck’s general result across more than languages
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