Associative and inferential processes in pragmatic enrichment: The case of emergent properties

Abstract

Experimental research on word processing has generally focused on properties that are associated to a concept in long-term memory (e.g., basketball—round). The present study addresses a related issue: the accessibility of “emergent properties” or conceptual properties that have to be inferred in a given context (e.g., basketball—floats). This investigation sheds light on a current debate in cognitive pragmatics about the number of pragmatic systems that are there (Carston, 2002a, 2007; Recanati, 2004, 2007). Two experiments using a self-paced reading task suggest that inferential processes are fully integrated in the processing system. Emergent properties are accessed early on in processing, without delaying later discourse integration processes. I conclude that the theoretical distinction between explicit and implicit meaning is not paralleled by that between associative and inferential processes.

Keywords:

• Lexical pragmatics
• Associative and inferential processes
• Spreading activation
• World-knowledge schemas or scenarios
• Emergent properties

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship and by a Marie Curie Outgoing International Fellowship (Project 022149). I would like to thank Sam Glucksberg, Bart Geurts and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

¹I adopt the term “emergent properties” from the literature on metaphor interpretation and conceptual combination. However, Barsalou (1983) used the term “ad hoc categories” to refer to concepts constructed impromptu to achieve goals (e.g., CAN BE USED TO STAY AFLOAT).

²When I presented this study as part of a talk at UCL, Ira Noveck commented that in first interpreting the example about John and the basketball, he had thought that John's friend was teasing him, not helping him. It seems clear from this misunderstanding that this type of examples cannot be understood without reference to the speaker's intentions.

³Even though it is worth investigating the possibility that various properties might be automatically activated through a chain of associations, it is unlikely that this process would work in such a simple manner as described above. A concept such a RUBBER DUCK, for example, is probably associated to FLOATS, but this property should not automatically activate CAN BE USED TO STAY AFLOAT in that instance.

⁴Previous psycholinguistics research has investigated the question of how elaborative inferences are derived during processing (e.g., Lucas, Tanenhaus, & Carlson, 1990; McKoon & Ratcliff, 1981). Notice, however, that the focus of the present study is not the pragmatic process of free enrichment per se (e.g., inferring in (5) that John's best friend was trying to save him). Rather, this paper investigates the accessibility of the implicated premises involved in this pragmatic process (i.e., accessing the information that a lifebuoy or a basketball can be used to stay afloat).

⁵It is possible that a process of analogy between the type of standard life-preservers that would be expected in the situation (e.g., a lifebuoy) and a basketball might underlie the process of backwards inference that would result in the priming of basketball. It is important to note that a process of analogy is not the type of blind automatic associative process that could fall under Recanati's primary pragmatic processing.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paula Rubio-Fernández

Present address: Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London WC1N 1PF, UK