Computational Linguistics Colloquium

Thursday, 5 June, 16:15
Conference Room, Building C7 4

Processing negative sentences and representing the described states of affairs: How are pragmatic aspects captured in the comprehension process?

My talk will be concerned with the difference between sentences such as The door is open and their negative counterpart The door is not closed. What is the difference between the two sentences? Obviously, the sentences do not differ with respect to the state of affairs that they describe. They both describe the same state of affairs, namely that the door is open. They do seem to differ with respect to the contexts in which they can be uttered felicitously. A negative sentence such as The door is not closed is usually uttered in a context in which the negated proposition (the door is closed) was either explicitly mentioned as a possibility by one of the discourse partners or at least constitutes a plausible assumption in the present context. Thus, negative sentences are usually used as a means for correction. As an effect, negative sentences not only communicate information about the actual state of affairs but also about plausible alternatives. In other words, The door is not closed tells the comprehender that the door is open but also that the speaker considered it possible that the recipient expected the door to be closed.
In the talk I will be dealing with the question of how this difference between affirmative and negative sentences is captured in the processes and representations during language comprehension. The first part is concerned with differences between affirmative and negative sentences during processing. The focus will be on the question of whether we can find evidence for the assumption that negative sentences are preferably processed in a context in which the negated proposition constitutes a plausible assumption. The second part is concerned with the differences between the meaning representations that are created for affirmative and negative sentences during comprehension.

If you would like to meet with the speaker, please contact Berry Claus.