Gibbs R W
Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
Brain Lang. 1999 Jul;68(3):466-85. doi: 10.1006/brln.1999.2123.
The traditional view in pragmatic theory is that a distinction exists between what speakers say and what they mean, communicate, or implicate in context. For example, when uttering Jane has three children, a speaker might only say that "Jane has three children but may have more than three," but the speaker implicates that "Jane has exactly three children." Under this view, pragmatics plays only a small role in determining what speakers say and has a primary part in interpreting speaker's intended messages. My aim in this article is to challenge this view. I describe empirical work showing that pragmatics has a fundamental role in determining both what speakers say and implicate. Thus, when a speaker utters Jane has three children, enriched pragmatic information is used to infer that the speaker says "Jane has exactly three children" and that in specific contexts, the speaker can go on to express additional pragmatic meanings, such as "Jane is married" or "Jane is very busy because she has three children." I also describe work on the importance of complex pragmatic, metarepresentational reasoning in understanding irony and metaphor. Finally, I briefly discuss the relevance of these new developments in pragmatics for neurolinguistic research.
语用学理论的传统观点认为，说话者所言与他们在语境中所表达的意思、所传达的信息或所暗示的内容之间存在区别。例如，当说出“简有三个孩子”时，说话者可能只是说“简有三个孩子，但可能不止三个”，但说话者暗示的是“简恰好有三个孩子”。按照这种观点，语用学在确定说话者说了什么方面只起很小的作用，而在解释说话者的意图信息方面起主要作用。我在本文中的目的是挑战这种观点。我描述了实证研究，表明语用学在确定说话者所言以及所暗示的内容方面都起着根本性的作用。因此，当说话者说出“简有三个孩子”时，丰富的语用信息被用来推断说话者说的是“简恰好有三个孩子”，并且在特定语境中，说话者可以进而表达额外的语用意义，比如“简结婚了”或者“简很忙，因为她有三个孩子”。我还描述了关于复杂语用、元表征推理在理解反语和隐喻中的重要性的研究。最后，我简要讨论了语用学这些新进展与神经语言学研究的相关性。
