Default Interpretations Research Articles

Morgan's Quaker gun and the species of belief

AbstractIn this article, I explore how researchers’ metaphysical commitments can be conducive—or unconducive—to progress in animal cognition research. The methodological dictum known as Morgan's Canon exhorts comparative psychologists to countenance the least mentalistic fair interpretation of animal actions. This exhortation has frequently been misread as a blanket condemnation of mentalistic interpretations of animal behaviors that could be interpreted behavioristically. But Morgan meant to demand only that researchers refrain from accepting default interpretations of (apparent) actions until other fair interpretations have been duly considered. The Canon backfired largely because of Morgan's background metaphysical commitment to a univocal, hierarchical, and anthropocentric account of cognitive architecture. I make the case that, going forward, comparative psychologists would do well to pair judicious use of Morgan's Canon with an openness to the existence of non‐humanlike animal minds comprising phenomena belonging to distinct cognitive and folk psychological ontologies. And I argue that this case gives us pragmatic reason to reconcile deep—e.g., psychofunctionalist—and superficial—e.g., dispositionalist—approaches to the metaphysics of belief.

Mapping models in novel metaphors and their effect on gaze behavior and default interpretations in native and target languages

In the study, we address the problem of existing differences in reading and understanding novel metaphors in the text fragments in native and target languages (L1 and L2), with these differences potentially attributed to both the specifics of forming analogies in native and target languages, and the mapping characteristics of metaphors. The study identifies the contingency effects of several primary metaphors onto the gaze behavior and default interpretation of textual novel metaphors in L1 (Russian) and L2 (English). To proceed, we use the text fragments in L1 and L2 containing novel metaphors appearing in more and less focal syntactic positions in a two-stage oculographic experiment. We obtain the participants’ gaze metrics values and the participants’ responses specifying the target domains of the novel metaphors, which further allows us to disclose the contingencies. Methodologically, the study is grounded in the metaphor processing theories developed in cognitive psychology, which explore the structure of analogical reasoning and associative fluency as manifesting potentially different effects in L1 and L2. To validate it, we also address the cognitive linguistic theories which provide the framework for identifying the primary metaphor models (here the models PATIENT (OBJECT) IS AGENT, PARTS ARE WHOLE, CONCRETE IS ABSTRACT) and for testing their effect onto information construal. We hypothesize that reading and understanding metaphors will proceed differently in L1 and L2, which is attributed to associative fluency in metaphor mapping in native and target languages. The experiment results do not show the differences in understanding the mapping model PATIENT (OBJECT) IS AGENT in L1 and L2, whereas these differences appear in understanding the models PARTS ARE WHOLE and CONCRETE IS ABSTRACT with higher default interpretation index in L1. The model PATIENT (OBJECT) IS AGENT is also found to stimulate higher gaze costs. The results suffice to claim that there are differences in the cognitive costs produced by primary metaphor models, which allows us to range and specify their role in information construal in L1 and L2.

The defaultness hypothesis

Abstract This paper demonstrates that, when interpretation is at stake, it is only degree of defaultness that matters. Neither degree of Negation, nor degree of Affirmation, nor equal degree of Novelty, nor equal degree of Literalness/Nonliteralness, nor equal strength of Contextual support, whether linguistic or pictorial (see Heruti et al. 2019), makes a difference. Instead, it is only degree of defaultness that counts. Indeed, having established degree of defaultness of negatives and affirmatives (Experiment 1.1) and their processing cost when in isolation (Experiment 1.2), we further attested to the speed superiority of default negative interpretations, which seemed more pronounced in the Left Hemisphere rather than in the Right Hemisphere (Experiment 1.2; see Giora, Cholev et al. 2018).We then further attested to the speed superiority of these negatives, when embedded in equally strong supportive contexts. Here, we also show that default Negative Sarcasm is processed significantly faster than nondefault Affirmative Sarcasm (Experiment 2). And when embedded in equally strong sarcastically biasing contexts, both hemispheres reflect the superiority of default Negative Sarcasm over nondefault Affirmative Sarcasm (Experiments 2.1–2.2). However, given Affirmative Sarcasm’s nondefaultness, it is only nondefault Affirmative Sarcasmthat is expected and shown to rely on cueing for its derivation (Corpus-based Studies 1–2, Section 3). Still, when hedonic effects are considered (see Section 4), it is only utterances’ nondefault interpretations, whether in linguistic (Experiment 3) or pictorial contexts (Experiment 4), that are entertaining, given that they make up Optimal Innovations, while involving default interpretations in the process (see Giora et al. 2004, 2017). It is degree of defaultness, then, that affects both (i) processing speed (whether in or out of context), (ii) reliance on cueing, and (iii) hedonic effects. Finally, in Section 5, our results and conclusions are summarized.

