The Oxford Handbook of Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics (Oxford Handbooks)

This handbook is the first to explore the growing field of experimental semantics and pragmatics. In the past 20 years, experimental data has become a major source of evidence for building theories of language meaning and use, encompassing a wide range of topics and methods. Following an introduction from the editors, the chapters in this volume offer an up-to-date account of research in the field spanning 31 different topics, including scalar implicatures, presuppositions, counterfactuals, quantification, metaphor, prosody, and politeness, as well as exploring how and why a particular experimental method is suitable for addressing a given theoretical debate. The volume's forward-looking approach also seeks to actively identify questions and methods that could be fruitfully combined in future experimental research. Written in a clear and accessible style, this handbook will appeal to students and scholars from advanced undergraduate level upwards in a range of fields, including semantics and pragmatics, philosophy of language, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, cognitive science, and neuroscience. COVER......Page 1 THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF EXPERIMENTAL SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS......Page 4 COPYRIGHT......Page 5 CONTENTS......Page 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 9 Figures......Page 10 Tables......Page 11 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS......Page 12 THE CONTRIBUTORS......Page 14 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION......Page 24 CHAPTER 2: LANGUAGES COMPREHENSION, INFERENCE, AND ALTERNATIVES......Page 30 2.1 THE STUDY OF INFERENCE IN LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION......Page 32 2.2 DEVELOPMENTAL EVIDENCE: SUCCECCES AND 'FAILURES'......Page 34 2.3 SCALAR IMPLICATURE......Page 35 2.4 QUANTIFIER SPREADING......Page 39 2.5 AN ALTERNATIVE......Page 40 2.6 CONCLUDING REMARKS......Page 43 3.1 THE PROBLEM......Page 44 3.2 CONSTRAINT-BASED APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE......Page 45 3.4 CONSTRAINT-BASED APPROACHES TO PRAGMATICS......Page 46 3.5.1 Question Under Discussion......Page 48 3.5.2 World knowledge......Page 49 3.5.4 Properties of the speaker......Page 50 3.6.1 What’s wrong with informational privilege accounts?......Page 51 3.6.2 Beyond informational privilege accounts......Page 53 3.7.1 Perspective-taking......Page 55 3.7.3 Learning: Adaptation, generalization, and speaker-specificity......Page 56 3.8 INFORMATION INTERGATION......Page 57 3.9 QUO VADIS, CONSTRAINT-BASED PRAGMATICS?......Page 59 3.10 CONCLUSION......Page 61 4.1.2 Pragmatics, communication, and a Gricean system......Page 62 4.2.1 Domain of inquiry......Page 64 4.2.2 Scalars as Gricean phenomena?......Page 67 4.3.1 Default implicatures: A testable proposal about the language-pragmatics interface......Page 69 4.3.2 Counting the cost of scalar implicatures......Page 71 4.3.3 Experimental research on potential scalars......Page 74 4.4 HOW A GRICEAN SYSTEM MIGHT INTEGRATE LINGUISTIC AND NON-LINGUISTIC FUNCTIONS INTO UTTERANCE INTERPRETATION......Page 76 4.4.1.1 The integration of a Gricean System in online utterance processing......Page 77 4.4.1.2 Literal first in scalar processing?......Page 78 4.4.1.3 ERP studies on the time course of scalar implicature......Page 81 4.4.2 Beyond time course studies......Page 82 4.5 CONCLUSION—BACK TO THE ORIGINS OF A GRICEAN SYSTEM......Page 83 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 84 5.2 DECOMPOSITION AND EVENT STRUCTURE......Page 85 5.3 THE MANNER AND RESULT OF EVENTS IN THE ENCODING OF VERBAL ROOTS......Page 87 5.4 THE TEMPORAL BOUNDARIES OF EVENTS AND THE ENCODING OF VERB PHRASES......Page 93 5.5 PARTICIPANTS IN EVENTS AND THE (IMPLICIT) ENCODING OF ARGUMENTS......Page 99 5.6 SUMMARY......Page 104 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 105 6.1 CURRENT ISSUES IN PRESUPPOSITION THEORY......Page 106 6.1.1 Basic phenomena......Page 107 6.1.2 Semantics vs. pragmatics and explanatory challenges......Page 109 6.1.2.1 The triggering