Ira Noveck. Centre de ..... distinguish one relatively tall glass from, say, a smaller glass. ... uttered and even before hearing the noun âglassâ (Sedivy et al., 1999).
Narrowing1
Ira Noveck Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem CNRS
Nicola Spotorno Laboratoire sur le Langage, le Cerveau et la Cognition Bron, France CNRS-Université de Lyon
Chapter in Brevity (Laurence Goldstein, Ed.), OUP 2013
1
Abtstract
This chapter describes pragmatic inferencing as a process we call narrowing, which serves to provide gains in information in utterance comprehension. While assuming that this process is ubiquitous, we rely on experimental data to detail a small set of phenomena that fall under either voluntary and imposed narrowing, with scalar inferences serving as the flagship example of the former and metaphor of the latter. Those we call voluntary have linguistically encoded readings that can lead to a more informative reading with extra effort. For those we call imposed there is no obvious relationship between linguistic readings and their intended ones. The proposal essentially describes how pragmatic inferencing makes brevity possible. Index: Narrowing Imposed Voluntary Scalar inferences Metaphor Conditionals Adjectival Modification
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It is uncontroversial among pragmatists to assume that an utterance can provide a meaning that is more precise than what is conveyed by the linguistic content of its words. So when Mary says (1a), a more informative interpretation of it is (1b). Similarly, when a speaker uses a sentence metaphorically, as in (2a), it can have many potential meanings, but it ultimately provides the addressee with a more precise interpretation (2b):
(1)
a. Some of the guests are hungry. b. Some but not all of the guests are hungry.
(2)
a. Nobody wanted to run against John at school. John was a cheetah. b. John was fast.
Controversy arises once theorists describe how this process is carried out. Grice (1975) assumed that there are standards in conversation and that the source of refinements comes from violations of these standards. Levinson (2000) argues that there are inferential heuristics (or default inferences) that make utterances informative (e.g. the Q-heuristic What isn’t said, isn’t is applied to the utterance), transforming the linguistically encoded meaning in (1a) to (1b)) while Relevance Theory (RT) describes how intended meanings are the result of the interplay between cognitive effects and effort in a particularized way for each utterance (Sperber & Wilson, 1985/1996). Others argue that grammar plays a determinative role in interpretations (Chierchia, 2001); e.g. (1a) is understood as similar to its linguistically encoded reading when in a downward entailing context and as (1b) otherwise. One way to adjudicate between these accounts is to test them experimentally. However, this endeavor is complicated by the fact that it is not obvious how to transform theoretical positions into 3
cognitive implementations of them. One can see how difficult this is when one considers Grice’s seminal theory. Grice proposed a theory that was a normative account for human communication and his approach was entirely theoretical. His cooperative principle and his maxims were designed to provide a rational reconstruction of what should happen during a conversation between two rational agents. Since then, scholars have aimed to transform the Gricean account into a psycholinguistic model of language processing (often referred to as the Standard Pragmatic Model, SPM). At its simplest, it is a three-step process that involves 1) the computation of the semantic / literal meaning; 2) the recognition of a violation of a maxim and; 3) the computation of an intended meaning through implicature. However, it has been difficult to establish that these three steps actually occur (let alone in such an order) and, more fatally, such a three-step process seems too long and slow for explaining the rapid on-line pragmatic processing of an utterance (e.g., see Sedivy’s chapter). This has made it easy for critics to rail against the SPM and, in so doing, the entire Gricean approach. However, Grice never intended his model to be used as a model of actual language processing and this holds for many theoretical accounts of pragmatics. Fortunately, much progress has been made in the cognitive sciences since David Marr (1982) pointed out how one can advance theoretically at three levels – often referred to as the computational, algorithmic and implementational levels of analysis – and how one can make progress by keeping the three separate and complementary. We summarize the three quickly. The computational level makes explicit the input and output of the process as well as the constraints that would allow a specified problem to be solved. The algorithmic level describes how to get from input to output, and specifically determines which representations have to be used and which processes have to be employed in order to build and manipulate the representations. The implementational level provides a description of the physical system that should realize the process at, say, the neuronal level.2 It should be clear then that Grice’s theory was designed at the computational level; the SPM was invented to practically mimic it at the algorithmic level. However, as Marr argued, it is neither 4
necessary nor recommended to assume that the two resemble each other. One can do theoretical work at the computational level without recourse to the algorithmic level and so on with any level with respect to the other two. While we make this historical digression to underline the dangers that arise when one translates a theory of pragmatics into a cognitive model of communication, it is also our way to introduce our modest aim, which is to describe our approach to pragmatic processing at the algorithmic level. In this chapter we propose that behind different pragmatic phenomena and different pragmatic theories is a single cognitive process that guides the selection of an intended interpretation of an utterance. We will call this process narrowing. Our proposal derives from experimental observations across several different areas of study – scalar implicatures, metaphor processing, contrastive inferences and inferential processes related to reasoning. Narrowing is part and parcel of a comprehension mechanism that allows interlocutors to take full advantage of the content of utterances. Narrowing on the part of listeners allows speakers to be briefer than they would absolutely need to be in order to fully express their thoughts. In other words, narrowing is a general pragmatic process that makes brevity possible.
