Empirical Evidence for Embodied Semantics

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.

[1]  P. Hendriks,et al.  When Production Precedes Comprehension: An Optimization Approach to the Acquisition of Pronouns , 2006 .

[2]  S. Levinson.  Presumptive Meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature , 2001 .

[3]  Petra Hendriks,et al.  Learning to reason about speakers' alternatives in sentence comprehension: A computational account , 2007 .

[4]  Chien Yu-Chin,et al.  Children's Knowledge of Locality Conditions in Binding as Evidence for the Modularity of Syntax and Pragmatics , 1990 .

[5]  Petra Hendriks,et al.  Cognitive architectures and language acquisition: a case study in pronoun comprehension. , 2010, Journal of child language.

[6]  Gerhard Jäger,et al.  Learning Constraint Subhierarchies: The Bidirectional Gradual Learning Algorithm , 2004 .

[7]  Hanjung Lee,et al.  Optimization in Argument Expression and Interpretation: A Unified Approach , 2001 .

[8]  Henk Zeevat,et al.  The Asymmetry of Optimality Theoretic Syntax and Semantics , 2000, J. Semant..

[9]  Jennifer Spenader,et al.  Coherent discourse solves the pronoun interpretation problem* , 2008, Journal of Child Language.

[10]  P. Smolensky,et al.  Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar , 2004 .

[11]  Tanya Reinhart,et al.  Interface Strategies : Optimal and Costly Computations , 2006 .

[12]  Henk Zeevat,et al.  Optimality-theoretic pragmatics , 2009 .

[13]  Reinhard Blutner,et al.  Some Aspects of Optimality in Natural Language Interpretation , 2000, J. Semant..

[14]  Helen de Hoop,et al.  Children's Optimal Interpretations of Indefinite Subjects and Objects , 2006 .

[15]  Gerlof Bouma,et al.  Starting a sentence in Dutch : a corpus study of subject- and object-fronting , 2008 .

[16]  Michael Franke,et al.  Signal to act : game theory in pragmatics , 2009 .

[17]  Paul Portner,et al.  Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning , 2011 .