Abstract
Speakers add modifiers to the extent that they are informative (Grice 1975); studies using the visual world eye-tracking paradigm find that the use of pre-nominal modifiers (short, big) leads listeners to infer the existence of similar objects differing along that same scale (Grodner & Sedivy 2011; Sedivy et al. 1999). In this study, we probe these contrastive inferences using an offline questionnaire, paired with audio/video stimuli to ask whether similar inferences extend to two types of suprasegmental features: prosodic focus and depictive co-speech gestures. Our results suggest that the presence of a scalar adjective robustly leads to contrastive inferences in this offline forced choice paradigm, and that the robustness of the lexical pattern persists even when prosodic focus would indicate otherwise. Prosodic focus does, however, appear to modulate the contrastive effect of a given pre-nominal modifier. We find that the same pragmatic process fails to extend to depictive co-speech gestures, supporting a semantic analysis of these gestures as generally not-at-issue contributions.
Highlights
When engaged in conversation, speakers and listeners follow certain fundamental conversational expectations to communicate effectively and efficiently (Grice 1975)
We will use this tradeoff as a starting point to examine the pragmatics of noun modification, asking when a speaker may choose to forgo brevity to include a modifier in an utterance, and how two suprasegmental features interact with this calculation
Upon concluding that co-speech gesture does not participate in contrastive inferences like lexical modifierr, we are left to wonder, why would a speaker bother to expend valuable energy on gesture that is not intended to assert information? This result is still compatible with Gricean pragmatics if McNeill and Cooperrider are correct in that co-speech gesture is not intended to be communicative in the first place
Summary
Speakers and listeners follow certain fundamental conversational expectations to communicate effectively and efficiently (Grice 1975). We will use this tradeoff as a starting point to examine the pragmatics of noun modification, asking when a speaker may choose to forgo brevity to include a modifier in an utterance, and how two suprasegmental features (prosody, and co-speech gesture) interact with this calculation. Well-attested in experimental literature, that arises from noun modification is known as contrastive inference (Sedivy et al 1999). Contrastive inferences occur when a speaker uses a pre-nominal modifier to restrict the meaning of a noun phrase, as in sentence (1-a). Due to the pragmatic expectation that a speaker will only provide as much information as is required, the modifier tall must be maximally informative in the discourse context, else the speaker would have chosen (1-b). The listener infers that tall serves to disambiguate the goal referent from a similar, not tall object
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