problem......Page 110 6.1.2.2 The projection problem......Page 111 6.1.3 Distinguishing types of presupposition triggers......Page 114 6.2 PRESUPPOSITION INTERPRETATION IN EXPERIMENTAL TASKS......Page 115 6.2.1 Detecting presuppositions experimentally......Page 116 6.2.2 Reflexes of the status of presuppositions......Page 118 6.2.3 ‘Novel’ presuppositions: To ignore, accommodate, or cancel?......Page 120 6.2.4 The time-course of presupposition interpretation......Page 123 6.2.5 Interim summary......Page 124 6.3.1.1 Projection from the scope of quantifiers......Page 125 6.3.1.2 Projection from sentential operators......Page 126 6.3.2 Local readings......Page 127 6.3.3.1 Soft vs. hard triggers and local accommodation......Page 128 6.3.3.2 Local readings reconsidered: Entailment vs. local accommodation......Page 130 6.3.4 Summary on embedded triggers......Page 132 6.4.1 Resolving presuppositions in the discourse context......Page 133 6.4.2 Factives, prosody, and discourse......Page 134 6.4.3 Obligatory triggers......Page 135 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 136 7.2 LOCATION TERMS......Page 137 7.3 MOTION TERMS......Page 139 7.4 FRAMES OF REFERENCE TERMS......Page 141 7.5 DOES SPATIAL LANGUAGE AFFECT SPATIAL COGNITION?......Page 143 7.6 CONCLUDING REMARKS......Page 145 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT......Page 146 8.1 HOW ARE COUNTERFACTUAL SITUATIONS ESTABLISHED?......Page 147 8.2 COUNTERFACTUAL REASONING PATTERNS......Page 148 8.3.1 Mental spaces......Page 150 8.3.2 Situation models......Page 151 8.3.3 Mental models......Page 153 8.4 EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR MULTIPLE REPRESENTATIONS OF COUNTERFACTUALS......Page 154 8.4.1 Evidence for rapid access to the explicit counterfactual world......Page 155 8.4.2 Evidence for rapid access to the implied factual world......Page 158 8.4.3 Both worlds are represented simultaneously......Page 159 8.5 COUNTERFACTUAL THINKING AND SOCIAL COGNITION......Page 162 8.6 SUMMARY......Page 164 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT......Page 165 9.1 INTRODUCTION TO DISTRIBUTIVITY......Page 166 9.2 LEXICALLY-ENCODED DISTRIBUTIVITY......Page 167 9.3 DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE DISTRIBUTIVITY OF EACH......Page 169 9.4 REAL-TIME BEHAVIOURAL MEASURES OF DISTRIBUTIVITY AND EACH......Page 175 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT......Page 178 10.1 INTRODUCTION......Page 179 10.2.1 Main definitions and facts......Page 180 10.2.2.1 Temporal unboundedness......Page 181 10.2.2.4 Resistance to contextual restriction......Page 182 10.2.2.5 Exception tolerance......Page 183 10.3 ACCOUNTS OF GENERICITY......Page 184 10.3.1.2 The modal approach, aka the received view: Krifka et al. ()......Page 185 10.3.1.3 The probabilistic approach: Cohen......Page 186 10.3.2.1 The Generics-as-Default view......Page 187 10.4 EXPERIMENTAL APPROACHES TO GENERICITY......Page 189 10.4.1.1 Off-line methods: Adult judgement data......Page 190 10.4.1.2 Online methods: Real-time processing and processing in the brain......Page 194 10.4.2.1 Typical adult populations......Page 196 10.4.2.2 Bilingual and second language adult acquisition......Page 197 10.5 REFLECTION ON THE EXPERIMENTAL LITERATURE ON GENERICITY......Page 198 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 200 11.1 INTRODUCTION......Page 201 11.2.1 Experimental support for the semantic account and the class A/B distinction......Page 204 11.2.2 Evidence for a pragmatic account......Page 205 11.2.3 (More) direct investigations of ignorance inferences......Page 207 11.3 VARIATION/DISTRIBUTIVITY EFFECTS......Page 212 11.4.1 Probing pragmatics......Page 215 11.4.2 The comparative–superlative (A–B) distinction revisited......Page 216 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 217 12.1 NEGATION PROCESSING: THE EXTRA EFFORT AND THE ROLE OF THE POSITIVE ARGUMENT......Page 218 12.2 THE REPRESENTATION OF THE POSITIVE ARGUMENT: WHEN IT HAPPENS AND WHEN IT DOESN'T......Page 220 12.3 NEGATION IS NOT DIFFICULOT WITH CONTEXT......Page 222 12.4 NEGATION HAS RICH PRAGMATIC EFFECTS......Page 224 12.5.1 Rejection accounts......Page 225 12.5.2 Contextual