Intuitions on Semantic Reference

Since Machery et al. Cognition 92, B1-B12 (2004) attacked Kripke’s refutation of classical descriptivism, their experiment has been repeated several times, in its original version or in some revised ones, by theorists with contrasting intents. Some repeated the experiment for confirming its results, others for proving them unreliable. One striking characteristic of those surveys is that they mostly replicated the data collected in Machery et al.’s Cognition 92, B1-B12, 2004 experiment: less than 60% of Westerners showed preference for the causal-historical response. We side with the critics of Machery et al.’s experiment. In this paper, we present the results of a survey that tests some hypotheses for explaining that percentage of Westerners’ preferences without taking it as evidence that more than 40% of Westerners have descriptivist intuitions on semantic reference. The aim of our paper is not merely to question the reliability of Machery et al.’s experiment. In sections 4 and 5 we assess the impact of our survey on the current debate in experimental semantics. We provide a novel account of the nature of the epistemic ambiguity that affects experiments in theory of reference and explain the consequences that our account of the epistemic ambiguity has for subsequent works trying to avoid ambiguities.

Introduction

This Introduction briefly tracks the emergence of research in semantics and pragmatics that employs paradigms from experimental psychology, from foundational work in the 1970s to the flourishing community conducting ‘experimental semantics and pragmatics’ today. The Handbook, the first in this field, aspires to be comprehensive in terms of the topics and methodologies covered, to be forward-looking in its identification of avenues for further investigation, and to be accessible to a broad audience, inviting researchers from linguistics, psychology, and other backgrounds to engage with these issues.

The Oxford Handbook of Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics

This handbook is the first to explore the growing field of experimental semantics and pragmatics. In the past twenty years, experimental data has become a major source of evidence for building theories of language meaning and use, encompassing a wide range of topics and methods. Following an introduction from the editors, the chapters in this volume offer an up-to-date account of research in the field spanning thirty-one different topics, including scalar implicatures, presuppositions, counterfactuals, quantification, metaphor, prosody, and politeness, as well as exploring how and why a particular experimental method is suitable for addressing a given theoretical debate. The volume’s forward-looking approach also seeks to actively identify questions and methods that could be fruitfully combined in future experimental research.

What is—or, for that Matter, isn’t—‘Experimental’ Semantics?

This chapter examines the currently fashionable notion of ‘experimental semantics’, and argues that most work in natural language semantics has always been experimental. The oft-cited dichotomy between ‘theoretical’ (or ‘armchair’) and ‘experimental’ is bogus and should be dropped form the discourse. The same holds for dichotomies like ‘intuition-based’ (or ‘thought experiments’) vs. ‘empirical’ work (and ‘real experiments’). The so-called new ‘empirical’ methods are often nothing more than collecting the large-scale ‘intuitions’ or, doing multiple thought experiments. Of course the use of multiple subjects could well allow for a better experiment than the more traditional single or few subject methodologies. But whether or not this is the case depends entirely on the question at hand. In fact, the chapter considers several multiple-subject studies and shows that the particular methodology in those cases does not necessarily provide important insights, and the chapter argues that some its claimed benefits are incorrect.

QUD effects on epistemic containment principle

The Epistemic Containment Principle (ECP) requires that epistemic modals takewider scope than strong quantifiers such as every or most (von Fintel and Iatridou, 2003). Althoughfairly robust in its realization, a few systemic classes of counterexamples to the ECPhave been noted. Based on these, previous work has argued for two claims: subjective modalsobey the ECP, whereas objective ones don’t (Tancredi, 2007; Anand and Hacquard, 2008); andevery respects the ECP, whereas each violates it (Tancredi, 2007). This paper argues that explicitQuestions Under Discussion (QUDs; Roberts, 1996; Ginzburg, 1996) also systematicallyinfluence the ECP: scopal orderings that provide relevant answers to the given QUDs are preferred,and this tendency can override the ECP. To support this claim, the paper presents anexperimental study. The results corroborate the existence of systematic QUD effects on theECP, and support the view that the ECP is derived from a confluence of various pragmatic andlexical biases.Keywords: Epistemic Containment Principle (ECP), epistemic modals, Question Under Discussion(QUD), quantifiers, scopal ambiguity, experimental semantics.

Ignorance in context: The interaction of modified numerals and QUDs

<p>We argue for a purely pragmatic account of the ignorance inferences associated with superlative but not comparative modifiers (at least vs. more than). Ignorance inferences for both modifiers are triggered when the question under discussion (QUD) requires an exact answer, but when these modifiers are used out of the blue the QUD is implicitly reconstructed based on the way these modifiers are typically used, and on the fact that "at least n", but not "more than n", mentions and does not exclude the lower bound "exactly n". The paper presents new experimental evidence for the context-sensitivity of ignorance inferences, and also for the hypothesis that the higher processing cost reported in the literature for superlative modifiers is context-dependent in the exact same way.</p><p>Keywords: superlative vs. comparative modifiers, ignorance inferences, questions under discussion, experimental semantics and pragmatics</p>