Pragmatic Inferencing Research Articles

Trends in cognitive-linguistic research on metonymy

Abstract This article is a brief introduction to the theory of conceptual metonymy and a brief survey of research on this area. The first section presents the cognitive-linguistic notion of metonymy, including a discussion of the various problematic aspects of this notion. This is followed by a longer section illustrating some of the main types of metonymies. The section devoted to the ubiquity of metonymy surveys research on its involvement in cognition, grammatical meaning and form, pragmatic inferencing and discourse, linguistic change, and non-linguistic areas like art and gesture; it ends with a brief note on metonymic triggers and chains, and on its multilevel operation. The chapter ends with a reflection on future directions.

Final tteyuu as a mockery stance marker: Multifunctionality and ongoing semantic change in Japanese social media

This paper explores the ongoing semantic change of a discourse marker in Japanese social media. An analysis of 140 instances of the sentence-final tteyuu on Twitter, renamed X in July 2023, suggests that this discourse marker is shifting from a textual function of elaboration to a stance marker of lighthearted mockery. I argue this transition is attributed to its recurrent use in specific contexts, leading to invited inferences about the writer's intentions in expanding upon an idea, which extend beyond purely informational to interpersonal and social concerns. The functional ambiguity of these examples suggests an intermediate stage in tteyuu's evolution. The findings of this study underscore the centrality of pragmatic inferencing in semantic changes as well as the context-dependent nature of meaning creation.

Comprehending non-canonical and indirect speech acts in German

In this paper, we compare the comprehension of the speech act meaning of non-canonical speech acts (i.e., rhetorical questions and surprise-disapproval questions) with the comprehension of indirect speech acts (i.e., indirect requests). Both speech act types are ‘mixed’ in the sense that they involve secondary and primary illocutionary forces, but our hypothesis is that they differ in their degree of how salient their primary illocutionary force is: On the one hand, the primary illocution is signaled by non-contextual cues (non-canonical speech acts); on the other hand, it is derived via pragmatic inferencing (indirect speech acts). We thus expect their comprehension processes to be different. We conducted a judgment experiment to test whether both speech act types differ regarding how accurate the primary illocutionary force is identified and regarding how fast that force can be identified. Our results suggest that non-canonical speech acts and indirect speech acts are indeed two distinct pragmatic and psychological phenomena: While non-canonical speech acts are more accurately identified with their primary illocutionary force than indirect speech acts, participants need more time to perform this identification for non-canonical speech acts than for indirect speech acts. Our findings shed new light on the mapping between linguistic form and illocutionary force and on the pragmatic typology of speech acts in general.

Formulaicity and contexts: a multimodal analysis of the Japanese utterance-finaltteyuu

AbstractThis study investigates the use of the utterance-finaltteyuu[ʔtejɯː], a combination of the quotative particletteand the verbyuu(‘say’). Although its lexicalized status and utterance-final occurrence are commonly observed, we still know little about its real-time functions. The analysis of 120 examples in varied contexts shows its general usage to clarify something expressed in the prior talk, which is a type of repair practice. More importantly, the analysis reveals how the participants’ understanding of the ongoing speech activity and multimodal cues affect its use and interpretation. Furthermore, some specialized usages appear to motivate activity-bound pragmatic inferencing, leading to emergence of a new construction. The findings demonstrate that even those expressions that arefixedin one context are in flux; their functions and structures are always subject to negotiation and change through frequent use in new contexts. The study contributes to the understanding of a dynamic interplay between linguistic formulaicity and contextual factors.

Hypallage is a rare bird. Not.

Hypallage, a “marginal” rhetorical trope, is defined as a combination of seemingly incompatible features and has been exploited since antiquity in poetic and narrative discourse, e.g., angry crowns of kings (Odes of Horace). Here the hypallactic incompatibility arises from the position of angry as a prenominal modifier of crowns rather than of kings. We deny that hypallage is a rare phenomenon restricted to belles-lettres; rather, we claim that hypallage is a highly entrenched mechanism in ordinary language. We demonstrate that structural and semantic parallelisms exist between prototypical hypallactic transpositions and the marked placement of constituents in clausal, morphological, and speech act constructions, as well as quantifier and adverbial placement. Hypallactic expressions constitute a violation of the Iconic Proximity Principle. Nevertheless, they are a means for a speaker to convey complex meanings at any level of grammar and discourse with a minimum of coding effort. The exploitation of hypallactic anti-iconicity by a speaker and its resolution by a hearer are made possible by shared conceptual models, the conceptual metonymies and/or metaphors operating on them, and pragmatic inferencing. We conclude that the prioritizing of figurative motivation at the expense of iconicity is a pervasive cognitive mechanism in language.