approach......Page 227 12.5.3 Dynamic pragmatic account......Page 228 12.5.4 Evaluating theories of negation processing against empirical findings......Page 229 12.6 CONCLUSION......Page 230 13.1 INTRODUCTION......Page 231 13.2.1 The implicature approach and its predictions......Page 232 13.2.2.1 Sauerland et al. (2005)......Page 234 13.2.2.2 Pearson et al. (2011)......Page 236 13.2.2.3 Tieu et al. (2014, 2015, 2017)......Page 237 13.2.2.4 Patson (2016)......Page 239 13.3 AMBIGUITY-BASED APPROACHES AND THEIR PREDICTIONS......Page 240 13.3.1 Farkas & De Swart (2010)......Page 241 13.3.2 Grimm (2013)......Page 242 13.4.1 Sensitivity to monotonicity......Page 244 13.4.2 Suspension and context-dependence......Page 245 13.4.3 Children’s development of plural meanings......Page 246 13.5 CONCLUDING REMARKS......Page 249 14.1 INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS QUANTIFIER SCOPE?......Page 251 14.2 FACTORS INFLUENCING THE GRAMMAR AND PROCESSING OD QUANTIFIER SCOPE......Page 252 14.3 THE DIFFICULTY OF PROCESSING INVERSE SCOPE: IMPIRICAL FINDINGS......Page 254 14.4.1 Underspecification theories vs. hierarchy-based accounts......Page 261 14.4.2 Cost of inverse scope as scope revision......Page 263 14.4.2.1 Logical form revision......Page 264 14.4.2.2 Discourse model revision......Page 265 14.4.3 Distinguishing between logical form and discourse-model theories......Page 266 14.5 CONCLUSION: BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER......Page 267 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 268 CHAPTER 15: QUANTIFIER SPREADING......Page 269 15.1 INITIAL DESCRIPTIONS OF ERRORS WITH UNIVERSAL QUANTIFIERS......Page 270 15.2 LOGICAL ERRORS IN SYLLOGISTIC REASONING......Page 273 15.4 DISTINGUISHING THE MEANINGS OF ALL AND EACH......Page 276 15.5 THE EVENT QUANTIFICATION HYPOTHESIS AND RELATED SYNTACTIC ACCOUNTS OF QUANTIFIER SPREADING......Page 279 15.6 CHILDREN'S ERRORS MAY REFLECT TASK DEMANDS, NOT FAULTY GRAMMAR......Page 282 15.7 EYE-TRACKING STUDIES OF QUANTIFIER SPREADING......Page 283 15.8 CONCLUSION......Page 284 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 285 16.1 INTRODUCTION......Page 286 16.2.1 Scale structure and the absolute/relative distinction......Page 287 16.3 GOING BEYONG INTUITIONS......Page 290 16.3.1 Relative gradable adjectives and context-dependence......Page 291 16.3.2 The logic of vagueness......Page 294 16.4.1 Ordering Subjectivity......Page 298 16.4.2 Adjectives and implicature......Page 299 16.5 NOTES ON METHODOLOGY......Page 302 16.5.2 Task......Page 303 16.6 CONCLUSIONS......Page 304 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 305 CHAPTER 17: IRONIC UTTERANCES......Page 306 17.1 GRICE: BRINGING AN ATTITUDE......Page 307 17.2 THE PSYCHOLINGUISTIC APPROACH TO IRONY......Page 309 17.2.2 Graded salience......Page 311 17.2.4 Interim conclusions......Page 312 17.3 THEORY OF MIND......Page 313 17.4 REINTRODUCING THEORY OF MIND TO LANGUAGE PROCESSING......Page 314 17.5 RECONCILING THEORETICAL PRAGMATIC APPROACHES WITH PSYCHOLINGUISTIC METHODS: DOING EXPERIMENTAL PRAGMATICS......Page 315 17.5.1 Links between Theory of Mind and irony processing?......Page 316 17.6 CONCLUSIONS......Page 319 18.1 INTRODUCTION......Page 321 18.2.1 Theoretical approaches to metaphor......Page 322 18.2.2 Literal first hypothesis......Page 323 18.2.3 What place for the literal meaning?......Page 324 18.3.1 Class-inclusion model......Page 326 18.3.3 Aptness and conventionality......Page 327 18.4.1 Are all metaphors processed in the same way?......Page 330 18.4.2 Metaphors vs. other tropes......Page 332 18.5.1 How early do children understand metaphors?......Page 335 18.5.2 Which factors influence children’s understanding of metaphors?......Page 336 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 338 19.1 TYPES AND FUNCTIONS......Page 339 19.2.1 One word, multiple meanings......Page 341 19.2.2 One word, multiple senses......Page 343 19.3 MULTIPLE SENSES VS. EXTENDED SENSES......Page 344 19.4 TOWARDS AN ACCOUNT OF MEANING CONSTITUTION......Page 347 19.5 METONYMY AND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION......Page 351 19.6 METONYMY AND LANGUAGES DEFICITS......Page 352 19.7 