An Experimental Study Of Chinese Conversational Impliciture

Gricean pragmatics provokes a fierce discussion among pragmatic scholars on the distinction between semantics and pragmatics and the cognitive mechanism of language comprehension.A kind of pragmatically enriched meaning which is conveyed but not literally and explicitly expressed by the utterance without a context and its cognitive mechanism have drawn much attention from pragmatic researchers.Scholars from different schools introduce varied terms and cognitive processing models including “Default Model”,“Standardization Model” and “Context-driven Model” for this pragmatically enriched meaning.Neo-Gricean linguistic philosopher Kent Bach coins the term “impliciture(not implicature)” deriving from “implicit” and proposes his doctrine “Conversational Impliciture Theory”.He renders that the Standardization Model is more explicable in terms of the inference of implicitures.Other Scholars dispute about the rational existence of impliciture and have adopted experimental methods to explore its existence and cognitive mechanism mainly in respect of English.This study conducted two online experiments with Chinese materials with the software DMDX to investigate(1)the existence of Chinese implicitures,and(2)the processing model of implicitures.A hundred and thirty-two non-linguistic postgraduates aged from 21 to 26 at Lanzhou University participated in this study.This study intended to provide empirical evidence from the perspective of Chinese forthe debates about the existence and the cognitive processing mechanism of implicitures.It also explored the effects of the impliciture type on Chinese impliciture processing.Meanwhile,through a comparison with previous English studies,this study observed the similarities and differences between Chinese and English implicitures in terms of interpretation strength and processing procedures among diverse types of implicitures.Experiment 1 redid the online context-free experiments of Garrett and Harnish(Garrett & Harnish,2007)and Dorjee,Garrett and Harnish(Dorjee,Garrett &Harnish,2013)with Chinese materials.This experiment aimed to testify the existence of Chinese impliciture and its processing model in context-free conditions by testing the possibility for Chinese native speakers to compute three types of implicitures:locative,temporal and possessive implicitures.It also concerned whether there existed discrepancies of interpretation strength and inference processes among different impliciture types.Thirty-two participants were involved.These results indicated that:(1)Implicitures existed in Chinese utterances;(2)The access to Chinese implicitures was default and automatic with no need for the involvement of specific contexts.The(2)finding negated the Context-driven Model that emphasized contextual dependence,but it supported the standpoints of Default and Standardization Models;(3)In context-free conditions,the impliciture type influenced the generation rate of Chinese implicitures.Compared with the results of English implicitures obtained by Dorjee,Garrett and Harnish,Chinese and English context-free implicitures both had temporal implicitures as the weakest interpretive contents.Locations and possessions hadstronger interpretation strength but respectively ranked first in English and Chinese.Experiment 2 referred to the experimental design with contexts by Garrett and Harnish and Dorjee,Garrett and Harnish.It was intended to testify whether the Default Model or the Standardization Model was more appropriate to explain Chinese impliciture processing and whether the impliciture type affected the processing.This experiment was conducted with “enabling” and “canceling” contexts.A pretest of off-line questionnaire survey ensured the reliability of contextual materials.A hundred participants were involved.The results suggested that:(1)Participants could successfully understand impliciture utterances according to different contexts;(2)The cognitive processing procedure aligned more with the Standardization Model;(3)In contexts,the impliciture type affected Chinese impliciture processing.Compared with English results obtained by Dorjee,Garrett and Harnish with interpretation strength of Time,Possession,Location decreasing progressively,Chinese implicitures had Possession,Location and Time decreasing progressively in interpretation strength.The present study verifies the existence of implicitures in Chinese and sustains the Standardization Model to be more rational to explain the processing mechanism of implicitures.The findings substantiate to some degree the rationality of Bach's Conversational Impliciture Theory and lend support to the illustration about people's way of meaning interpretation in terms of his standardization theory.