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Selected Works

Pragmatics

Articles 1 - 16 of 16

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Two Questions About Interpretive Effects, Robert J. Stainton, Christopher Viger Dec 2017

Two Questions About Interpretive Effects, Robert J. Stainton, Christopher Viger

Robert J. Stainton

We discuss central themes in Lepore and Stone's Imagination and Convention. We begin by laying out their view, and then pose both empirical and methodological criticisms.

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56. Pragmatic Failure And Referential Ambiguity When Attorneys Ask Child Witnesses “Do You Know/Remember” Questions., Angela D. Evans, Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Thomas D. Lyon Dec 2016

56. Pragmatic Failure And Referential Ambiguity When Attorneys Ask Child Witnesses “Do You Know/Remember” Questions., Angela D. Evans, Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

“Do you know” and “Do you remember” (DYK/R) questions explicitly ask whether one knows or remembers some information while implicitly asking for that information. This study examined how 104 4- to 9-year-old children testifying in child sexual abuse cases responded to DYK/R wh- and yes/no questions. When asked DYK/R questions containing an implicit wh- question requesting information, children often provided unelaborated “Yes” responses. Attorneys’ follow-up questions suggested that children usually misunderstood the pragmatics of the questions. When DYK/R questions contained an implicit yes/no question, unelaborated “Yes” or “No” responses could be responding to the explicit or the implicit questions resulting …

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Barrios-Lech_Linguistic_Interaction_Appendix_Five.Docx, Peter G. Barrios-Lech Jun 2016

Barrios-Lech_Linguistic_Interaction_Appendix_Five.Docx, Peter G. Barrios-Lech

Peter Barrios-Lech

Appendix 5, "Supplementary Material for Parts III-IV," Barrios-Lech, P. Linguistic Interaction in Roman Comedy (Cambridge).

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1st_Plural_Hortatory_Subj_Menander_New.Xls, Peter G. Barrios-Lech Dec 2015

1st_Plural_Hortatory_Subj_Menander_New.Xls, Peter G. Barrios-Lech

Peter Barrios-Lech

This is the data for my article, "The First Person Plural Hortatory Subjunctive in New Comedy"

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Cuasi Factivos, Axel Barcelo Aspeitia, Robert J. Stainton Dec 2015

Cuasi Factivos, Axel Barcelo Aspeitia, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

We introduce a construction which we label 'quasi-factive'. They are heard like factives, in that we immediately take the complement to be true. Yet they aren't really factive at all. Examples include: 'It's not widely known that Marta was born in Canada' (because she was born in Uruguay); 'Don't tell anyone that Carlos will run as a candidate' (because he won't); 'Did it bother Jane that Miguel came?' (no, because Miguel didn't come). We identify sub-categories of our quasi-factives, and then tentatively explore a pragmatic explanation of how they work their magic.

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Brevity, By Laurence Goldstein, Monica Mcmillan, Robert J. Stainton Nov 2014

Brevity, By Laurence Goldstein, Monica Mcmillan, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

No abstract provided.

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Revisiting Pragmatics Abilities In Autism Spectrum Disorders, Jessica De Villiers, Brooke Myers, Robert J. Stainton Dec 2013

Revisiting Pragmatics Abilities In Autism Spectrum Disorders, Jessica De Villiers, Brooke Myers, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

In a 2007 paper, we argued that speakers with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) exhibit pragmatic abilities which are surprising given the usual understanding of communication in that group. That is, it is commonly reported that people diagnosed with an ASD have trouble with metaphor, irony, conversational implicature and other non-literal language. This is not a matter of trouble with knowledge and application of rules of grammar. The difficulties lie, rather, in successful communicative interaction. Though we did find pragmatic errors within literal talk, the transcribed conversations we studied showed many, many successes. A second paper reinforced our finding of a …

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The First Person Plural "Hortatory" Subjunctive In Plautus And Terence, Peter G. Barrios-Lech Dec 2013

The First Person Plural "Hortatory" Subjunctive In Plautus And Terence, Peter G. Barrios-Lech

Peter Barrios-Lech

ABSTRACT: The article examines some patterns in the distribution of the 1st person plural hortatory subjunctive (e.g. faciamus) in Roman Comedy.

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Herder And Pragmatics, Robert J. Stainton Dec 2012

Herder And Pragmatics, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

No abstract provided.

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The Opc In Spanish And Polish Monolingual Speakers, Ewelina Barski Dec 2011

The Opc In Spanish And Polish Monolingual Speakers, Ewelina Barski

Ewelina Barski, PhD

A variety of studies have documented the acquisition of the Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC) (Montalbetti, 1984) in second language speakers (Kanno 1997, Pérez-Leroux & Glass 1999, Rothman & Iverson, 2007) but none have looked at the OPC from an experimental perspective. This paper takes an experimental approach to the OPC focusing on the mental representation of the OPC in Spanish and Polish monolinguals going beyond L2 speakers and probing into the interpretations that monolinguals assign to pronouns (null and overt) with quantified and referential antecedents. Specifically, I aim to investigate whether there is a difference in how monolinguals treat different …

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The Development Of Automobile Speedometer Dials: A Balance Of Ergonomics And Style, Regulation And Power, Marilyn Mitchell Aug 2011

The Development Of Automobile Speedometer Dials: A Balance Of Ergonomics And Style, Regulation And Power, Marilyn Mitchell

Marilyn Mitchell

This paper explains the historical development of analogue and digital speedometer dial designs using the linguistics theory base of pragmatics, which asks researchers to explain a visual design by describing its purpose as well as how its various visual features meet people¿s needs, how people read dials and how people use dials to coordinate with one another or machines. The paper is useful for researchers interested in methodologies for studying the development of language-like visual communication, and for those interested in the history of information graphics, machine interfaces or speedometer dials in particular. A range of dial designs from the …

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The Opc: An Experimental Approach, Ewelina Barski Dec 2010

The Opc: An Experimental Approach, Ewelina Barski

Ewelina Barski, PhD

A variety of studies have documented the acquisition of the Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC) (Montalbetti 1984) in second language speakers (Kanno 1997, Pérez-Leroux & Glass 1999, Rothman & Iverson 2007). This study is an experimental approach to the Overt Pronoun Constraint in native Spanish speakers. Much has been said about this constraint but very few data have been collected to corroborate the asymmetry between referential NPs and quantified antecedents. According to the Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC) (Montalbetti, 1984) unlike the null pronoun, the overt pronoun can never refer back to a quantified expression (1) or a WH-word (2): The overt …

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Second Occurrence Focus And The Acoustics Of Prominence, Jonathan Howell Dec 2008

Second Occurrence Focus And The Acoustics Of Prominence, Jonathan Howell

Jonathan Howell

Partee (1991) challenged the significance of the observation that certain adverbs (e.g., only) reliably associate with phonologically prominent words to truth‐conditional effect, noting second occurrence (i.e., repeated or given) focus (SOF) appears to lack a phonological realization. Rooth (1996), Bartels (2004), Beaver et al. (2004), Jaeger (2004), and Fry and Ishihara (2005) argued that, while not intonationally prominent, an SOF word can be marked by increased duration and/or increased rms intensity. An acoustic study of verb‐noun homophone pairs is reported. Three sophisticated speakers uttered five repetitions of the targets, embedded in discourses, in first occurrence (FOF), SOF, and unfocused (NF) …

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Shorthand, Syntactic Ellipsis, And The Pragmatic Determinants Of What Is Said, Reinaldo Elugardo, Robert J. Stainton Aug 2004

Shorthand, Syntactic Ellipsis, And The Pragmatic Determinants Of What Is Said, Reinaldo Elugardo, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

Our first aim in this paper is to respond to four novel objections in Jason Stanley's 'Context and Logical Form'. Taken together, those objections attempt to debunk our prior claims that one can perform a genuine speech act by using a sub‐sentential expression—where by 'sub‐sentential expression' we mean an ordinary word or phrase, not embedded in any larger syntactic structure. Our second aim is to make it plausible that, pace Stanley, there really are pragmatic determinants of the literal truth‐conditional content of speech acts. We hope to achieve this second aim precisely by defending the genuineness of sub‐sentential speech acts. …

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The Pragmatics Of Non-Sentences, Robert J. Stainton Dec 2003

The Pragmatics Of Non-Sentences, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

No abstract provided.

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Unembedded Definite Descriptions And Relevance, Robert J. Stainton Oct 1998

Unembedded Definite Descriptions And Relevance, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

Definite descriptions (e.g. 'The king of France in 1997', 'The teacher of Aristotle') do not stand for particulars. Or so I will assume. The semantic alternative has seemed to be that descriptions only have meaning within sentences: i.e., that their semantic contribution is given syncategorimatically. This doesn't seem right, however, because descriptions can be used and understood outside the context of any sentence. Nor is this use simply a matter of "ellipsis." Since descriptions do not denote particulars, but seem to have a meaning in isolation, I propose that they be assigned generalized quantifiers as denotations — i.e. a kind …

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