Default sarcastic interpretations of attenuated and intensified similes

This study tests the Defaultness Hypothesis (Giora et al., 2015b, 2018), aiming to show that, “fully abstract phrasal patterns” (Goldberg, 2003, 2006), strongly attenuating (i.e., weakening) highly positive concepts, generates sarcastic interpretations by default – i.e., automatically, without relying on supportive context or internal incongruity. According to the Defaultness Hypothesis, for an interpretation, activated automatically, to be considered as default, it has to be novel, free of internal incongruity, and free of contextual support.The results of our studies support the prediction of the Defaultness Hypothesis, showing that strongly attenuated highly positive concepts (of novel, isolated similes, involving no internal incongruity) generates sarcastic interpretations by default.Additionally, our experimental results diverge from previous corpus-based findings, in which attenuated similes, containing negative internal incongruity, were found to be more sarcastic than their non-attenuated counterparts (Veale, 2013). Given that Veale's corpus-based studies relied heavily on items' internal incongruity, his findings cannot be considered default interpretations. However, our experiments, involving items free of internal incongruity do reveal a significant difference between the attenuated and non-attenuated similes. We conclude that, as predicted by the Defaultness Hypothesis, it is attenuating highly positive concepts that affects sarcasm by default, i.e., even without relying on internal incongruity.

The Interplay of Syntactic and Lexical Salience and its Effect on Default Figurative Responses

Abstract The aim of the paper is to determine how salient and non-salient figurative discourse nouns affect readers’ default response processing and oculo-graphic (eye-movement) reactions. Whereas the theories of the Graded Salience and the Defaultness Hypotheses, developed by R. Giora (Giora, 1999, 2003; Giora, Givoni, & Fein, 2015), have stimulated further research in the area of interpretive salience (Giora et al., 2015; Giora, Jaffe, Becker & Fein, 2018), the resonating influence of syntactic salience on default interpretations has been largely neglected. In this study we provide corpus-based evidence followed by eye-tracking experiment verification, supportive of the synchronized influence of syntactic and lexical salience. The results show that default figurative responses in lexically salient positions may require more cognitive effort (longer fixations) if they are syntactically less salient. Literal responses to figurative nouns may also result from either weak lexical or syntactic salience of nouns. Therefore, apart from exemplifying resonance with lexical salience (in terms of lexical frequency, familiarity, conventionality, and prototypicality), the default figurative interpretations are also syntactically dependent.

Age Factor and its Role in the Readers’ Comprehension of Stylistic Heterogeneity: Evidence from Eye Movements and Default Responses

The article discusses the role of the age factor in the readers’ comprehension of stylistically heterogeneous texts, here the text fragments containing figurative noun groups of salient and non-salient character. The salience effects on eye movement and default responses are studied in the oculographic experiment where the secondary school children had to read the sentences displaying figurativeness. The earlier detected statistically significant corpus salience indices of referential, linguistic and discourse parameters in figurativeness construal get verified experimentally. In accordance with the Graded Salience and Defaultness hypotheses I assumed that the interpretation of figurative noun groups of varied referential, linguistic and discourse salience will require different cognitive effort in terms of both eye movement reactions and default inferences. Several eye-tracking experiments with adult participants sufficed to prove the dependency, however, the results obtained with children did not support the Salience hypothesis in the part of visual perception. The eye movements of children facing figurative noun groups did not show steady correlation patterns with the salience effects of these groups, whereas the default interpretations correlated strongly with referential, linguistic, and discourse salience. The results show evidence in favor of Mixed-Effects Model of interpretation

