neo-Gricean Pragmatics Research Articles

What's in a code? The code-inference distinction in Neo-Gricean Pragmatics, Relevance Theory, and Integral Linguistics

In this article we examine how Neo-Gricean Pragmatics, Relevance Theory, and Integral Linguistics account for the code-inference distinction in natural language. Although the distinction between encoded and inferred meaning figures prominently in each of these theoretical frameworks, the way the distinction is articulated varies considerably. We compare how the three frameworks establish the code-inference distinction with respect to seven issues: 1) the extension of the code (its degree of underspecification) vis-à-vis its intension (the content contained in the code), 2) the criteria for distinguishing code and inference, 3) the differentiation of the pragmatic domain into nonce realizations and default senses, 4) the linguistic phenomena to which the code-inference distinction is applied, 5) the role of truth-conditions, 6) the levels and heuristics involved in the process of getting from encoded meaning to speaker meaning, and 7) the scope of the distinction in the overall study of language. On the basis of the comparison the article explores the main strengths and limits of the three theoretical frameworks.

A cognitive-pragmatic study of non-scalar implicatures

Abstract Whether or not non-entailment relations generate scalar implicatures is a cutting-edge issue in linguistic pragmatics. The present study intends to argue that, based on the Cognitive Grammar paradigm, non-scalar implicatures generated by non-entailment relations are manifested as cognitive defaults which are conventionally incorporated into symbolic units in schema-instance complexes. Conventions provide a shortcut for the hearer to infer non-scalar implicatures in an unconscious, effortless and automatic way. We maintain that, contrary to neo-Gricean pragmatics, non-entailment relations cannot generate (scalar) Q-implicatures.

GP and NCP

AbstractDespite its theoretical significance, Paul Grice’s CP, as the heart of classic and neo-Gricean pragmatics, has been a bone of contention for the last four decades for both Western and Eastern scholarship. This study addresses the contribution of four Chinese pragmaticians to the anti-CP principles: Guanlian Qian, Meizhen Liao, and Yameng Liu and Chunshen Zhu, focusing on the latter two. We briefly discuss Liao’s Goal Principle (GP) and Liu and Zhu’s Non-Cooperative Principle (NCP), which challenge Grice’s CP head-on. It points out that Liao’s GP is loaded with neo-Gricean pragmatic value as an alternative interpretation of CP but is not deemed “more applicable” as they claim, and that the NCP of Liu and Zhu, based on their CP query, sheds some light on neo-Gricean pragmatics and rhetoric, and yet calls for suspicion of their NCP as an “antistrophos/counterpart rhetoric-principle.” We maintain that cooperation in CP suggests pragma-philosophical cooperativeness or cooperationality between rational humans and that it applies to pragmatics and rhetoric alike, as well as to forensic, daily, and rhetorical utterances. It seems that so-called “non-cooperation in cooperation” or “cooperation in non-cooperation” is only logico-semantic non-cooperation, deeply rooted in the soil of pragma-philosophical cooperativeness or cooperationality.

Языковые шкалы: направления современных исследований

The aim of this article consists in reviewing the basic areas of studying language scales in pragmatics; several prospects of their investigation are discussed. Presently, language scales are the object of intensive research in semantics and pragmatics, from linguistic, logical, psycholinguistic, and neuro-linguistic perspectives. We are interested mainly in pragmatics (although the area of semantics is also considered) and concentrate on linguistic rather than logical, psycholinguistic, or neuro-linguistic aspects. The article continues the series of publications intending to review and systematize pragmatic investigation in basic topical areas. An interest in studying linguistic scales in pragmatics has increased primarily due to the works of H. P. Grice, L. Horn, G. Gazdar, and S. Levinson. An important class of general pragmatic principles of communication was introduced by H. P. Grice and then was elaborated on greater detail in neo-gricean pragmatics. This class of principles specifies quantity characteristics of communication, and can be defined in terms of scales. Language scales give rise to a special class of implicatures called “scalar implicatures”. In many cases, it is necessary for a speaker to choose some position on a scale. Scalar implicature appears as a result of this choice. Each position potentially generates a certain set of implications. This pragmatic phenomenon is intensively studied in linguistics, logic, and experimental investigations. The literature in the area is ample; the article draws only a general picture of the area. The article proposes: 1) to elicit a system of potential language scales for a concrete language; 2) to consider individual / situational scales; 3) to consider dynamics of scales in speech (in accordance with basic ideas of dynamic semantics). The proposed areas of practical application are the following: stylistic analysis and studying an author’s style, modelling of reasoning and communication (particularly in dialogue systems), constructing formal ontologies of different subject areas.