1. A descriptive example of narrowing
Consider this statement from Sam Stein, an American political reporter from the Huffington Post who was speaking on television about Ann Coulter, a conservative commentator who was just shown (on a video clip) to be rather upset about a statement made by a spokeswoman for the conservative Romneyfor-President campaign:
(3)
Sam Stein: Ann Coulter is talking out of her mind.
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His remark has several interpretations. One is close to a literal description. This can be viewed as Ann Coulter is speaking through parts of her mind/brain. Without any other context, this might seem plausible though hardly informative. Another possible interpretation is that perhaps he misspoke and meant to say “talking out of line,” since both she and the spokeswoman are from the same end of the political spectrum and it is highly unusual to see one conservative publicly angry with another. This is not likely, especially because he didn’t correct himself, but given the formulation there is a chance that this is possible. The third is that “out of her mind” –– an idiomatic expression meaning something along the lines of excitedly and implausibly (as in insanely) –– is being used awkwardly here to describe the outlandish and demonstrative way Coulter was expressing herself in the video clip. It would be fair to say that the third interpretation was the intended one, but given the options, and especially if it removed from context, the others would be possible. We present this example because it is typical of cases of utterance interpretation and for the following three reasons. First, these sorts of utterances are ubiquitous (this specific real-life occurrence made itself known immediately while the authors were mulling over a reviewer’s suggestion that we present an example here). Second, it comes with numerous interpretations. Third, and importantly, one can see how elements from a literal interpretation emerge and could readily represent one of the three we described. These are also the features that one can appreciate in the academic cases described in the opening paragraph. For example, while the literal reading of (1a) is a possible construal, there are many circumstances where (1b) is made readily apparent by context. Likewise for the utterance and its interpretation in (2); (2a) can have a literal reading, but it is more likely to be understood as (2b). Importantly, we propose that the same narrowing process is responsible for all three of the cases in (1) through (3). We bring up the two cases represented in (1) and (2) in order to distinguish between two sorts of narrowing – one that we call voluntary and the other imposed. These labels characterize the way an addressee ends up with the more informative endpoint, the one that discussions usually consider to be 6
closest to the intended reading. In the voluntary sort, the linguistically-encoded reading could be considered good enough while the more informative version can be viewed as stronger; in fact, the more informative reading actually entails the encoded one. Consider the case of scalars from (1). The linguistically-encoded meaning of Some is entailed by the pragmatically enriched reading, which can be viewed as equivalent to only some. Voluntary narrowing gets its name from the ubiquitous finding showing that, when all else remains equal, the more informative interpretation appears to require more effort than the linguistically encoded one (see Noveck & Reboul, 2008). Imposed narrowing gets its name from the fact that, while both a linguistically encoded reading and an intended go-to reading involve some form of narrowing, some feature (of either the context or the linguistic code) forces the addressee to look for a sensible interpretation that is quite different from one that comes closest to the linguistically encoded sort. In fact, it is hard to see any direct relationship between a linguistically-encoded reading and a more informative reading among the phenomena in this category. Metaphor serves as our main example of imposed narrowing, so consider John was a cheetah. The relationship between a linguistically encoded reading (for the present purposes, consider it something akin to A named object John was a large feline called a cheetah) and the more informative, go-to metaphoric reading (e.g., John was fast) is not obvious when one compares the two. One can even argue, as we will do later, that the narrowing in the more informative case has little overlap with (and can even inadvertently lead to a rejection of) the linguistically encoded sort. Thus, if one does take the verbal stimulus to gather that John was fast, the more informative metaphoric reading dispenses with possible alternatives, including the one that can be considered closest to the literally encoded meaning. The rest of the chapter will unfold in the following way. First, we motivate the general need for a narrowing process by underlining how it provides for gains in information in utterance comprehension. This is followed by describing in greater detail a small set of phenomena that fall under either voluntary or imposed narrowing, with scalars serving as the flagship example of the former 7
and metaphor of the latter. Critically, and as has been pointed out in previous work (Noveck & Sperber, 2007), we do not think that semantic and pragmatic intuitions can suffice for building up accounts of pragmatic processes, so we point out that our analyses rely almost exclusively on data drawn from experiments. We conclude by considering issues related to our proposal. By the end of the chapter, we hope that the reader will have the wherewithal to categorize the utterance in (3).