Getting Gettier straight: thought experiments, deviant realizations and default interpretations

It has been pointed out that Gettier case scenarios have deviant realizations and that deviant realizations raise a difficulty for the logical analysis of thought experiments. Grundmann and Horvath have shown that it is possible to rule out deviant realizations by suitably modifying the scenario of a Gettier-style thought experiment. They hypothesize further that the enriched scenario corresponds to the way expert epistemologists implicitly interpret the original one. However, no precise account of this implicit enrichment is offered, which makes the proposal somewhat ad hoc. Drawing on pragmatic theory, I argue that the content of Grundmann and Horvath’s modified scenario corresponds to the default interpretation of the original scenario and that epistemological expertise is not required to access the deviance-proof interpretation. This Default Interpretation proposal offers thus a more general and independently motivated solution to the Problem of Deviant Realizations.

The Defaultness Hypothesis: A quantitative corpus-based study of non/default sarcasm and literalness production

This study provides converging corpus-based evidence (originally in Hebrew) for (1) findings, supportive of the first prediction of the Defaultness Hypothesis (Giora, Givoni, & Fein, 2015b), regarding the anticipated processing speed superiority of default (spontaneous) interpretations over nondefault (context-dependent) counterparts. Indeed, as shown by Giora et al. (2015b), default negative sarcasm was processed faster than nondefault negative literalness and nondefault affirmative sarcasm, all enjoying equally strong contextual support.Our corpus-based study here tests the second prediction of the Defaultness Hypothesis, (2) expecting relatively slow nondefaultness to be prompted by implicit and explicit cues, rejecting (as unintended) default counterparts. Findings indeed show that (ia) speakers are sensitive to the defaultness of negative sarcasm. Hence, they implicitly preserve conceptually weak syntactic slots for nondefault interpretations; and when (ib) wishing to be polite, speakers mute the sarcastically intended negatives by explicit metalinguistic mitigators (to put it mildly). Furthermore, (iia) when intended compositionally (often literally), speakers dismiss as unintended the default (sarcastic) interpretation of the negative constructions, by explicitly prompting a nondefault (literal) counterpart (by means of but not Y either). Complementarily, (iib) speakers intentionally fool addressees in order to humor them by using explicit cueing (just kidding), rejecting as unintended default (literal) interpretations of affirmative utterances while inviting nondefault (sarcastic) counterparts. Our corpus-based study, then, provides usage-based support for the Defaultness Hypothesis.

The role of defaultness and personality factors in sarcasm interpretation: Evidence from eye-tracking during reading

ABSTRACTTheorists have debated whether our ability to understand sarcasm (pertaining here to verbal irony) is principally determined by the context or by properties of the comment itself. The current research investigated an alternative view that broadens the focus on the comment itself, suggesting that mitigating a highly positive concept by using negation generates sarcastic interpretations by default. In the current study, pretests performed on the target utterances presented in isolation established their default interpretations; novel affirmative phrases (e.g., He is the best lawyer) were interpreted literally, whereas equally novel negative counterparts (e.g., He isn’t the best lawyer) were interpreted sarcastically. In Experiment 1 (an eye-tracking study), prior context biased these utterances toward literal or sarcastic interpretations. Results showed that target utterances were easier to process in contexts supporting their default interpretations, regardless of affirmation/negation. Results from a second eye-tracking experiment suggested that readers’ tendency to interpret negative phrases sarcastically is related to their own tendency to use malicious humor. Our findings suggest that negation leads to certain ambiguous utterances receiving sarcastic interpretations by default and that this process may be further intensified by personality factors.

