Presuppositions and Cognitive Processes

Understanding the Information Taken for Granted

Filippo Domaneschi

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137579423
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Psycolinguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book breaks new ground towards an understanding of the mental processes involved in presupposition, the comprehension of information taken for granted. Various psycholinguistic experiments are discussed to support the idea that involved in ordinary language comprehension are complex and demanding cognitive processes. The author demonstrates that these processes exist not only at the explicit level of an utterance but also at a deeper level of computing, where the background information taken for granted as already known and shared between interlocutors is processed. The author shows that experimental research can suggest new theoretical models for presupposition, thus this book will be of interest to researchers and students of psycholinguistics, the philosophy of language and experimental pragmatics.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Filippo DomaneschiPresuppositions and Cognitive ProcessesPalgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition10.1057/978-1-137-57942-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Experimental Pragmatics

Filippo Domaneschi¹

(1)

University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy

Abstract

In this chapter I provide a map of the current debate in experimental pragmatics. First, I present the core ideas of the Gricean intention-based semantics; I claim that this traditional semantic framework has led to an abandonment of the classic code model of verbal communication in favour of an inferential account of communication. I go on to describe the four main levels of meaning that characterize an utterance in a particular context of use: the sentence meaning, what is said, presuppositions, and implicatures. Next, the field of cognitive pragmatics is introduced and I distinguish between neuropragmatics and experimental pragmatics. I then describe the main areas of investigation in experimental pragmatics. I conclude by pointing out that the debate in experimental pragmatics has been characterized by the common assumption that presuppositions are a second level pragmatic phenomenon and I try to suggest some reasons to explain the lack of an experimental research line on presuppositions.

Keywords

PragmaticsInferential model of communicationImplicit communicationExperimental pragmaticsPresuppositions

End Abstract

1.1 Pragmatics: The Inferential Model of Communication

In our everyday lives we constantly communicate with other human beings. Communication comes about in a number of different ways besides purely verbal: by means of gestures, glances, smiles, whistles, clothes worn, and so on. However, because of its complexity and specificity, verbal language is considered the highest form of communication. Indeed, since the origins of Western thought, it has been one of the most frequently studied.

The use of language pervades our everyday lives: when we order a coffee at a bar, when we talk to our friends, when we greet someone, or have a job interview, we communicate with other human beings using the words and expressions of our chosen language (e.g. Italian, English, Spanish, Chinese, etc.). In most cases, linguistic communication takes place without too many complications. Sometimes, however, ordinary conversations are subject to misconceptions or difficulties of understanding. For instance, someone might say:

1. (1)
   “Mark is ready.”

Are we be able to say if (1) is either true or false? Obviously not, as the statement is incomplete. To determine whether it is true or false, it is necessary to establish exactly in what respect Mark can be considered ready (e.g. to take an examination? to get married?). To give another example, someone might say:

1. (2)
   “John is very tall.”

What do we understand? Not very much. Our first concern is to establish “with respect to who or to what” John can be considered “very tall”. For example, John might be considered tall if compared with a class of five-year-old children, but not so tall if judged in the changing room of a basketball team.

What, then, is the missing ingredient that enables us fully to understand statements (1) and (2)? The answer is that we must first understand the use made of each statement by the speaker in context. This pertains to the field of linguistics called pragmatics: the study of the use of language in context.

Herbert Paul Grice (1913–1988) is recognized as one of the founding fathers of contemporary pragmatics, together with John Langshaw Austin, Peter Strawson, and John Searle. His analyses consist of two distinct components: (i) intention-based semantics, where the meaning of an utterance can be accounted for in terms of the speaker’s communicative intentions, and (ii) a theory of conversation based on the principle of cooperation and the notion of implicature, grounded on the distinction between implicit and explicit meaning.

Grice developed a theory of meaning that represents a landmark not only of linguistics and philosophy of language, but also for other disciplines concerned with communication (e.g. semiotics, sociology, discourse analysis, etc.). Moreover, although Grice never used the term “pragmatics”, his theory of meaning is the starting point of the contemporary debate in philosophy of language on the boundary between semantics and pragmatics. In the following, some of the core aspects of the Gricean theory of meaning are described, including how it has led to the adoption of an inferential account of communication in lieu of the traditional code model.