FUTURE DIRECTIONS......Page 353 20.1 INTRODUCTION......Page 354 20.2 THEORIES OF VAGUENESS......Page 355 20.2.1 Valency two: Epistemicism......Page 356 20.2.2.1 Super-/subvaluationism......Page 357 20.2.2.2 Strict/tolerant evaluation......Page 360 20.2.3 Valency greater than three: Fuzzy logic......Page 362 20.3 EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH ON THE BORDERLINE......Page 364 20.4 BEYOND BORDERLINE CONTRADICTIONS......Page 372 20.4.1 Imprecision and a typology of vagueness......Page 373 20.4.2 Round numbers......Page 374 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT......Page 376 21.1 INTRODUCTION......Page 377 21.2.1 Mapping verbal probabilities onto a numerical probability space......Page 378 21.2.1.2 Numerical intervals......Page 379 21.2.1.3 Membership functions......Page 381 21.2.2 Mapping verbal probabilities onto an outcome distribution space......Page 382 21.3 OVERVIEW OF FINDINGS......Page 383 21.3.1 Key results on numerical interpretation......Page 384 21.3.2 Directionality......Page 388 21.3.3 Continuous outcomes......Page 390 21.4 CONCLUSION......Page 391 CHAPTER 22: WORD SENSES......Page 392 22.1 THE STRUCTURE OF LEXICAL FLEXIBILITY......Page 393 22.1.1 Explaining patterns of flexibility......Page 394 22.1.2 Explaining generalization......Page 396 22.2 LEXICAL REPRESENTATION OF WORD SENSES......Page 398 22.3 WHY DO WORDS HAVE DISTINCT SENSES?......Page 402 22.3.1 Functional pressures and lexical flexibility......Page 403 22.3.2 Mechanisms and constraints for learning senses......Page 406 22.4 CONCLUSION......Page 408 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 409 23.1 INTRODUCTION TO THE PHENOMENON......Page 410 23.2.1 Evidence for QR in child grammar......Page 414 23.2.2 Evidence for the landing site of QR in child grammar......Page 416 23.2.3 Evidence for multiple landing sites for QR in child grammar......Page 417 23.3.1 ACD as evidence against clause-boundedness of QR......Page 419 23.3.2 ACD and possible evidence for theoretical frameworks......Page 421 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT......Page 423 24.1 INTRODUCTION......Page 424 24.2.1 At-issue content......Page 427 24.2.2 Conversational implicature......Page 428 24.2.3 Presupposed exhaustivity......Page 429 24.2.4 Indirect exhaustivity......Page 431 24.3 EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE......Page 433 24.4 DISCUSSION......Page 436 24.5 CONCLUSION......Page 439 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 440 CHAPTER 25: FOCUS......Page 441 25.1 ATTENTION, MENORY, AND DEPTH OF PROCESSING......Page 442 25.2 FOCUS AND SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY RESOLUTION......Page 446 25.3.1 Focus as cue to discourse structure......Page 448 25.3.2 Anaphoric dependencies......Page 450 25.3.3 Focus and reference resolution in visual displays......Page 451 25.3.4 Inferring implicit alternatives......Page 453 25.4.1 Conflicting cues to focus......Page 455 25.4.2 Cues to focus projection......Page 456 25.5.1 Different focus operators......Page 457 25.5.3 Cross-linguistic variation......Page 458 26.1 INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS AN NPI?......Page 459 26.2.1 Downward entailment......Page 460 26.2.2 Non-veridicality......Page 462 26.2.4 Summary......Page 463 26.3.1 Basic sensitivity to the licensing condition......Page 464 26.3.2 Illusory licensing effect......Page 468 26.4 ACQUIRING NEGATIVE POLARITY ITEMS......Page 470 26.4.1 Children’s knowledge about NPI licensing......Page 471 26.4.2 What is in the input?......Page 472 26.4.3 Summary......Page 473 26.5 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS......Page 474 CHAPTER 27: PRONOUNS......Page 475 27.1.1 Does syntax matter?......Page 477 27.1.2 Does thematic role matter?......Page 478 27.1.3 Does distance matter?......Page 480 27.1.4 Does topichood matter?......Page 482 27.1.5 Prior models of pronoun use......Page 483 27.2 STOP LOOKING AT PRONOUNS TO UNDERSTAND PRONOUNS......Page 484 27.3 LIKELY MESSAGES AND LIKELY FORMS......Page 486 27.4 PRONOUNS IN A GENERATIVE MODEL: A BAYESIAN APPROACH......Page 488 27.4.1 Coherence-driven factors influence next mention......Page 489 27.4.2 Topichood