Pragmatic Prediction in the Processing of Referring Expressions Containing Scalar Quantifiers.

ABSTRACT: Previous research in cognitive science and psycholinguistics has shown that language users are able to predict upcoming linguistic input probabilistically, pre-activating material on the basis of cues emerging from different levels of linguistic abstraction, from phonology to semantics. Current evidence suggests that linguistic prediction also operates at the level of pragmatics, where processing is strongly constrained by context. To test a specific theory of contextually-constrained processing, termed pragmatic surprisal theory here, we used a self-paced reading task where participants were asked to view visual scenes and then read descriptions of those same scenes. Crucially, we manipulated whether the visual context biased readers into specific pragmatic expectations about how t

SUBMITTER: Macuch Silva V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8438145 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature