Linguistic inferences without words.
gesture
iconicity
implicature
inference
presupposition
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
ISSN: 1091-6490
Titre abrégé: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 7505876
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
14 05 2019
14 05 2019
Historique:
pubmed:
26
4
2019
medline:
26
4
2019
entrez:
26
4
2019
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
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.
Identifiants
pubmed: 31019076
pii: 1821018116
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1821018116
pmc: PMC6525514
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
9796-9801Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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