influences pronominalization......Page 491 27.4.3 Model comparison......Page 493 27.5 HOW DOES A GENERATIVE MODEL CLARIFY PRONOUN PUZZLES?......Page 494 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 496 28.1 THE PROBLEM OF REFERENTIAL CHOICE......Page 497 28.2.1 Gricean maxims......Page 498 28.2.2.1 What is informativeness?......Page 499 28.2.2.2 Empirical investigations of informativeness in production......Page 500 28.2.2.3 Empirical investigations of informativeness in comprehension......Page 502 28.2.3 Discourse theories: Framework and empirical evidence......Page 504 28.2.4 Comparing informativeness and discourse approaches......Page 508 28.3.1 What’s in the context? Linguistic and non-linguistic sources of information......Page 509 28.3.2.1 Does common ground matter?......Page 510 28.3.2.2 Social cues; gestures......Page 511 28.3.2.4 Speaker goals......Page 512 28.3.3 Constraints from the referent......Page 513 28.4 FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN REFERENCE PRODUCTION......Page 515 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT......Page 516 29.1 INTRODUCTION......Page 517 29.2 PROSODY: A BRIEF PRIMER......Page 519 29.3 THE PRODUCTION OF PROSODICALLY REALIZED FOCUS......Page 520 29.3.1 Prosodic realization of information-structural focus across languages......Page 521 29.3.2 The prosodic realization of focus is context-dependent......Page 522 29.3.3 Prosodic realization of other information-structural properties of foci......Page 523 29.3.4 Prosodic marking of focus size......Page 525 29.4 THE PERCEPTION AND INTERPRETATION OF PROSODICALLY REALIZED FOCUS......Page 527 29.4.1 The perception and interpretation of focus across languages......Page 528 29.4.2 Contextual influence on the perception and interpretation of prosodically realized focus......Page 529 29.4.3 Interpreting prosodic cues to foci that differ in other information-structural properties......Page 530 29.4.4 Perceiving and interpreting the size of prosodically realized focus......Page 531 29.4.5 Experimental tasks for the perception and interpretation of prosodically realized focus......Page 532 29.5 CONCLUDING REMARKS......Page 533 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 534 30.1 A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF PLOITENESS THEORIES......Page 535 30.2 TESTS OF BROWN & LEVINSON'S MODEL......Page 536 30.3 SOCIAL INTERACTIONAL DETERMINATIONS OF POLITENESS......Page 538 30.4 POLITENESS, REASONING, AND THE COMMUNICATION OF UNCERTAINITY......Page 540 30.5 PROCESSING POLITENESS......Page 542 30.6 CONCLUSION......Page 545 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 546 31.2 BRIEF REASONING: AT WHAT AGE, AND WHEN?......Page 547 31.3 THEORY OF MIND, LANGUAGE AND PRAGMANTICS: RELATIONS AND PARALLELS......Page 549 31.4 TWO-YEARS-OLDS: DO THEY KNOW BETTER NOW THAN THIRTY YEARS AGO?......Page 550 31.5 THREE-YEARS-OLDS' UNDERSTANDING OF FACTIVITY: WE KNOW, OR WE THINK?......Page 552 31.6 EARLY REFERENTIAL COMMUNICATION: ENGAGEMENT AND DISENGAGEMENT......Page 554 31.7 PRESCHOOLERS' REASONING ABOUT OTHERS' PERCEPTIONS: FROM SEEING TO KNOWING......Page 556 31.8 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS......Page 557 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 559 32.1 THE RULES......Page 560 32.2.1 The status of The Rules......Page 561 32.2.2 The processing of The Rules......Page 563 32.2.3 Cues for predicting the end of turns......Page 565 32.3.2 Corpus analysis......Page 568 32.4 VALIDITY ISSUES......Page 569 32.5 SUMMARY......Page 570 REFERENCES......Page 572 INDEX......Page 680 This handbook is the first to explore the growing field of experimental semantics and pragmatics. In the past 20 years, experimental data has become a major source of evidence for building theories of language meaning and use, encompassing a wide range of topics and methods. Following an introduction from the editors, the chapters in this volume offer an up-to-date account of research in the field spanning 31 different topics, including scalar implicatures, presuppositions, counterfactuals, quantification, metaphor, prosody, and politeness, as well as exploring how and why a particular experimental