Diagnosing truth, interactive sincerity, and depictive sincerity

Abstract

This paper presents two experimental findings pertaining to the semantics and pragmatics of superlative modifiers ("at least", "at most"). First, in a scenario with N objects of a given type, speakers consistently judge it true that there are ‘at least N’ and ‘at most N’ objects of that type. This supports the debated position that the ignorance conveyed by superlative modifiers is an implicature, not an entailment, and contrasts with results obtained using an inference-judgment paradigm, suggesting that truth-value judgment tasks are impervious to certain pragmatic infelicities that inference-judgment tasks are sensitive to. The second finding is not predicted by any previous theory: In a scenario with N objects, it is not consistently judged true that there are ‘at most N + 1’ objects, even though it is consistently judged true that there are ‘at least N − 1’ objects. To explain this, we propose a novel pragmatic principle requiring that the scenario depicted by a sentence must be considered possible by the speaker (the Maxim of Depictive Sincerity). Put together, the two findings show that truth-value judgment tasks are impervious to some aspects of pragmatics, but not all.

Reasoning with Partial Orders: Restrictions on Ignorance Inferences of Superlative Modifiers

“…For the SM at least the answer appears to be "No", supporting the neo-Gricean account defended in Mendia (2016). On the other hand, for at most, the answer to the question seems to be "Yes", with the results being more consistent with Coppock & Brochhagen's (2013a) account. Let us therefore consider each quantifier in turn.…”

“…Thus, in general, we observe that both Types in TARGET are accepted at similar rates as BAD items. Therefore, in the case of at most, the results are more consistent with theories where the prejacent of an SM statement must always be amongst those alternatives that the speaker considers in her epistemic state, as defended by Coppock & Brochhagen's (2013a).…”

“…This is a novel observation about the behavior of at least that any semantic/pragmatic theory of SMs must account for, as, for instance, is done in Mendia (2016). On the other hand, the SM at most does behave uniformly across the different kinds of complements tested, and so the results lend support to Coppock & Brochhagen's (2013a) suggestion that the prejacent must always constitute a possibility in the epistemic state of the speaker. The resulting state of affairs is one where two pragmatic theories make divergent predictions, and each of them can account only for the behavior of one of the SMs, but not the other.…”

“…Experiments conducted by the same authors in Coppock & Brochhagen (2013a) confirmed that these predictions are indeed problematic. In a truth value judgment task speakers had to judge whether a picture with n objects could be verified by sentences of the form at most n and at most n + 1.…”

“…the interpretation of the prejacent Inquisitive Semantics approach of Coppock & Brochhagen (2013b) predicts that the exhaustive interpretation of the prejacent does not have to be in the epistemic state of the speaker, regardless of the type of complement. Finally, the amendment presented by Coppock & Brochhagen (2013a) does require the exhaustive interpretation of the prejacent to be an epistemic possibility, but this happens for both totally and partially ordered complements alike. These predictions are summarized in Table 1 above.…”