2. Narrowing as a means to gain information
Why is narrowing necessary? The short answer is that it provides informational value. While a linguistic stimulus is a means for gaining information, narrowing operates by reducing the interpretational possibilities that the stimulus itself provides. To bring this notion into focus, consider a quote from Levinson (2000, p. 31), in which he describes a way to view information-gain semantically while assuming some basic background information:
Recollect the idea, independently developed in slightly different ways by Popper (1959) and Bar-Hillel and Carnap (1952), that semantic information content of a message can be measured in proportion to the number of states of affairs that the message effectively rules out, given a domain of discourse. For example, in a domain consisting of Bill and Ben, and considering just the states of affairs characterized by two predicates, say ‘married’ and ‘middle aged’, the assertion “Bill is married” will rule out just 8 out of 16 possible states of affairs (e.g., a state where Ben is married and middle-aged and where Bill is not middle-aged and not-married).
Based on our understanding of Levinson’s scenario, the 16 states of affairs refer to conjunctions of Bill’s marriage status and age along with Ben’s marriage status and age (e.g. one state would be Bill is 8
married and is middle aged and Ben is not-married and is not middle aged). Once these 16 states are declared, asserting that Bill is married removes eight cases, i.e. those in which Bill is unmarried (e.g., Bill is unmarried and is not middle aged and Ben is married and is middle aged). Further asserting that Bill is middle-aged removes another four states of affair in which he is not middle-aged.3 That would leave four cases where Bill is both married and middle-aged (corresponding to the four remaining combinations of marriage-status and age for Ben). So, there are gains as one moves along the sentence. This portrays the way semantics can be quantified to capture information gains and, as Levinson writes, this is a useful first approximation. Even without knowing the precise features of the background information of an utterance, there remain ways one can appreciate gains in information in a similarly useful (though sometimes more trivial) way. That would be by ruling out some of the multiple interpretations the linguistic code itself generates through one’s background knowledge and knowledge of language. For example, in Levinson’s example above, one’s knowledge of English helps us understand that Bill without an article is a person (and not an invoice) and that married is antonymic to unmarried. Our general knowledge would inform us that Bill is probably the first name of a man and that he is probably married to a woman and that the two are married to two different women. All of this leads to the assumption that the two are probably not married to each other. Moreover, one would probably assume that middle-aged is based on contemporary standards and not prehistoric or biblical ones. As can be seen with this banal example, one does not need to formally declare the domain’s background in order to measure information gains, especially in the sort of out-of-the-blue sentences that are usually employed in psychological experiments; background knowledge and linguistic know-how allow one to do quite a bit. In order to consider narrowing a general algorithmic process, it ought to be sufficiently ubiquitous. Given the host of pragmatic phenomena in which an utterance can be refined (e.g., quantified spaces, lexical interpretations, anticipated information, and potential reference assignments, 9
to name a few) one should be able to find evidence of it across the pragmatic spectrum. That is why we now turn to our flagship examples – scalar inferences and metaphor – in which one can identify narrowing. Our method is to find, for each case, a minimally functional linguistically encoded meaning (often referred to in the literature as logical, literal, or semantic) that is related to the utterance of each example. This ultimately involves finding a critical term that is thought to be responsible for either a literal or extra-literal reading. This is the weak quantifier in (1) and the metaphor vehicle in (2). We focus on literal meanings, not only because the literature does but, because the fate of the linguisticallyencoded reading in each case is revealing of the distinction between the two sorts of narrowing. In the voluntary case, there is a relationship to detect between the linguistically encoded meaning and the more informative one. Thus, pragmatic discussions of Some usually aim to distinguish the semantic meaning of Some, which is compatible with All, from the pragmatic reading of Some, which is not compatible with All (though see Degen & Tanenhaus, 2010 & Grodner et al., 2010, who distinguish Some from the quantities 2 and 3). For the imposed kind, the relationship between literal and pragmatic readings can be best described as incompatible.
