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1-042 - Epistemic reasoning in pragmatic interpretation

Thu, March 21, 9:30 to 11:00am, Hilton Baltimore, Floor: Level 2, Key 2

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Going beyond the literal meaning of an utterance to derive pragmatic inferences requires the listener to engage in rich epistemic reasoning about the speaker. Adults incorporate the speaker’s mental state and experience into the derivation of pragmatic inferences (Breheny, Ferguson & Katsos, 2013, Bergen & Grodner, 2012); however, evidence from children is still limited (Papafragou, Friedberg, & Cohen, 2017). In some pragmatic areas, children have shown very early success in speaker perspective taking (O’Neill, 1996; Nilsen & Graham, 2009), while in others, children have been argued to remain egocentric until later (Epley et al., 2004). Investigating children’s successes and failures to consider speaker knowledge and subjective perspective in pragmatic interpretation can offer insights into both processes of language acquisition and cognitive (theory of mind) development.

This symposium will explore new directions in children’s ability to incorporate speaker perspective into pragmatic inferences and judgements. The first presentation demonstrates that (unlike past work) 2.5-7-year-olds are able to interpret ‘or’ in an adult-like way provided that the use of ‘or’ is motivated by speaker ignorance. The second presentation shows that 5-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, are able to extend pragmatic principles that rely on assessing the speaker’s knowledge to non-linguistic communication. The third presentation finds that, while older children display sensitivity to the speaker’s subjective perspective in judging adjective use, 4-7-year-old children remain egocentric. Our discussant will explore the questions raised about children’s pragmatic and epistemic development and situate them in a broader context of social reasoning and children’s developing sensitivity to speaker informativeness.

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