method is suitable for addressing a given theoretical debate. The volume's forward-looking approach also seeks to actively identify questions and methods that could0be fruitfully combined in future experimental research. Written in a clear and accessible style, this handbook will appeal to students and scholars from advanced undergraduate level upwards in a range of fields, including semantics and pragmatics, philosophy of language, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, cognitive science, and neuroscience This handbook is the first to explore the growing field of experimental semantics and pragmatics. In the past 20 years, experimental data has become a major source of evidence for building theories of language meaning and use, encompassing a wide range of topics and methods. Following an introduction from the editors, the chapters in this volume offer an up-to-date account of research in the field spanning 31 different topics, including scalar implicatures, presuppositions, counterfactuals, quantification, metaphor, prosody, and politeness, as well as exploring how and why a particular experimental method is suitable for addressing a given theoretical debate. The volume's forward-looking approach also seeks to actively identify questions and methods that could0be fruitfully combined in future experimental research.0Written in a clear and accessible style, this handbook will appeal to students and scholars from advanced undergraduate level upwards in a range of fields, including semantics and pragmatics, philosophy of language, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, cognitive science, and neuroscience "This handbook is the first to explore the growing field of experimental semantics and pragmatics. In the past 20 years, experimental data has become a major source of evidence for building theories of language meaning and use, encompassing a wide range of topics and methods. Following an introduction from the editors, the chapters in this volume offer an up-to-date account of research in the field spanning 31 different topics, including scalar implicatures, presuppositions, counterfactuals, quantification, metaphor, prosody, and politeness, as well as exploring how and why a particular experimental method is suitable for addressing a given theoretical debate. The volume's forward-looking approach also seeks to actively identify questions and methods that could be fruitfully combined in future experimental research. / [This] handbook will appeal to students and scholars from advanced undergraduate level upwards in a range of fields, including semantics and pragmatics, philosophy of language, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, cognitive science, and neuroscience." - Buchumschlag ## Abstract This handbook is the first to explore the growing field of experimental semantics and pragmatics. In the past twenty years, experimental data has become a major source of evidence for building theories of language meaning and use, encompassing a wide range of topics and methods. Following an introduction from the editors, the chapters in this volume offer an up-to-date account of research in the field spanning thirty-one different topics, including scalar implicatures, presuppositions, counterfactuals, quantification, metaphor, prosody, and politeness, as well as exploring how and why a particular experimental method is suitable for addressing a given theoretical debate. The volume’s forward-looking approach also seeks to actively identify questions and methods that could be fruitfully combined in future experimental research. Exploring the growing field of experimental semantics and pragmatics, this volume offers an up-to-date account of research in the field spanning thirty-one different topics, including scalar implicatures, presuppositions, counterfactuals, quantification, metaphor, prosody, and politeness, as well as exploring how and why a particular experimental method is suitable for addressing a given theoretical debate. In the past twenty years, experimental data has become a major source of evidence for building theories of language meaning and use, encompassing a wide range of topics and methods