Cooperativeness, Implicature, and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics in Tim O'Brien's Works

The present research sheds light on cooperativeness, implicatures, and Neo-Gricean pragmatics and applying them on some representative extacts from Tim O'Brien's novels. From Tim O'Brien's extracts under study, The researcher noted that speakers frequently mean much more than their words actually say, i.e. more is being communicated than is said. Grice's theory is an attempt at explaining how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant, from the level of expressed meaning to the level of implied meaning. From the previous excerpts, it is obvious that the most prevalent type of flouting of the maxims in Tim O'Brien's novels is that of quantity and relation.

Unarticulated constituents and neo-Gricean pragmatics

AbstractIn recent years, the concept of unarticulated constitutes has generated a fierce debate both in the philosophy of language and in linguistic semantics and pragmatics. By unarticulated constituent is meant a propositional (or conceptual) constituent of a sentence that is communicated by the speaker in uttering that sentence, but is not linguistically represented in that uttered sentence. The main aim of this article is to provide a neo-Gricean pragmatic analysis of unarticulated constituents, showing that the current existing mechanism of neo-Gricean pragmatic theory can handle unarticulated constituents in a straightforward and elegant way. Second, I defend the neo-Gricean position that the pragmatic enrichment of unarticulated constituents is nothing but a neo-Gricean, pre-semantic conversational implicature. And third and finally, I briefly evaluate an alternative, formal syntactico-semantic analysis of unarticulated constituents.

Framing effects are robust to linguistic disambiguation: A critical test of contemporary theory.

Theoretical accounts of risky choice framing effects assume that decision makers interpret framing options as extensionally equivalent, such that if 600 lives are at stake, saving 200 implies that 400 die. However, many scholars have argued that framing effects are caused, instead, by filling in pragmatically implied information. This linguistic ambiguity hypothesis is grounded in neo-Gricean pragmatics, information leakage, and schema theory. In 2 experiments, we conducted critical tests of the linguistic ambiguity hypothesis and its relation to framing. We controlled for this crucial implied information by disambiguating it using instructions and detailed examples, followed by multiple quizzes. After disambiguating missing information, we presented standard framing problems plus truncated versions, varying types of missing information. Truncations were also critical tests of prospect theory and fuzzy trace theory. Participants were not only college students, but also middle-age adults (who showed similar results). Contrary to the ambiguity hypothesis, participants who interpreted missing information as complementary to stated information nonetheless showed robust framing effects. Although adding words like "at least" can change interpretations of framing information, this form of linguistic ambiguity is not necessary to observe risky choice framing effects.

Bayesian probabilistic model of discourse anaphoric comprehension, linguistic typology, and neo-Gricean pragmatics

Bayesian probabilistic model of discourse anaphoric comprehension, linguistic typology, and neo-Gricean pragmatics

Towards a Neo-Gricean Stylistics: Implicature in Dorothy L. Sayers's Gaudy Night

Abstract This article explores the possibility of using neo-Gricean pragmatics as a tool for the stylistic analysis of literary texts, with reference to Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (1935). Although displaying many of the traits of a detective mystery, this novel has been noted by both its author and critics to transcend this genre by exploring two more general themes. Firstly, it is concerned with attitudes to women's role and status in society, and with the consequences of these attitudes. Secondly, it deals with the psychological motivations and developments of its central characters, particularly in relation to the competing demands of emotion and intellect. In this article, neo-Gricean pragmatics is used to explain how these themes are communicated implicitly.