2.1. Narrowing that is voluntary: The case of scalars
Here we turn to what has become the drosophila of the experimental pragmatics literature – scalar inferences. Consider an out-of-the-blue utterance such as Some of the guests are hungry. This utterance can lead to two sorts of output, the one in (1a) or the stronger interpretation in (1b), even if there is some disagreement about the underlying cause for the latter. From the classic Gricean perspective, the explanation for (1b) goes as follows: The more informative proposition All the guests are hungry would make a greater contribution to the common purpose of the conversation and the speaker would
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be expected to express it if she could. Given that it was not expressed, the negation of All the guests are hungry becomes part of a generated meaning. To see how there is greater information gain with the more refined interpretation, consider Leibniz’s line diagrams (see Politzer et al., 2006), which are analogous to Venn Diagrams, as one processes Some of the guests are hungry. The minimally acceptable linguistically encoded meaning in (1a) is compatible with the four following possibilities:
(4)
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
G
----------
H
-----------
G
-----------------
H
----------
G
----------
H
----------
G
----------
H
-----------------
These representations essentially show the 4 different ways “Some G are H” can be represented. In every case, there is an overlap between G and H. What distinguishes the four is what occurs at the peripheries. In (4a), there are G that are not H and H that are not G (i.e., guests who are not hungry and non-guests who are). In (4b), G includes H so that there are simply G that are not H (i.e., guests who
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are not hungry). In (4c), the two groups are perfectly overlapping and in (4d), there are only H that are not G (i.e. non-guests who are hungry). The reading of (1a) is compatible with all four readings of (4). The narrowing represented in (1b) eliminates (4c) and (4d) from consideration, leaving only (4a) and (4b) as possibilities. There is thus a relative gain in information when one compares the two readings of (1), 4 possibilities in one case (1a) and 2 in the other (1b). Keep in mind that pragmatic processing works on arriving at even the linguistically encoded meaning (e.g., perhaps it could help determine the way to define the degree of hungry, which could refer to a minimal hunger for snacks or to the need to eat an entire meal). The approximations that we present concerning narrowing here are designed to sketch out the relationship between a minimal reading, and the other acceptable (and more informative) reading, while focusing on one (usually critical) feature of the utterance. Here, in the case of scalars, one can see that the pragmatic reading entails the literal one.4 Evidence from the developmental, sentence processing, and neurological literature show how the linguistically encoded reading very often suffices for out-of-the-blue sentences and how extra processing is associated with the narrowing of the more refined interpretations. As has been reported and summarized elsewhere (Noveck & Sperber, 2007; Noveck & Reboul, 2008), linguistically encoded readings are often sufficient for making on-line interpretations with utterances containing scalars and it is the more refined readings that come with extra costs, even if they may be relatively light (e.g., see Bott, Bailey & Grodner, 2012; Bott & Noveck, 2004; Breheny, Katsos & Williams, 2007; De Neys & Schaeken, 2007; Huang & Snedeker, 2009). There is also little evidence that situations exist wherein utterances containing scalar expressions are always narrowed (though see Grodner et al., 2010). In the interest of space, we focus on neurological features of sentence-processing and developmental data. A recent EEG study on sentence processing with scalar terms reveals how readily participants use semantic readings (Nieuwland et al., 2010). While exploiting individual differences first reported in Noveck (2001) and in an EEG study from Noveck and Posada (2003), Nieuwland et al. showed that the 12
moment at which underinformativeness becomes apparent is generally not noticeable to most participants. In sentence (5), taken from Experiment 2 of their study, the word “lungs” which is arguably underinformative at the point at which it is expressed (since all people have lungs) apparently prompts an EEG profile that is indistinguishable from the word “pets” in (6) when it is expressed, even though the latter does not have the potential to appear underinformative:
(5)
Some people have lungs that require good care.
(6)
Some people have pets that require good care.
However, Experiment 1 of the same paper –– with the same paradigm –– shows that EEG profiles appear more reactive when (a) participants are broken down into two groups based on their “Communication Score” in Baron-Cohen’s Autism Quotient (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001), where a higher score indicates that an individual is higher on the Autism Spectrum, plus when; (b) a comma is inserted prompting a sort of “clausal wrap-up.” For example, (5) and (6) were presented as (5’) and (6’):
(5’)
Some people have lungs, which require good care.
(6’)
Some people have pets, which require good care.
With these sentences, those participants who are considered more “pragmatically skilled” (with low AQ scores) had EEG profiles with an N400 of greater magnitude to the underinformative item in a sentence such as (5’) when compared to (6’); this indicates that some sort of expectation was violated on line among this half of participants. Those who scored higher on the scale had N400’s that were less remarkable. The upshot here is that it can be demonstrated that a subgroup of participants who appear
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to be more pragmatically skilled go further in narrowing the meaning of a sentence on-line. The rest do not. Developmentally speaking, more refined readings occur more frequently with age, indicating that younger participants are more likely than older ones to rely on minimal (semantic) readings. This is supported by findings showing that children are less likely than adults to reject as false underinformative sentences such as Some boxes contain a token when presented with four boxes each containing a token. The developmental trajectory (with linguistically encoded readings more prevalent among younger participants) is present consistently and across multiple languages (French, Greek, Italian, English & German, to name a few) and even as types of underinformative sentences vary (Noveck, 2001; Papafragou & Musolino, 2003; Guasti et al., 2005; Pouscoulous et al., 2007). For example, Noveck (2001) showed that 10-year-olds are more likely than adults to accept underinformative sentences such as Some elephants have trunks, indicating that they are less likely than adults to narrow their interpretations (with meanings that can be glossed) as Some but not all elephants have trunks. While largely replicating Noveck (2001), Guasti et al. (2005) showed that explicit training among 7-year-olds improves their ability to draw more refined interpretations but that they never achieve adult levels of performance for most scalar terms and that the effects of instruction do not last beyond the training session itself for most children. Taking both the EEG and developmental data together, it is safe to assume that the narrowing that distinguishes the linguistically encoded reading from the more informative one is an activity that is linked to further inferencing. Addressees who are more socially skilled make more narrowed readings of Some on-line as do older participants on sentence verification tasks. With data like these (and in abundance) it is difficult to claim that narrowed readings occur routinely without effort.