The Role of Perspective-Taking in Children’s Quantity Implicatures

ABSTRACT Young children excel at pragmatic inferences known as ad hoc quantity implicatures: they can infer, for example, that a speaker who said “the card with apples” meant the card with nothing but apples. However, it is not known whether children take into account the speaker’s perspective in deriving such inferences, as adults are able to do, and as the received theories of pragmatics claim. In two experiments, we tested children (5–7 years, N = 33 and N = 25) and adults using a picture-matching director task, in which participants played a game giving cards to the speaker, with some cards being in common ground and some in privileged ground. We found that adults can both derive implicatures when all information is in common ground and not derive them when relevant information is in privileged ground. Children also derive ad hoc implicatures when relevant information is in common ground but, crucially, fail to not derive them when it is in privileged ground. Children’s difficulty with integrating perspective-taking with pragmatic inferencing challenges the received theories about the necessity of perspective-taking in pragmatics.

The Multifunctionality of MandarinDiào 掉

AbstractThis paper explores the various functions ofdiàoin Mandarin Chinese as it changes from a verb to a phase marker. As a phase marker,diàoprovides a natural endpoint to a co-occurring event and indicates completion, which is a distinct function from the perfect markerle. In this shift, the meaning ofdiàoalso expands, including ‘falling down’, ‘throwing down’, ‘disappearing’, ‘removal’, ‘completion’ and ‘change of state’. The multifunctionality ofdiàois the result of grammaticalization along with semantic change and extension. Cognitive mechanisms such as metonymic and metaphoric extensions, pragmatic inferencing, analogy on Verb-Complement structures, and semantic generalization all contribute to the grammaticalization ofdiào, with further influence from contact with southern Chinese dialects. This paper further argues that the grammaticalization and semantic extension ofdiàois in accordance with the development of aspectual markers cross-linguistically, reflecting the commonality in human cognition.

Pragmatic inferences in aging and human-robot communication

Despite the increase in research on older adults' communicative behavior, little work has explored patterns of age-related change in pragmatic inferencing and how these patterns are adapted depending on the situation-specific context. In two eye-tracking experiments, participants followed instructions like “Click on the greenhouse”, which were either played over speakers or spoken live by a co-present robot partner. Implicit inferential processes were measured by exploring the extent to which listeners temporarily (mis)understood the unfolding noun to be a modified phrase referring to a competitor object in the display (green hat). This competitor was accompanied by either another member of the same category or an unrelated item (tan hat vs. dice). Experiment 1 (no robot) showed clear evidence of contrastive inferencing in both younger and older adults (more looks to the green hat when the tan hat was also present). Experiment 2 explored the ability to suppress these contrastive inferences when the robot talker was known to lack any color perception, making descriptions like “green hat” implausible. Younger but not older listeners were able to suppress contrastive inferences in this context, suggesting older adults could not keep the relevant limitations in mind and/or were more likely to spontaneously ascribe human attributes to the robot. Together, the findings enhance our understanding of pragmatic inferencing in aging.

Epistemic reasoning in pragmatic inferencing by non-native speakers: The case of scalar implicatures

Scalar implicatures involve inferring the use of a less informative term (e.g. some) to mean the negation of a more informative term (e.g. not all). A growing body of recent research on the derivation of scalar implicatures by adult second language (L2) learners shows that while they are successful in acquiring the knowledge of scalar implicatures, a property at the semantics–pragmatics interface, it remains controversial as to which mechanism, default or non-default, could account for L2 learners’ derivation of scalar implicatures. The present study used an online self-paced reading task to address this issue by examining the role of the speaker’s knowledge state in the interpretation of the existential quantifier some by Chinese-speaking learners of English in incremental sentence processing. Results showed that both L2 and native participants demonstrated comparable online sensitivity to the speaker’s knowledge state. Critically, when the scalar implicature was computed in situations where the speaker was more likely to know whether the statement with the stronger alternative was true, it gave rise to measurable reading latency, indicative of increased processing costs. We conclude by arguing that our findings are compatible with the context-driven models within the Gricean tradition.

The role of relevance for scalar diversity: a usage-based approach

abstractScalar inferences occur when a weaker statement like It’s warm is used when a stronger one like It’s hot could have been used instead, resulting in the inference that whoever produced the weaker statement believes that the stronger statement does not hold. The rate at which this inference is drawn varies across scalar words, a result termed ‘scalar diversity’. Here, we study scalar diversity in adjectival scalar words from a usage-based perspective. We introduce novel operationalisations of several previously observed predictors of scalar diversity using computational tools based on usage data, allowing us to move away from existing judgment-based methods. In addition, we show in two experiments that, above and beyond these previously observed predictors, scalar diversity is predicted in part by the relevance of the scalar inference at hand. We introduce a corpus-based measure of relevance based on the idea that scalar inferences that are more relevant are more likely to occur in scalar constructions that draw an explicit contrast between scalar words (e.g., It’s warm but not hot). We conclude that usage has an important role to play in the establishment of common ground, a requirement for pragmatic inferencing.