Developmental evidence against the theoretical distinction between Horn and pragmatic scales

A theoretical distinction between Horn and pragmatic scales that are instrumental in generating scalar implicatures (SIs) is widely accepted in neo-Gricean pragmatics; at the same time, this distinction has been questioned in some neo-Gricean and post-Gricean accounts of SIs. In order to explore whether or not this distinction has a reflex on the way in which children acquire SIs, I tested 40 children (4;3-7;7) on computing SIs based on Horn and pragmatic scales. If this distinction is postulated, children are predicted to perform better on computing SIs based on Horn scales. In my experiment, children did significantly better on computing SIs based on pragmatic scales. Moreover, children performed worse on certain Horn scales than on the pragmatic scales, and better on other Horn scales than on the pragmatic scales.I provide theoretical reasons against distinguishing between Horn and pragmatic scales, and propose my own Context-based QUD account of SIs on which children's performance on computing SIs is a function of challenges presented by individual scales. I identify three major linguistic and cognitive acquisitional challenges presented by scales, and how these predict the timeline of SI acquisition.

Theoretical Pragmatics: An Introduction

The last decade witnessed a surge of new research in pragmatics, fuelled by the emergence of new theoretical frameworks, an increased interest in the semantics-pragmatics interface, and the establishment of experimental pragmatics as a new research paradigm. Many of these developments concern the line of pragmatics which originated with the work of H. Paul Grice. Of new theoretical frameworks, we may mention different variants of optimality and game theoretic approaches, localist semantic theories of embedded implicatures, logical globalist formalisations of Gricean pragmatics, and multi-layered semantics for conventional implicatures. At the same time, research in older frameworks such as Neo-Gricean and Post-Gricean pragmatics continued, and new investigations of speech act and presupposition theory emerged. This development led to a diversification of theoretical approaches, a synthesis of which is desirable but not to be expected in the near future. This issue is intended as a contribution to the enhancement of mutual awareness and the discussion of each other’s results.

Crafting Legal Language: Four or Five in the Mishnah and the Tosefta

Using the insights of neo-Gricean pragmatics, this paper analyzes the phrase four or five, with the meaning “a few,” in the Mishnah and the Tosefta. The different usages of the phrase in the two corpora support the view that the Mishnah is a more carefully crafted corpus, and more self-consciously directed toward application, than the Tosefta.

Metapragmatics of Speech and Its Interactions with Pragmatic Inferences

Since it was first introduced to the linguistic pragmatics in the early 1970s, the notion of metapragmatics has been employed in one way or another in the description of some pragmatic phenomena such as indexicality and reported speech. However, virtually no attempts have been made to make use of this independently motivated notion in the discussion of pragmatic implicatures. This study is an attempt to build a new metapragmatic perspective in the study of pragmatic inferences. To this end, we begin with characterizing metapragmatic implicature in comparison with pragmatic implicature, and then investigate the role of metapragmatics in pragmatic reasoning in the neo-Gricean framework. In particular, it is shown that the order of the incrementation of the context, or the projection principle proposed by Levinson (2000) is defective since it does not take into account the presence of metapragmatic implicature. Moreover, it is pointed out that some unexpected failures of implicature on a pragmatic level is due to the presence of metapragmatic implicature involved in the utterance. Thus, this study shows that the interaction of metapragmatics and pragmatics provides a new insight into how implicatures are processed or blocked without positing any extra devices to deal with apparent counterexamples or exceptions to the neo-Gricean pragmatics.

Current issues in neo-Gricean pragmatics

Current issues in neo-Gricean pragmatics

Relevance Theory, Grice and the neo-Griceans: a response to Laurence Horn’s ‘Current issues in neo-Gricean pragmatics’

In this short forum piece, I respond to three of the main points Laurence Horn made in his replies to questions from Istvan Kecskes in this journal (Horn 2005a). My response will naturally (and as requested) reflect my relevance-theoretic allegiances, but I am looking as much for points of agreement and/or complementarity between Relevance Theory and Horn’s neo-Gricean framework as for divergences.

Typology of Coreferential Possessive Anaphora and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics: Implications for a Newly Designed Artificial Language

Coreferential possessive anaphora can be defined as a relation be- tween two linguistic expressions， one a possessive anaphor， and the other its antecedent， in which the possessive anaphor refers to what its antecedent refers to. This article presents a typology of coreferential possessive anaphora， on the basis of a preliminary investigation into a variety of genetically different and structurally distinct languages in the world. It also provides an analysis of coreferential possessive anaphora in terms of the revised neo-Gricean pragmatic theory of anaphora， as constructed in Huang (2000a). Finally， coreferential possessive anaphora in Esparento will be examined， and implications for the construction of such anaphora in a newly designed artificial language will be discussed.