2.1.1. Other cases of voluntary narrowing: Adjectival modifications
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As we indicated earlier, we are interested in describing a general process that can be seen to work across several phenomena. This is why we turn to another well-studied case that, according to our breakdown, falls under the voluntary narrowing label. These are contrastive inferences that arise in sentences that are modified with an adjective. For example, the word “tall” in (7) can help participants distinguish one relatively tall glass from, say, a smaller glass.
(7)
Pick up the tall glass.
One view on this inference is that knowledge of the semantics of the adjective triggers a search for a pertinent comparison class (Sedivy, 2003). According to this view, the word “tall” is the basis for a presupposition rather than something akin to voluntary narrowing as in (8). This claim is based on a result showing that listeners’ eye-movements reveal that they make referential assignments (measured by looks to the tall glass when it was one of two differently sized glasses) as soon as the adjective was uttered and even before hearing the noun “glass” (Sedivy et al., 1999). Arguably, the adjective “tall” ought to have attracted one’s attention to another tall object in the scenario, a pitcher, which was present in the referential domain as well, and yet it did not appear to.
(8)
Pick up the tall glass and not the shorter one.
From our view, a test sentence such as (7) has a linguistically encoded reading that does not necessarily include one particular contrastive inference (which according to the above description, looks like 8). It could, depending on the context, have other interpretations through narrowing. To appreciate our point, consider a hypothetical case where there are numerous tall things (a tall cup, a tall paper clip, a tall telephone, a tall screwdriver, a tall ruler) as well as small things, some of which can be viewed as paired with the tall ones (a normal-sized paper clip, a standard-sized telephone 15
etc.). Among these objects, there is a single glass that is the same height as the other tall objects. In this case, the critical sentence can arguably lead to the experiment’s intended glass without considering other glasses. Moreover, it can be viewed as implicitly eliminating other tall things without referring to other glasses. This implies that narrowing can exclude other objects and that it is context that determines which information is implicitly eliminated. In Sedivy et al. (1999) it would be (8) and in our hypothetical case it would be (9).5
(9)
Pick up the tall glass and no other singular, tall things.
It can be seen that, with either interpretation, the modifying adjective provides the means for narrowing. Context determines which features are excluded as a result of narrowing. One would be justified to ask, But how does that explain the speed at which the interpretation in (8) is carried out? We would argue that the impressive results arise due to particular features of the experimental scenario that a) always include four objects, b) consist of repeated trials that focus on finding a unique object, and; c) include control cases in the same session that use sentences like (7) without a contrasting object. It is possible that the adjective in the control utterances, which are arguably superfluous there, makes these items infelicitous. That is, the same person who voluntarily narrows down her choice due to an adjective when there is a contrast presented, based on size say, would arguably be primed to do so even when there is none presented in the visual world. It would follow that at least part of the reported effect is due to the control conditions that slow addressees down. We consider the pragmatic reading of (7) –– e.g. the one in (8) –– voluntary because the listener could have accessed a more literal interpretation (without rejecting other glasses or other tall objects). A reading coming closer to the linguistically encoded one would indicate that a word such as “tall” in (7) is simply a further identifying feature. Our main point is that a contrastive inference, when it is
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made (and even if it is made routinely by adults), can be seen as an interpretation that goes beyond the linguistic one. The contrastive inference is not necessarily automatic nor is it quasi-grammatical. One can find some support for our view from comprehension tasks with children. These are studies that are designed around children’s sensitivity to informativity constraints and the detection of infelicity. For example, participants are asked to point to a specific object when there are two potential entities to choose from; the research question essentially becomes, at what age or in what sort of tasks do children detect that this is an unfair question to ask (Ackerman, Szymanski & Silver, 1990; Ironsmith & Whitehurst, 1978; for a review see Flavell et al., 1981). For example, Ironsmith & Whitehurst (1978) show that 5- to 8-year-old children rarely ask for clarification when an utterance instructs them to select one referent that could in fact refer to two (the Experimenter would say “I am thinking of the person with antennae” when there were two representations of people with antennae). They choose one at random. On the other hand, 9- to 12-year-olds ask for clarification (“which one?”) reliably more often in such situations. These are not ideal data, since they rely largely on a metalinguistic judgment, but they do seem to show that older children are attempting narrowing –– with respect to what they see in context –– more than younger ones. The younger ones, in the meantime, use the very literal meaning of the sentence to find one element that satisfies the description corresponding to the definite Noun Phrase. To sum up this section, it is our view that the adjectival modification patterns with the narrowing process described for scalar cases. Just like with scalars, there are linguistically encoded readings that provide enough information to make a choice in an experiment and there are further-narrowed readings that can be viewed as nested. For the moment, it is difficult to determine that the more informative interpretations are more effortful than the linguistically encoded readings; however, we believe this is hard to see because current investigations do not provide paradigms that allow for a felicitous comparison between the two.