The interplay between respectfulness and lexical-semantic in reading Chinese: evidence from ERPs.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11571-021-09700-2.

What is the contribution of executive functions to communicative-pragmatic skills? Insights from aging and different types of pragmatic inference.

The role of executive functions in supporting the pragmatics of communication has been extensively examined in clinical populations, but is still under-explored in healthy aging. In this study we addressed the role of executive skills, including inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, in older adults' communicative-pragmatic abilities. Pragmatics was extensively assessed by measuring the understanding of figurative language, narrative texts, humor, and implicatures. A hierarchical regression analysis using composite scores evidenced a global effect of executive functions on communicative-pragmatic abilities, beyond demographic and theory of mind aspects. More fine-grained analyses showed that working memory was the strongest predictor of all pragmatic tasks. Specifically, comprehending narratives and humor seemed to capitalize primarily upon working memory, whereas figurative language and implicatures relied on working memory and to some extent cognitive flexibility. Conversely, inhibition did not stand out as a robust predictor of pragmatics. We argue that working memory allows for the simultaneous consideration of multiple pieces of information needed for pragmatic inferencing, and that only once working memory has played its role other executive aspects, such as cognitive flexibility and inhibition, might come into play. Overall, this study highlights the diverse role of executive skills in pragmatics in aging, and more generally contributes to shed light on pragmatic competence in older adults.

The contributions of proficiency, exposure, and working memory capacity to second language learners’ comprehension of indirect speech

Abstract Pragmatic inferencing necessary to interpret indirect speech can be problematic for second language (L2) learners and could be influenced by factors such as L2 proficiency and L2 exposure as well as the difficulty of inference to be made (e.g., conventional vs. nonconventional inference) – particularly difficult inferences could tax working memory capacity. The comprehension of direct speech (acceptances and refusals), conventional indirect speech (acceptances and refusals – some with introductory phrases), and nonconventional indirect speech (opinions) was measured in adult Spanish-English bilinguals (n = 58) and native English speakers (n = 38). L2 speakers generally performed worse than native speakers and were influenced by inference difficulty. They more accurately and quickly comprehended direct speech than nonconventional indirect speech, and most conventional indirect speech items fell between these extremes. L2 proficiency was found to be a strong predictor of both conventional and nonconventional inferencing, with L2 exposure also having some impact. Importantly, L1 working memory capacity was shown to independently contribute to L2 learners’ accuracy on one type of conventional and one type of nonconventional inference. Thus, some pragmatic inferencing may require both enough skill to process the second language and enough working memory capacity to make the inference.

The Relationship Between Inference Skills and Reading Comprehension

This research aims to reveal the extent to which inference-making ability predicts reading comprehension skill. The research participants consisted of 117 middle-grade students attending 5th and 6th grades. The data was collected by Inference-Making Ability Test and Reading Comprehension Test. The tests were administered to the respondents in a single session and the answers were interpreted by two evaluators. The answers provided by the participants were imported into a statistical software after being coded and were analyzed. The research findings showed that the participants had poor level of inference-making ability. Whereas reading comprehension skills of the participants was at a medium level. While especially lexical inferencing was achieved at a satisfying level, propositional and pragmatic inferencing could not be attained at sufficient levels. The research results assert that inference-making ability predicted reading comprehension skill at a medium level. In light of this finding, it was recommended to introduce and include inference-making strategy in reading and literacy education so that the level of reading comprehension skill would be enhancedges.

Early birds: Metaphor understanding in 3-year-olds

To assess children's cognitive capacities to understand (rather than explain or paraphrase) metaphors, we investigated how 3-year-olds (n = 36; 3;0–3;3) fare with novel metaphors corresponding to their world knowledge and linguistic competences using a behavioural choice paradigm. In a game, participants had to give the experimenter one of two objects referred to by a metaphorical expression. Unlike what previous literature suggests, our results indicate that 3-year-olds are able to understand novel metaphors that are appropriate for their vocabulary and world knowledge, based on action measures rather than metalinguistic responses. We discuss how factors other than incompetence with pragmatic inferencing can explain difficulties with metaphor comprehension.

Visuo-Kinetic Signs Are Inherently Metonymic: How Embodied Metonymy Motivates Forms, Functions, and Schematic Patterns in Gesture.