Overriding default interpretations through prosody: Depictive predicates in Brazilian Portuguese

In Brazilian Portuguese, depictive predicates can have ambiguous readings: the attribute can either refer to the subject (high attachment; HA) or the object (low attachment; LA) of the sentence. Previous studies have found that LA is the default interpretation for ambiguous depictive predicates (e.g., Magalhães & Maia 2006, Fonseca & Magalhães 2007), and that speakers use different acoustic cues to signal HA. However, these studies found several mismatches between speakers’ intended intonation and listeners’ interpretations. We conducted a judgement task and a production task to determine which acoustic cues are used by native speakers to arrive at HA interpretation. The results for the judgement task indicate that HA interpretation is favored by pause before attribute (which can be combined with another cue in the attribute). In the production task, speakers can also signal HA by putting a pause before the attribute (which can be combined with another cue in the object). However, some of the participants did not use any acoustic cue to signal HA, which suggests that some speakers arrive at a HA interpretation only through context, not prosody.

Context Management for Supporting Context-aware Android Applications Development

<p class="0abstract">Building context-aware mobile applications is one of the most ambitious areas of research. Such applications can change their behavior according to context or perform specific tasks in specific contexts. Regardless of the application, all context-aware mobile applications share the need to retrieve and process context information. This paper presents a Context Management tool for the Android platform (ACM). ACM allows easy access to internal on-board mobile sensors and hardware features extracting corresponding raw data. Raw context is processed into higher-level more human-readable context that is provided seamlessly to the mobile applications. Different methods are used for this purpose including fuzzy classifiers. Since different mobiles have different sensors and hardware features, ACM can adapt to the mobile device by deactivating access to unavailable ones. Information regarding the available sensors and hardware features and their specifications can also be queried. Additionally, applications can request notifications regarding context change or specific context values. In addition to providing developers with supporting classes and methods, ACM is accompanied by an application that allows developers to examine its functionality and capabilities before using it. The application can be also used to examine the readings of the different sensors in different situations and thus calibrate them as needed. Additionally, it can be used to modify and personalize default interpretations of raw context values to high-level ones. ACM has been tested empirically and the results show extreme interest of context-aware mobile application developers in its promising capabilities and that it is conducive to facilitating, speeding up and triggering development of many more of such applications.</p>

Talk talk, not just small talk. Exploring English contrastive focus reduplication with the help of corpora

Abstract Contrastive focus reduplication (CR) is a type of reduplication in English which picks out a prototypical or intensified reading of the reduplicated element and shows contrastive stress on the reduplicant: for instance, speakers may use talk talk to indicate that a ‘real talk’ - as opposed to e.g. ‘just small talk’- took place. The present paper pursues an empirical, corpus-linguistic approach to CR: Based on three mega-corpora of contemporary English, the following aspects in particular are investigated: the importance of the co-text of CR, the possibility of emerging default interpretations for some frequent CRs, and the function(s) CR serves in discourse. In addition, it contains the first analysis of the sociolinguistics of the phenomenon, based on a corpus of blogs. It emerges that contrasts and/or synonyms are commonly employed to clarify the meaning of CR - most frequently in the form of the unreduplicated base (not talk, but talk talk) or an explanatory phrase (talk talk, by which I mean a serious conversation). CR is most frequent in blogs maintained by women and by young speakers. Its presence in blogs shows that CR is not limited to (fictional representations of) spoken dialogue. Though generally rare, it is also found in other genres (such as fiction, news, and even academic prose). Apart from its disambiguating function, CR is also used for creative purposes (as a kind of wordplay) and apparently serves to build rapport between interlocutors (or bloggers and readers) via reference to common ground.

Preschoolers’ interpretations of gesture: Label or action associate?

