Abstract
This paper addresses the question whether and under which conditions hearers take into account the perspective of the speaker, and vice versa. Empirical evidence from computational modeling, psycholinguistic experimentation and corpus research suggests that a distinction should be made between speaker meanings and hearer meanings. Literal sentence meanings result from the hearer’s failure to calculate the speaker meaning in situations where the hearer’s selected meaning and the speaker meaning differ. Similarly, non-recoverable forms result from the speaker’s failure to calculate the hearer meaning in situations where the speaker’s intended meaning and the hearer meaning differ.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Levinson, S.: Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicatures. MIT Press, Cambridge (2000)
Grice, P.H.: Studies in the Ways of Words. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (1989)
Prince, A., Smolensky, P.: Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Blackwell, Malden (2004)
Blutner, R.: Some Aspects of Optimality in Natural Language Interpretation. Journal of Semantics 17, 189–216 (2000)
Zeevat, H.: The Asymmetry of Optimality Theoretic Syntax and Semantics. Journal of Semantics 17, 243–262 (2000)
Franke, M.: Signal to Act: Game Theory in Pragmatics. PhD Thesis, University of Amsterdam (2009)
Jäger, G.: Learning Constraint Sub-hierarchies: The Bidirectional Gradual Learning Algorithm. In: Blutner, R., Zeevat, H. (eds.) Optimality Theory and Pragmatics, pp. 251–287. Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire (2004)
Blutner, R., Zeevat, H.: Optimality-Theoretic Pragmatics. In: Maienborn, C., von Heusinger, K., Portner, P. (eds.) Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin (to appear)
Chien, Y.C., Wexler, K.: Children’s Knowledge of Locality Conditions on Binding as Evidence for the Modularity of Syntax and Pragmatics. Language Acquisition 1, 225–295 (1990)
Reinhart, T.: Interface Strategies: Optimal and Costly Computations. MIT Press, Cambridge (2006)
Hendriks, P., Spenader, J.: When Production Precedes Comprehension: An Optimization Approach to the Acquisition of Pronouns. Language Acquisition 13, 319–348 (2005)
De Hoop, H., Krämer, I.: Children’s optimal interpretations of indefinite subjects and objects. Language Acquisition 13, 103–123 (2005)
Spenader, J., Smits, E.J., Hendriks, P.: Coherent Discourse Solves the Pronoun Interpretation Problem. Journal of Child Language 36, 23–52 (2009)
Hendriks, P., van Rijn, H., Valkenier, B.: Learning to Reason about Speakers’ Alternatives in Sentence Comprehension: A Computational Account. Lingua 117, 1879–1896 (2007)
Van Rij, J., van Rijn, H., Hendriks, P.: Cognitive Architectures and Language Acquisition: A Case Study in Pronoun Comprehension. Journal of Child Language (in press)
Bouma, G.: Starting a Sentence in Dutch: A Corpus Study of Subject- and Object-Fronting. PhD Thesis, University of Groningen (2008)
Lee, H.: Optimization in Argument Expression and Interpretation: A Unified Approach. PhD Thesis, Stanford University (2001)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Hendriks, P. (2010). Empirical Evidence for Embodied Semantics. In: Aloni, M., Bastiaanse, H., de Jager, T., Schulz, K. (eds) Logic, Language and Meaning. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6042. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14287-1_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14287-1_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-14286-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-14287-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)