Experimental Pragmatics

Explains the phenomena, theoretical debates, experiments and historical development of experimental pragmatics, which investigates how utterances communicate a speaker's intended meaning.

How do we understand what we are told, resolve ambiguities, appreciate metaphor and irony, and grasp both explicit and implicit content in verbal communication? This book provides the first comprehensive introduction to an exciting new field in which models of language and meaning are tested and compared using techniques from psycholinguistics.

How does a listener understand a sarcastic 'That was a wonderful speech' when the words point to a positive review? Why do students of introductory logic interpret 'Some cabs are yellow' as 'Not all cabs are yellow' when the meaning of 'some' is compatible with 'all'? Pragmatics aims to explain how listeners draw out a speaker's meaning from utterances, an astonishing feat when one considers that the words in a sentence hardly suffice for fully comprehending what the speaker intended. Given the nature of pragmatics, it is going to take the interdisciplinary firepower of many cognitive sciences - including philosophy, experimental psychology, linguistics and neuroscience - to fully appreciate this uniquely human ability. In this book, Ira Noveck, a leading pioneer in experimental pragmatics, engagingly walks the reader through the phenomena, the theoretical debates, the experiments as well as the historical development of this growing academic discipline.

How does a listener understand a sarcastic 'That was a wonderful speech' when the words point to a positive review? Why do students of introductory logic interpret 'Some cabs are yellow' as 'Not all cabs are yellow' when the meaning of 'some' is compatible with 'all'? Pragmatics aims to explain how listeners draw out a speaker's meaning from utterances, an astonishing feat when one considers that the words in a sentence hardly suffice for fully comprehending what the speaker intended. Given the nature of pragmatics, it is going to take the interdisciplinary firepower of many cognitive sciences - including philosophy, experimental psychology, linguistics and neuroscience - to fully appreciate this uniquely human ability. In this book, Ira Noveck, a leading pioneer in experimental pragmatics, engagingly walks the reader through the phenomena, the theoretical debates, the experiments as well as the historical development of this growing academic discipline.

In recent years, a lively debate ensued on an old issue, namely the proper distinction between semantics and pragmatics against the background of the classical Gricean distinction between ‘what is said’ and ‘what is implicated’. From a linguist’s point of view, however, there has always been a regrettable lack of empirical data in this otherwise sophisticated debate. Recently, a new strand of research emerged under the name of experimental pragmatics, the attempt to gain experimental data on pragmatic and semantic issues by using psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic methods. This volume brings together work by scholars engaging in experimental research on the semantics/pragmatics distinction. The contribution of experimental pragmatics to pragmatic and semantic theory is discussed from a number of different angles, ranging from implicature and pragmatic enrichment to pragmatic acquisition, pragmatic impairment, and pragmatic processing. In addition, methodological issues are discussed. The contributions will appeal to theoretical linguists, psycholinguists, neurolinguists, and language philosophers.

In recent years, a lively debate ensued on an old issue, namely the proper distinction between semantics and pragmatics against the background of the classical Gricean distinction between what is said and what is implicated . From a linguist s point of view, however, there has always been a regrettable lack of empirical data in this otherwise sophisticated debate. Recently, a new strand of research emerged under the name of experimental pragmatics, the attempt to gain experimental data on pragmatic and semantic issues by using psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic methods. This volume brings together work by scholars engaging in experimental research on the semantics/pragmatics distinction. The contribution of experimental pragmatics to pragmatic and semantic theory is discussed from a number of different angles, ranging from implicature and pragmatic enrichment to pragmatic acquisition, pragmatic impairment, and pragmatic processing. In addition, methodological issues are discussed. The contributions will appeal to theoretical linguists, psycholinguists, neurolinguists, and language philosophers."

The ability to communicate through spoken and written language is one of the defining characteristics of the human race, yet it remains a deeply mysterious process. The young science of psycholinguistics attempts to uncover the mechanisms and representations underlying human language. This interdisciplinary field has seen massive developments over the past decade, with a broad expansion of the research base, and the incorporation of new experimental techniques such as brain imaging and computational modelling. The result is that real progress is being made in the understanding of the key components of language in the mind. The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics brings together the views of 75 leading researchers in psycholinguistics to provide a comprehensive and authoritative review of the current state of the art in psycholinguistics. With almost 50 chapters written by experts in the field, the range and depth of coverage is unequalled. The contributors are eminent in a wide range of fields, including psychology, linguistics, human memory, cognitive neuroscience, bilingualism, genetics, development and neuropsychology. Their contributions are organised into six themed sections, covering word recognition, the mental lexicon, comprehension and discourse, language production, language development, and perspectives on psycholinguistics. The breadth of coverage, coupled with the accessibility of the short chapter format should make the handbook essential reading for both students and researchers in the fields of psychology, linguistics and neuroscience.

This handbook is the first to explore the growing field of experimental semantics and pragmatics. In the past 20 years, experimental data has become a major source of evidence for building theories of language meaning and use, encompassing a wide range of topics and methods. Following an introduction from the editors, the chapters in this volume offer an up-to-date account of research in the field spanning 31 different topics, including scalar implicatures, presuppositions, counterfactuals, quantification, metaphor, prosody, and politeness, as well as exploring how and why a particular experimental method is suitable for addressing a given theoretical debate. The volume's forward-looking approach also seeks to actively identify questions and methods that could be fruitfully combined in future experimental research. Written in a clear and accessible style, this handbook will appeal to students and scholars from advanced undergraduate level upwards in a range of fields, including semantics and pragmatics, philosophy of language, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, cognitive science, and neuroscience.

The concept of theory of mind (ToM), a hot topic in cognitive psychology for the past twenty-five years, has gained increasing importance in the fields of linguistics and pragmatics. However, even though the relationship between ToM and verbal communication is now recognized, the extent, causality and full implications of this connection remain mostly to be explored. This book presents a comprehensive discussion of the interface between language, communication, and theory of mind, and puts forward an innovative proposal regarding the role of discourse connectives for this interface. The proposed analysis of connectives is tested from the perspective of their acquisition, using empirical methods such as corpus analysis and controlled experiments, thus placing the study of connectives within the emerging framework of experimental pragmatics.