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2.2. Imposed narrowing: The case of metaphor
Here, we describe imposed narrowing in greater detail. As we indicated, in imposed narrowing, there is no obvious relationship between an (even imaginary) linguistically encoded reading and the more informative end-product. It is called imposed because one needs to carry out narrowing in order to arrive at a sensible, relatively informative go-to reading. As we indicated, we consider metaphor to be a flagship case. We generally follow the RT account of the metaphor comprehension process, which means that we do not consider metaphor a departure from a norm of literalness nor a natural kind, but to be based on an inferential process that integrates the linguistic input with the contextual information from the first steps of the comprehension (Sperber & Wilson, 2008). One of the critical steps during the comprehension process of an utterance concerns the construction of ad hoc concepts. Consider the metaphor in (2a), “John was a cheetah.” In order to understand the utterance, the addressee extracts the relevant features of the vehicle CHEETAH that fit with those of the topic “John,” such as “wild animal,” “fast,” or perhaps “predatory.” By taking into consideration the ad hoc concept CHEETAH* as the product of the comprehension process, it can then be considered as a broader concept than the lexical concept CHEETAH because now the category of cheetah also includes a human being. When the addressee has to extract the relevant features of the vehicle CHEETAH that fit with the features of the topic “John,” one can detect narrowing. We argue that the narrowing process boils down to determining which features of the lexical concept CHEETAH are to be retained and which abandoned. One can consider these features as being part of a set of propositions (John is a wild animal, John is predatory etc.) and narrowing involves finding the best fit with the available information and thus discarding those propositions that do not. In other words, the addressee narrows down his options from a wider set of possibilities. 18
We cite two kinds of evidence that support such a narrowing account for metaphor. One comes from a priming study (Rubio Fernández, 2007), which presented vignettes aurally and concluded with a metaphor. At the end of a vignette, a prime appeared on a screen immediately or either 400 or 1000 msec later. These primes required participants to determine whether they were spelled correctly (with the idea being that a relatively quick lexical decision –– a “yes, it is spelled correctly” –– reveals that the prime was active at the time of decision). For example, participants would read (2a), which is presented again here as (10):
(10)
Nobody wanted to run against John at school. John was a cheetah.
This could be followed with what was referred to as a superordinate prime such as cat or an unrelated one, e.g. plant (a superordinate from another trial). The decision latencies for those who got the prime at 400 msec showed a preference for processing the former over the latter (644 vs. 698 msec, respectively), which disappeared when measured against those who got the prime at 1000 msec (791 vs. 799 msec, respectively). One can see that the categorical information no longer had much impact on the listener’s processing a full second after finishing the sentence. In contrast, when the primes presented were akin to fast (which is the relevant feature of being a cheetah in the example) and it was compared to an unrelated one, e.g., “tall” (a feature from a metaphor in another vignette), the decision latencies for those who got the prime at 400 msec showed a slight preference for the former over the latter (658 vs. 710 msec, respectively) and it remained disparate at 1000 msec (598 vs. 651 msec, respectively). Both of these remained faster than all the so-called superordinate cases. As Rubio Fernández wrote, her results support the notion that “metaphor interpretation involves enhancing relevant properties of the metaphor vehicle while suppressing irrelevant ones.” In our terms, narrowing not only helps determine a good fit for the metaphor; in doing so, it incidentally eliminates other candidate propositions that are generated by the utterance. 19
One also finds some support for narrowing in metaphor in developmental data. While children are quite competent at detecting and accounting for a metaphoric reference, their developmental progress shows how interpretations that are compatible with literal readings give way to the intended meaning. For example, Winner et al. (1976) showed that while 6- and 7-year-old children failed to correctly paraphrase a metaphorical expression, they also avoid a simple literal interpretation of the sentence. For example, given a sentence like (11):
(11)
“After many years of working at the jail, the prison guard had become a hard rock that could not be moved.”
While most of the children failed to understand the intended meaning of (11), which is that the prison guard has become harsh and insensitive, their protocols reveal that they do not adopt an interpretation in which the prison guard simply becomes a rock either. For example, the authors describe how children transform the scenario so that, e.g., an unmentioned king turns the guard into a rock. Literal readings in some form persist until addressees can appreciate a more informative meaning through the task’s metaphor (also see Noveck et al., 2001).
2.2.1. Other candidates for imposed narrowing
Another place where we identify imposed narrowing concerns illicit minor premises in the wake of conditional statements. When a conditional such as if p then q is presented, there is an expectation that the minor premise p is imminent (Bonnefond & Van der Henst, 2008; Bonnefond, et al., in press). Many participants, however, incorporate presented minor premises such as q, which is genuinely an imposition; this ultimately generates what appears to be pragmatically justifiable inferences. For example, consider the Affirmation of the Consequent (AC) argument in (12): 20
(12)
If Jean goes to the cinema, then he travels by bicycle.
If P then Q
Jean travels by bicycle.
Q
Therefore, he goes to the cinema.
∴P
Although most of the literature points to a nested reading between the conditional and what can be read as a biconditional, which makes this case seem like voluntary narrowing (see van der Auwera, 1997), there are several reasons for not applying the voluntary narrowing label. For one thing, the actual stimulus in (12) has no obvious linguistically encoded reading that corresponds with, say, an AC argument. Those who accept AC arguments as pragmatically valid have reacted to the unexpected q, which is inconsistent with what is expected with the linguistically encoded reading of if (see Bonnefond et al., in press; Noveck, Bonnefond & Van der Henst, 2011). We propose that one sees narrowing with respect to the conditional only indirectly because if-then itself generates a pragmatic process that raises expectations and specifically about the antecedent; these expectations are optionally and effortfully maintained and those who succeed typically reject AC arguments. Those who do not maintain narrowed expectations about the conditional’s antecedent are more likely to allow illicit conclusions to impose themselves through post-hoc justifications. One can see that narrowing need not be viewed as a means to arrive at true responses or false ones because it is not in the service of logical inference. Rather, narrowing can be viewed as a general pragmatic process that works from the linguistic code in opportunistic ways.
2.3. Comparing voluntary and imposed narrowing
We began this chapter by showing how different pragmatic phenomena use narrowing. To find what is common between them, we articulated some form of a linguistically encoded reading in each case and 21
followed its fate in order to determine how narrowing works and how to classify it. By considering a potential linguistically encoded meaning of an utterance and comparing it to another more informative one, one can see how voluntary and imposed readings diverge from one another. Those we call voluntary have linguistically encoded readings that are often good enough but can also lead to a more informative reading with extra effort (one that can entail the weaker one). There is a great deal of evidence showing that, at least in tasks that make the two sorts of interpretations feasible, the more informative readings very often reveal themselves as requiring greater effort. Those we call imposed are generally forced upon the addressee, but we still assume that they require the addressee to consider possibilities before settling on one intended reading (or a restricted set of intended readings). Critically, there is no entailment relation between a linguistically encoded meaning and its more informative one. If anything, the linguistically-encoded meaning is ultimately rejected by the more informative one.
