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. 2019 May 14;116(20):9796-9801.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1821018116. Epub 2019 Apr 24.

Linguistic inferences without words

Lyn Tieu  1   2   3   4 , Philippe Schlenker  5   6   7 , Emmanuel Chemla  5   8
Affiliations

Linguistic inferences without words

Lyn Tieu et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Contemporary semantics has uncovered a sophisticated typology of linguistic inferences, characterized by their conversational status and their behavior in complex sentences. This typology is usually thought to be specific to language and in part lexically encoded in the meanings of words. We argue that it is neither. Using a method involving "composite" utterances that include normal words alongside novel nonlinguistic iconic representations (gestures and animations), we observe successful "one-shot learning" of linguistic meanings, with four of the main inference types (implicatures, presuppositions, supplements, homogeneity) replicated with gestures and animations. The results suggest a deeper cognitive source for the inferential typology than usually thought: Domain-general cognitive algorithms productively divide both linguistic and nonlinguistic information along familiar parts of the linguistic typology.

Keywords: gesture; iconicity; implicature; inference; presupposition.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Mean endorsement across all phenomena and conditions. Error bars represent standard error of the mean across participants; dots represent individual participants.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Animation stimuli representing different amounts of punching.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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