Towards a dynamic pragmatics
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation explores the interplay of conventional and interactional factors in the interpretation of natural language utterances. It develops a formal framework, dynamic pragmatics, in which pragmatic inferences arise as contextual entailments in a dynamic system in which information states are updated with information about the occurrence of utterance events (in contrast to dynamic semantics, where information states are updated with the content of linguistic expressions). In this way, the framework is able to faithfully model Gricean pragmatic inference as interlocutors' reasoning about each other's utterance choices. Linguistic utterances are analyzed as having essential facts of two distinct types: Epistemic effects (i.e., effects on the information states of the interlocutors) and normative effects (i.e., effects on the interlocutors' commitments). The latter effects are carried by extra-compositional, normative conventions of use that mediate the form-force mapping; the former arise largely due to the interlocutors' presumptions about each other's beliefs, preferences, and method of determining which (utterance) actions are best (i.e., practical reasoning). The framework of dynamic pragmatics allows us to consistently take a thoroughly Gricean perspective on language use, and allows us to explore how the interpretation of an utterance arises through the interplay of sentential force, content, and context. At the same time, the framework of dynamic pragmatics sheds a new light on the nature of conversational implicature, and language use in general.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2013 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Lauer, Sven |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Linguistics. |
| Primary advisor | Condoravdi, Cleo A, 1962- |
| Primary advisor | Potts, Christopher, 1977- |
| Thesis advisor | Condoravdi, Cleo A, 1962- |
| Thesis advisor | Potts, Christopher, 1977- |
| Thesis advisor | Kiparsky, Paul |
| Advisor | Kiparsky, Paul |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Sven Lauer. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Linguistics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2013. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2013 by Sven Lauer
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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