This study explores a common assumption made in the cognitive development literature that children will treat gestures as labels for objects. Without doubt, researchers in these experiments intend to use gestures symbolically as labels. The present studies examine whether children interpret these gestures as labels. In Study 1 two-, three-, and four-year olds tested in a training paradigm learned gesture–object pairs for both iconic and arbitrary gestures. Iconic gestures became more accurate with age, while arbitrary gestures did not. Study 2 tested the willingness of children aged 40–60 months to fast map novel nouns, iconic gestures and arbitrary gestures to novel objects. Children used fast mapping to choose objects for novel nouns, but treated gesture as an action associate, looking for an object that could perform the action depicted by the gesture. They were successful with iconic gestures but chose objects randomly for arbitrary gestures and did not fast map. Study 3 tested whether this effect was a result of the framing of the request and found that results did not change regardless of whether the request was framed with a deictic phrase (“this one 〈gesture〉”) or an article (“a 〈gesture〉”). Implications for preschool children’s understanding of iconicity, and for their default interpretations of gesture are discussed.

Types, Moods, and Force Potentials: Towards a Comprehensive Account of German Sentence Mood Meanings

I have agreed to comment on Truckenbrodt’s paper mainly because I am sympathetic with the overall approach which aims at figuring out the non-syntactic correlates of the syntactic distinction between verbinitial1 and verb-final constructions in German sentences, both root and embedded clauses. Figuring out the non-syntactic correlates, however, is not exactly the same as examining the semantic motivation of some syntactic phenomenon. Semantic motivation for Truckenbrodt (henceforth HT) is the connection with illocutionary force. But other kinds of motivation are possible as well. I think in fact that one of the major shortcomings of HT’s approach is his exclusive occupation with illocutionary semantics and his neglect of pragmatics in the sense of information structure.2 With respect to illocutionary semantics (alias force potential or sentence mood meaning) I consider HT as a brother-in-arms because there is considerable overlap between our ideas. Therefore much of the forcerelated part of this paper will take the form of a comparison of our approaches. To anticipate: The main di¤erence consists in the fact that in his approach default interpretations are built into the semantics, whereas in my approach they result from canonical contexts. This contrast results in a relatively strong semantics in the former case and a rather lean semantics in the latter.

The Neopopulist Experience: Default Interpretations and New Approaches

The two document collections on the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) under review here raise perplexing questions. Political movements that never "came to power" leave an impression of impotence. Their fate was defeat without victory, ultimate irrelevance rather than splendid Götterdämmerung. Inevitably their history imparts, even to its chroniclers, a sense of futility. Still, the historical discipline no longer allows us to deal with the past solely in terms of grand victorious movements. Hegel has fallen out of fashion in favor of the counter-historical, the local, the transient, and even the evanescent. We now privilege agency and contingency over structure and the nuances of memory over empirical data. The SRs of 1900-17 unquestionably experienced defeat in full measure; whereas another political group, the Bolsheviks, their rivals, experienced total triumph. To heighten the humiliation, the Mensheviks, rivals and friends of the SRs and close ideological and organizational relatives of the ultimate victors, have enjoyed a better, although not necessarily fuller, historiographical press. Since few real-time observers, except perhaps the Mensheviks themselves, mistook the Mensheviks for a group with greater influence and prospects than the SRs, the latter's real-life defeat finds replication in a second, deeper, symbolic defeat. The legions of analyses of the Russian revolutionary movement, the labor movement, or the February and October Revolutions that portray these events as Bolshevik-Menshevik mediations [End Page 195] only exaggerate this effect. Real defeat in struggle has its sad glory, but to be overlooked is worse. Latter-day "SRs" can comfort themselves with the assurance that tragedy repeats itself as farce.

