Pragmatics in understanding what is said

Abstract

A central claim in cognitive science is that speakers often say things which underdetermine what they imply by their use of utterances in context. For example, in uttering Jane has three children a speaker might only say that Jane has at least three children and may have more than three, but the speaker's utterance implicates that Jane has exactly three children. Many scholars following Grice have argued from such observations that pragmatics plays only a small part in determining what speakers say, as opposed to what they conversationally imply or implicate. We examined people's intuitions about the distinction between what speakers say, or what is said, and what they implicate by different indicative utterances, such as Jane has three children. The data from four experiments demonstrate that people do not equate a minimal meaning (i.e., Jane has at least three children and may have more than three) with what a speaker says, but assume that enriched pragmatics plays a significant role in determining what is said (i.e., Jane has exactly three children). People further recognize a distinction between what speakers say, or what is said, and what speakers implicate in particular contexts (e.g., Jane is married). These data lend support to theories of utterance interpretation in cognitive science that pragmatics strongly influences people's understanding of what speakers both say and communicate.