1.1.1 Natural versus. Non-Natural Meaning

Grice’s theory of meaning starts from a traditional philosophical question: why does a sign mean something? In “Meaning” (1957), Grice discussed the problem of the conditions for meaning. From the outset, he adopted a semiotic point of view to address both linguistic and non-linguistic signs (e.g. gestures, images, sounds, etc). The Gricean analysis of meaning is focused mainly on the level of the use of signs: the level of utterances—the action performed by a person who utters a linguistic sign (e.g. a sentence) or a non-linguistic sign (e.g. a gesture)—is always considered.

Grice started his analysis with a survey of the different uses of the verb “to mean” in English. He did so first in the paper “Meaning” and then in “Meaning Revisited”, where he drew a distinction between natural and non-natural meanings. At the beginning of “Meaning” he provides the following examples:

1. (3)
   Those spots mean measles.
2. (4)
   The recent budget means that we shall have a hard year.
3. (5)
   Those three rings on the bell (of the bus) mean that the “bus is full”.
4. (6)
   That remark, “Smith couldn’t get on without his trouble and strife” meant that his wife was indispensable.

Grice points out that the same linguistic expression “to mean” is used with different meanings in the ordinary sentences (3), (4), (5), (6). In fact, in (3) and (4) the verb “to mean” performs a factive function, as it implies that what is described is true (i.e. that the person has measles, or that we shall have a hard year). In other words, (3) and (4) have the form “x means y” and convey that x entails y—that is, a proposition A semantically entails a proposition B iff in all worlds in which A is true, B is true too. For this reason, speakers that utter (3) commit themselves with the claim that the diagnosis is true; or, to be more precise, uttering “Those spots mean measles” is equivalent to uttering “If it is true that there are spots then it is necessarily true that there is measles”. In fact, it would seem contradictory to utter “Those spots mean measles nevertheless she doesn’t have measles”. Cases (5) and (6) present different uses of the expression “to mean”. For instance, in utterance (5) the verb “to mean” does not perform a factive function: those who utter (5) are not directly committed to claiming that the bus is actually full. For this reason, it might be possible to claim “Those three rings on the bell (of the bus) mean the bus is full although the bus is empty” without falling into contradiction. Likewise, utterance (6) does not convey any implication. This is because the utterance “Smith couldn’t get on without his trouble and strife” does not necessarily imply that “Smith found his wife indispensable” is true. The same sentence may actually mean something else: for example, “Smith used to pick quarrels with total strangers”.

How is it possible to explain the difference between the use of “to mean” in (3) and (4) and the use of the same linguistic expression in (5) and (6)? Grice distinguishes between two kinds of meaning: utterances (3) and (4) are examples of a natural use of meaning—that a sign has a natural meaning when it means something simply because things in the world are in a certain way; conversely, utterances (5) and (6) are examples of non-natural meaning of the verb “to mean”: in this case, a sign means something only because someone intends to communicate something to an audience by using a sign. With this distinction between natural and non-natural meanings, Grice intends to distinguish between signs that are causally connected with their meanings (e.g. “indexes” in Peirce’s classification of signs) and those that have no such connection but are driven by conventions and express the intention of a specific agent (see Peirce 1931–1935: 1.346, 2.228, 4.531).

1.1.2 Intention-Based Semantics: The Inferential Model

Having established the distinction between natural and non-natural meanings, Grice devoted his theory to the latter. Non-natural meanings are connected with the idea that communication consists of a mutual process of production and recognition of communicative intentions between speakers, and that intentions ground the conventional aspect of meaning.

By reducing the notion of meaning to the notion of intention (which is why his theory is typically termed intention-based semantics), Grice goes beyond the code model of communication: that is, the traditional idea that linguistic communication consists of a symmetric process of encoding and decoding messages. The code model is said to be rooted in Aristotelian philosophy and its most original developments are found in the Lockean theory of language (Locke 1690: book iii, ch. II, 1) and twentieth-century structuralist semiotics, especially in the work of Jakobson (1960), whose model of communication was partly influenced by the mathematical theory of communication. According to the code model, natural language is constituted by socially fixed connections between expressions and meanings (signifiers and signifieds), which are sufficient for understanding the message. Therefore, during verbal communication, speakers access the mental representations of their interlocutors through a simple operation of decoding the content of the message.

On the contrary, Grice claims that understanding the meaning communicated by a speaker is the result of an inferential process made by hearers on the basis of l...