This paper aims to evidence the inherently metonymic nature of co-speech gestures. Arguing that motivation in gesture involves iconicity (similarity), indexicality (contiguity), and habit (conventionality) to varying degrees, it demonstrates how a set of metonymic principles may lend a certain systematicity to experientially grounded processes of gestural abstraction and enaction. Introducing visuo-kinetic signs as an umbrella term for co-speech gestures and signed languages, the paper shows how a frame-based approach to gesture may integrate different cognitive/functional linguistic and semiotic accounts of metonymy (e.g., experiential domains, frame metonymy, contiguity, and pragmatic inferencing). The guiding assumption is that gestures metonymically profile deeply embodied, routinized aspects of familiar scenes, that is, the motivating context of frames. The discussion shows how gestures may evoke frame structures exhibiting varying degrees of groundedness, complexity, and schematicity: basic physical action and object frames; more complex frames; and highly abstract, complex frame structures. It thereby provides gestural evidence for the idea that metonymy is more basic and more directly experientially grounded than metaphor and thus often feeds into correlated metaphoric processes. Furthermore, the paper offers some initial insights into how metonymy also seems to induce the emergence of schematic patterns in gesture which may result from action-based and discourse-driven processes of habituation and conventionalization. It exemplifies how these forces may engender grammaticalization of a basic physical action into a gestural marker that shows strong metonymic form reduction, decreased transitivity, and interacting pragmatic functions. Finally, addressing basic metonymic operations in signed lexemes elucidates certain similarities regarding sign constitution in gesture and sign. English and German multimodal discourse data as well as German Sign Language (DGS) are drawn upon to illustrate the theoretical points of the paper. Overall, this paper presents a unified account of metonymy’s role in underpinning forms, functions, and patterns in visuo-kinetic signs.

Whither historical pragmatics? A cognitively-oriented perspective

The emphasis of this paper is on cognitively-oriented strands of research developed in the last two decades, and on language-internal evidence for pragmatic factors that by hypothesis enable change. Work is highlighted in which pragmatic inferencing is analyzed in context. Contexts are understood to include not only the local clause but also complex clauses, conversational interaction, discourse structuring and typological shifts that are ongoing in the language as a whole. The roles in meaning change of turn taking, frequency and factors such as non-cooperation are touched on.

Scales and scalarity: Processing scalar inferences

Abstract The scalar word ‘some’ may be interpreted with an upper bound, i.e., as excluding ‘all’. Several studies have found that the computation of this scalar inference may be associated with a processing cost (e.g., Bott & Noveck, 2004; De Neys & Schaeken, 2007), which seems to argue in favour of theories according to which pragmatic inferencing is cognitively demanding (e.g., Sperber & Wilson, 1986). This argument holds on the premise that findings for ‘some’ can be generalised across the entire family of scalar words, which has been called into question by recent work highlighting the diversity within the class of scalar words (e.g., van Tiel, van Miltenburg, Zevakhina, & Geurts, 2016). In order to determine how generalisable the findings for ‘some’ are, we conducted three experiments in which we investigated the cognitive processing of seven scalar words that differ, inter alia, in their scalarity, i.e., whether they impose a lower (‘some’, ‘or’, ‘might’, ‘most’, ‘try’) or upper (‘low’, ‘scarce’) bound on their dimension. We find that the scalar inferences of the negatively scalar words ‘low’ and ‘scarce’ are not associated with a processing cost, unlike the scalar inferences of positively scalar words. We argue that the reported processing cost for scalar inferencing reflects increased cognitive demands associated with the processing of negative information.

隐喻推理的两大进路及优势互补

隐喻推理主要包括语用推理和认知推理。本文首先梳理隐喻推理的语用观和认知观，并简要评述各自的优点和缺点，继而介绍语用与认知互补视角下的隐喻糅合理论，该理论以词汇语义学和词汇语用学为出发点，糅合关联理论和概念隐喻理论详细分析了词汇隐喻义的在线理解过程，并运用概念合成理论揭示了句子隐喻性和词汇隐喻性的关系。文章指出，隐喻糅合理论结合语用和认知两大进路推理隐喻的做法可以实现二者优势互补，但仍有待进一步发展和完善。 Metaphor inferencing embraces pragmatic inferencing and cognitive inferencing. First of all, this paper introduces the pragmatic view and cognitive view of metaphor inferencing respectively and gives a brief comment on their merits and demerits. Then it describes the Hybrid Theory of Metaphor (HTM) which adopts a complementary perspective of pragmatics and cognitive linguistics. This theory centers around lexical semantics and lexical pragmatics and presents carefully how to understand the metaphorical meaning of certain word(s) online by combining relevance theory and conceptual metaphor theory, and the relationship of sentential metaphoricity and lexical metaphoricity via conceptual blending theory. It is pointed out that although the combination of pragmatic approach with cognitive approach for metaphor inferencing can make up for each other’s disadvantages; HTM still requires further development and improvement.

Guess What? Comparing Ad-hoc and Scalar Implicatures in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Guess What? Comparing Ad-hoc and Scalar Implicatures in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder