Redundancy and awareness in discourse
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Rational speakers should not be redundant. This is a view on language use that is both widely held and intuitively compelling. It is also wrong. This dissertation shows that speakers routinely produce redundant utterances and explores the reasons why they do so. In particular, it focuses on rational motivations for redundancy as they relate to a speaker's desire to raise a listener's awareness of or draw a listener's attention to some issue. At a high level, this dissertation demonstrates that the models standardly assumed by linguists for modelling discourse are insufficient to make sense of the full range of functions that language use serves. These models typically make the idealizing assumptions that all speakers and listeners have perfect memories, are fully rational, and are logically omniscient. The arguments in the following pages show the necessity of thinking of linguistic discourse in a more nuanced way. This more elaborate model of discourse recognizes that speakers are well aware of the cognitive limitations of their interlocutors, but also that they have well-developed strategies to deal with such limitations.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2017 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Crone, Philip |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Linguistics. |
| Primary advisor | Lassiter, Daniel |
| Thesis advisor | Lassiter, Daniel |
| Thesis advisor | Condoravdi, Cleo A, 1962- |
| Thesis advisor | Frank, Michael C |
| Thesis advisor | Potts, Christopher, 1977- |
| Advisor | Condoravdi, Cleo A, 1962- |
| Advisor | Frank, Michael C |
| Advisor | Potts, Christopher, 1977- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Philip Crone. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Linguistics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2017. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2017 by Philip Crone
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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