3. Further issues and conclusions
Although we think that this outline goes far in classifying a range of data under one label, work still remains. One question we ask is to what extent does an individual pragmatic phenomenon remain in a single classification. For example, can a scalar inference, which is an example of voluntary narrowing here, be rendered imposed (see Grodner et al., 2010)? Similarly, how would one classify pragmatic processing behavior when participants are asked to determine whether a metaphor (such as Some jobs are jails) is literally false, as was investigated in Glucksberg et al. (1982) and whose results show that participants slow down in providing false responses when compared to simpler false statements such as Some cats are fish. These data indicate that there is extra effort involved in deflecting metaphoric interpretations and this would mean that arriving at a linguistically encoded reading (in order to justify a false response) in the imposed cases requires voluntary processing; this seems paradoxical. It could 22
also imply that linguistically encoded readings can come into conflict with more informative readings drawn from imposed narrowing; this does not seem paradoxical. Another issue concerns the frequency of narrowing occurrences in any given exchange. Is it necessary to carry out narrowing each and every time it is called for in a prolonged conversation (or experimental session)? This is relevant for those situations where participants receive repeated trials that potentially call on the same sort of narrowing throughout (whether it involve scalar, metaphoric or any other sort of process). We think that narrowing need not repeat itself and this may even be one of its central features. Once a listener adopts a reading for a particular sort of linguistic input that calls for narrowing, it will remain so over the course of the exchange (or experimental session). One can even see this at work in the conceptual pacts literature where two separated interlocutors exchange descriptions and information in order to organize their (identical) sets of 12 pictures into a particular order (see Brennan & Clark, 1996). When the 12 pictures represent basic objects (dog, toy, car etc.), participants refer to these with their common names, but when a second set of 12 pictures is introduced which includes 4 objects of the same category (e.g., 4 dogs or 4 cars), they are likely to use more specific references (e.g., “red Labrador” instead of “dog”), indicating that the specificity of reference prompts narrowing. Interestingly, when given one of the specifically described (more informative) items from the second set as part of a third phase –– which returns to using 12 common basic objects –– participants continue to use the more specific reference they established in the second round. This persistence is said to exploit lexical entrainment, which is the idea that once interlocutors hit upon a common expression to refer to a specific object, they continue to do so even if it appears overinformative. This indicates that a conceptual pact between interlocutors takes precedence over being just informative enough on each occasion. In this case, the narrowed meaning remains even when it is no longer necessary. According to our proposal, lexical entrainment is an expression of narrowing; once it occurs (and most forcibly, one would think, when it is among the same set of interlocutors) it is no longer necessary to carry it out each time, as long as it is part of the same conversation or task. This 23
sort of initiation in the context of a conversation or task can well explain many results in the experimental pragmatic literature more generally, including the scalar literature’s individual differences (first reported by Noveck & Posada, 2003). One potential misconception is to consider the utterance comprehension process as a simplified collection of information that comes from several sources (e.g., linguistic stimulus and extra-linguistic context) and that it all coalesces into a coherent interpretation. Contextual information is not spread around the hearer as single units waiting to be integrated; a good deal of information is already incorporated into the hearer's representation of a state of affairs. Therefore, when a new stimulus arises it has to be integrated into a pre-existing picture and the comprehension process need only cut off those features that do not fit with the picture. Considering language processing from this perspective, the comprehension process may be better defined as a process of verification or selection rather than as a process of construction. To summarize, all narrowing takes features of the linguistic stimulus and implicitly refines the list of propositions that it can produce. The kind of narrowing we call voluntary can be seen as having (at least) two sorts of output that are compatible with another (with the weaker linguistically encoded reading appearing as entailed by the more informative reading). In this category, the more informative reading also requires further effort when compared to the linguistically encoded one. Imposed narrowing can also be seen as having a linguistically encoded reading and a more informative one. In this case, however, there are no direct relations to construe between the two and it can even be argued that the more informative one rejects the linguistically encoded one. This proposal for narrowing in the comprehension process –– across a range of pragmatic phenomena –– was developed in order to follow a principle of cognitive economy. While are aware that the Occam razor is an elegant, theoretical tool and not a law of nature, it would make sense for cognitive systems to use a limited number of processes to be applied to a broad range of phenomena. It
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also reduces the explanatory gap that separates theoretical proposals from accounts of processing of individual pragmatic phenomena.
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1
Acknowledgements. The authors wish to thank Anouch Bourmayan, Eve Clark, Laurence Goldstein,
Luisa Marti, and Julie Sedivy for some very useful comments. 2
To make the three levels more concrete, consider the process of addition. First, one would define
what addition is, namely what is its input and output and what is its aim. This step corresponds to Marr’s computational level. One also has to define what kind of algorithm can compute addition. This means that one has to figure out a process that can manipulate the provided input and produce the desired output. Finally, one would need the machinery that can implement the algorithm in order to compute the addition; this is the level of implementation. 3
In the rest of the quote, Levinson writes that “Bill is married and middle-aged” leads to twice as much
information gain over “Bill is married” alone:
But the assertion “Bill is married and middle-aged” will rule out twice as many states of affairs and, by this measure, will be twice as informative.
The only way we can make sense of this quote is if we assume that a) the 16 states of affairs are conjunctions of Bill’s status and Ben’s status and; b) the gain is 50% (from 8 eliminated states to 12) and not “twice as much.” 4
Using entailments to distinguish between enrichments has been used before but to distinguish
between explicit and implicit readings in what was once referred to as Functional Independence (Carston, 2002). 5
As Anouch Bourmayan points out, it is the presupposition of uniqueness –– semantically conveyed by
the definite article –– that forces the subject to look at the size of other glasses. The listener needs to check whether there are no taller glasses to be sure that the uniqueness presupposition is obeyed. There 30
are those who defend a presuppositional account in the literature, which assumes that i) there is an entity identifiable with the noun phrase, i.e. a tall glass exists, and; ii) there is set of referents that can also be identified by the noun alone; that is, there is at least one other glass (see Ferreira & Clifton, 1986; Sedivy, 2003, for a review).
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