Evoking context with contrastive stress: effects on pragmatic enrichment
Although it is widely acknowledged that context influences a variety of pragmatic phenomena, it is not clear how best to articulate this notion of context and thereby explain the nature of its influence. In this paper, we target contextual alternatives that are evoked via focus placement and test ho...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2015-11-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01779/full |
| _version_ | 1817990139482210304 |
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| author | Chris eCummins Hannah eRohde |
| author_facet | Chris eCummins Hannah eRohde |
| author_sort | Chris eCummins |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Although it is widely acknowledged that context influences a variety of pragmatic phenomena, it is not clear how best to articulate this notion of context and thereby explain the nature of its influence. In this paper, we target contextual alternatives that are evoked via focus placement and test how the same contextual manipulation can influence three different phenomena that involve pragmatic enrichment: scalar implicature, presupposition, and coreference. We argue that focus placement influences these three phenomena indirectly by providing the listener with information about the likely question under discussion (QUD) that a particular utterance answers (Roberts, 1996/2012). In three listening experiments, we find that the predicted interpretations are indeed made more available when focus placement is added to the final element (to the scalar adjective, to an entity embedded under the negated presupposition trigger, and to the predicate of a pronoun). These findings bring together several distinct strands of work on the effect of focus placement on interpretation all in the domain of pragmatic enrichment. Together they advance our empirical understanding of the relation between focus placement and QUD and highlight commonalities between implicature, presupposition, and coreference. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-14T00:55:48Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-d5ae3249aca7416982ff90669460590b |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-14T00:55:48Z |
| publishDate | 2015-11-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-d5ae3249aca7416982ff90669460590b2022-12-22T02:21:38ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782015-11-01610.3389/fpsyg.2015.01779160685Evoking context with contrastive stress: effects on pragmatic enrichmentChris eCummins0Hannah eRohde1University of EdinburghUniversity of EdinburghAlthough it is widely acknowledged that context influences a variety of pragmatic phenomena, it is not clear how best to articulate this notion of context and thereby explain the nature of its influence. In this paper, we target contextual alternatives that are evoked via focus placement and test how the same contextual manipulation can influence three different phenomena that involve pragmatic enrichment: scalar implicature, presupposition, and coreference. We argue that focus placement influences these three phenomena indirectly by providing the listener with information about the likely question under discussion (QUD) that a particular utterance answers (Roberts, 1996/2012). In three listening experiments, we find that the predicted interpretations are indeed made more available when focus placement is added to the final element (to the scalar adjective, to an entity embedded under the negated presupposition trigger, and to the predicate of a pronoun). These findings bring together several distinct strands of work on the effect of focus placement on interpretation all in the domain of pragmatic enrichment. Together they advance our empirical understanding of the relation between focus placement and QUD and highlight commonalities between implicature, presupposition, and coreference.http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01779/fullscalar implicatureCoreferencePresupposition projectionquestion under discussion (QUD)focus placement |
| spellingShingle | Chris eCummins Hannah eRohde Evoking context with contrastive stress: effects on pragmatic enrichment Frontiers in Psychology scalar implicature Coreference Presupposition projection question under discussion (QUD) focus placement |
| title | Evoking context with contrastive stress: effects on pragmatic enrichment |
| title_full | Evoking context with contrastive stress: effects on pragmatic enrichment |
| title_fullStr | Evoking context with contrastive stress: effects on pragmatic enrichment |
| title_full_unstemmed | Evoking context with contrastive stress: effects on pragmatic enrichment |
| title_short | Evoking context with contrastive stress: effects on pragmatic enrichment |
| title_sort | evoking context with contrastive stress effects on pragmatic enrichment |
| topic | scalar implicature Coreference Presupposition projection question under discussion (QUD) focus placement |
| url | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01779/full |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT chrisecummins evokingcontextwithcontrastivestresseffectsonpragmaticenrichment AT hannaherohde evokingcontextwithcontrastivestresseffectsonpragmaticenrichment |