The Nilo-Saharan languages: A comparative essay By Lionel M. Bender (review)

BOOK NOTICES 883 tic) approach to meaning, 'which leaves the bulk of "explanation" to the pragmatics' (93). Ideally, the basis for pragmatic approaches to meaning should be the utterance within its situational context. This, however, is at odds with the fact that most analyses are confined to the sentence level—a problem the author himself realizes. A related problem is that W commonly invokes 'default', 'core' or (proto)- 'typical' meanings of his examples. As with many semantic analyses, it is often hard to see how W arrives at such default interpretations since he largely dismisses the 'chimera of intuition' (219) as the basis for his investigation. The potential of analyzing frequency patterns to that end, a method which would have conformed more closely to W's theoretical preliminaries , has apparently been overlooked. In the empirical chapters, many individual proposals and example sentences are taken up that are already discussed in the three introductory chapters. This is perhaps the greatest weakness of the study. It fails to provide exhaustive discussions of previous proposals in the relevant place. The book has its merits, though. Given the enormous literature and the terminological profusion in the field, a consistent presentation ofthe semantics of related modals and penphrastics alongside a critical review of the relevant literature is an achievement in itself. Second and more rewarding, unlike many previous researchers, W does notjump to grand conclusions . Instead he disproves, or at least questions, some strong claims that have so far gone unchallenged . W has done a lot of the tedious work of testing previous hypotheses against empirical data. This is also one reason why the book's main results echo scholars from the 1960s and 1970s: Modals are unmarked , less specific semantically, and generally more subjective relative to their corresponding periphrastics , which in their turn fill the syntactic and semantic gaps left by the modals' defective paradigms . Unfortunately, there is another reason why W is right in being so cautious: the scarcity of new, conclusive data offered in this study. It is not always satisfying to read that matters are complex. More hints at alternative explanations would have been welcome. Nor are the results produced convincing throughout. 'Confirmation' of rather uncontroversial issues such as the relative formality of the will future when compared to the be going to future is gathered from two text samples that are by no means balanced or even representative (19Of.). Finally, it seems rather premature to rule out differences between American and British English in the relevant area when this has not been investigated. In sum, this book provides a very readable account of the state of the art, but it leaves open many questions for further research into English modals and periphrastics. [Manfred Krug, University of Freiburg .] The Nilo-Saharan languages: A comparative essay. By Lionel M. Bender. (Lincom handbooks in linguistics 6.) Munich & Newcastle: Lincom Europa, 1996. Pp. 253. After the preface and acknowledgments, m which the National Science Foundation is recognized as his primary source ofsupport, Bender surveys the historical development of African linguistics with special emphasis on the Nilo-Saharan language grouping, in which earlier and different theories of relationships are exhaustively discussed. In Section 2.2.2, (Proto-segments and modern reflexes , 66-7), B offers a conservative reconstruction of Proto-Nilo-Saharan phonemes and then carefully supports his reconstruction with sections devoted to labials, alveolare or dentals, palatals, velars, and vowels, which first list the phoneme then conveniently key its occurrence to the roots discussed in the following pages, e.g. *g-: #35, 36, 121, 124 (all families) . . . *-g: #111. An appreciated hallmark of B's general approach is facilitating investigation of any of his assumptions through copious cross-referencing. His approach is consistently conservative and, as a result, very convincing . He presents several lists of isoglosses, graded for reliability according to their attestation m two major groupings: Outliers (Songai, Sanaran, Kuhak) and Satellite Core (all others). He characterizes as 'excellent' those isoglosses which 'are found in all the Outliers (A, B, K) and in Satellite-Core.' In this category, 16 items are presented. A typical entry (77) is: '3. SS40: work = cultivate, builds make = mold = create2, change3, hoe4, dig5(8)', which he then details...

Cognitive control of rotation in depth

Abstract Five experiments examined the ability of observers to control the direction of rotation of parallel (Experiments 1–4) and polar (Experiment 5) projections of transparent objects using a control strategy based on the idea that attended surfaces are given front/convex default interpretations. Experiments 1 and 2 measured observers' degree of control and evaluated the role of attention in the control strategy. Experiment 3 examined whether attentional constraints limit the use of the strategy with dual rotating objects. Experiment 4 measured control with unambiguous stimuli in which the direction of rotation was specified by occlusion or proximity luminance covariance, and Experiment 5 measured the control of structure (rigid, non-rigid) as well as motion by examining the control of rotating displays presented in polar perspective. The General Discussion evaluates several hypotheses concerning the nature and rationale of an attentional bias in surface interpretation.