The information status of iconic enrichments: modelling gradient at-issueness

Abstract

Linguistic structures can contribute different types of meaning alongside standard assertions, such as conventional implicatures and presuppositions, which have long been described as being non-at-issue meaning contributions. Although information status has long been handled as a binary opposition between non-at-issue and at-issue content, recent research suggests that a gradient approach may be more appropriate. Building on new – and in the formal linguistic framework so far mostly neglected – data targeting spoken and gestural iconicity, specifically iconic gestures and ideophones, this paper investigates the information status of such iconic contributions in spoken language and suggests a new theoretical concept of at-issueness by spelling it out as a gradient category. The paper highlights a range of factors which can affect the information status of iconic contributions, proposing a scale for iconic phenomena based on these factors. To formally model this scale, we propose an approach in which at-issueness is analysed as a gradient property based on a given structure-inherent at-issueness status and the corresponding proposition’s relevance to a Question Under Discussion in a given context. This analysis accounts for the variations in information status observed between different iconic enrichments and their impact on truth conditions and paves the way for an approach to Common Ground updates using this model. The analysis outlined here allows for a more nuanced understanding of non-at-issue content and its interaction with at-issue content and provides predictions which can guide further experimental work on information status and the factors that influence it.