Brevity

Edited by Laurence Goldstein

Integrated interdisciplinary perspectives on conversation
Sheds new light on how people talk
Brings together distinguished linguists, philosophers and cognitive scientists

Brevity

Edited by Laurence Goldstein

Description

Brevity in conversation is a window to the workings of the mind. This book brings it into prominence as both a multifaceted topic of deep philosophical importance and a phenomenon that serves as a testing ground for theories in linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computer modeling. Brevity is achieved in a variety of ways. Speakers use elliptical constructions and exploit salient features of the conversational environment in a process of pragmatic enrichment so as to pack as much as possible into a few words. They take account of what has already been said in the current and previous conversations, and tailor their words to what they know about the beliefs and personalities of the people they're talking to. Most of the time they do all this with no obvious mental effort.

The book, which brings together distinguished linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists, is the product of an interactive multidisciplinary research project that extended over four years. The questions dealt with concern how speakers secure understanding of what they mean when what they mean far outstrips the literal or compositional meanings of the sentences or sentence fragments that they use.

Brevity sheds new light on economy in discourse. It will appeal to linguists, philosophers, and psychologists at advanced undergraduate level and above.

Brevity

Edited by Laurence Goldstein

Part I: Brevity in Language and Thought
1. Fragment Answers to Questions: a case of inaudible syntax, Jason Merchant, Lyn Frazier, Thomas Weskott, and Charles Clifton, Jr.
2. Structuring Silence Versus the Structure of Silence, Anne Bezuidenhout
3. On Coordination in Conversational Dialogue: subsentential talk and its implications, Eleni Gregoromichelaki, Ronnie Cann, and Ruth Kempson
4. Inexplicit Thoughts, Christopher Gauker
5. Sub-Sentential Speech Acts, Reflexive Content, and Pragmatic Enrichment, Reinaldo Elugardo
6. A New Puzzle About Discourse-Initial Contexts, Michael Glanzberg
7. Transitive Meanings for Intransitive Verbs, Francois Recanati and Anouch Bourmayan
8. Economy in Embodied Utterances, Matthew Stone
Part II: THe Philosophy of Brevity
9. Some Consequences of "Speaking Loosely", Laurence Goldstein
10. COntext, Compositionality, and Brevity, Jeff Pelletier
11. nd and And*, Andreas Stokke
12. Insinuating Information and Accommodating Presupposition, Manuel Garcia-Carpintero
Part III: Experimenting with Brevity
13. "Be Brief": from necessity to choice, Eve V. Clark and Chigusa Kurumada
14. Sizing up the Speaker: using speaker-specific information to detect the nature of children's inferences about meaning, Julie Sedivy
15. The Influence of Perspective and Communicative Goals on How Speakers Choose to Refer, Dan Grodner and Rachel Adler
16. Narrowing, Ira Noveck and Nicola Spotornp
Part IV: Prolixity
17. Relevance Theory and Prolixity, Friedrich Christoph Doerge
References
Index

Brevity

Edited by Laurence Goldstein

Author Information

Laurence Goldstein is Professor of Philosophy and Head of the School of European Culture and Languages at the University of Kent. His books include Logic (Continuum 2005), Clear and Queer Thinking: Wittgenstein's Philosophy and his Relevance to Modern Thought (Rowman & Littlefield and Duckworth 1999) and The Philosopher's Habitat (Routledge 1990).

Contributors:

Rachel Adler, Educational Testing Service
Anne Bezuidenhout, University of South Carolina
Anouch Bourmayan, Institut Jean Nicod (Paris)
Ronnie Cann, University of Edinburgh
Eve V. Clark, Stanford University
Charles Clifton, Jr., University of Massachusetts Amherst
Friedrickk Christoph Doerge, University of Tübingen
Reinaldo Elugardo, The University of Oklahoma
Lyn Frazier, University of Maccachusetts Amherst
Manuel García-Carpintero, University of Barcelona
Christopher Gauker, University of Cincinnati
Michael Glanzberg, Northwestern University
Laurence Goldstein, University of Kent
Eleni Gregoromichelaki, King's College London
Dan Grodner, Swarthmore College
Ruth Kempson, King's College London
Chigusa Kurumada, Stanford University
Jason Merchant, University of Chicago
Ira Noveck, Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem (CRFJ) Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
Jeff Pelletier, Simon Fraser University
François Recanati, CRBA, CNRS/Ecole Polytechnique/Institut Jean-Nicod
Julie Sedivy, University of Calgary
Nicola Spotorno, Laboratoire sur le Langage, Cerveau et Cognition
Andreas Stokke, University of Lisbon
Matthew Stone, Rutgers University