1. Université Libre de Bruxelles (Ladisco), F.R.S.-FNRS
Nicolas Ruytenbeek
Mikhail Kissine
Université Libre de Bruxelles (Ladisco), F.R.S.-FNRS
Illocutionary forces and sentence-types: Contradictory experimental evidence?

2. Introduction
Sentence-types and illocutionary forces: two opposite views
Literalism: sentence-types encode illocutionary forces
Vs. contextualism
Empirical issue
General issue: how do interpreters assign IF to utterances?
Working assumption: illocutionary forces play a role in utterance comprehension
Contextualism
Literalism
Experiments on indirect SAs (Clark, Gibbs)
Experiments on SA activation (Holtgraves)

3. Literalism Speech Act Theory (SAT)
Illocutionary force determined by sentence’s morpho- syntactic structure (Searle 1979, Vanderveken 1990)
Sentence-types
Imperatives  directive force
Declaratives  assertive force
Interrogatives  asking questions
Illocutionary force indicators (ONE SUCH INDICATOR = Sentence-type)

4. Literalism Major problems of literalism Typological Theoretical
Interrogative vs. imperative sentence-types
Theoretical
Sentence meaning / illocutionary force
Rational reconstructions very implausible
Empirical
Literal force of interrogatives = subset of literal force of imperatives
BUT interrogative sentence-types are NOT subset of imperative sentence-types

5. Contextualism Some varieties of contextualism…
Relevance Theory (Wilson & Sperber 1988)
Sentence-types encode attitudes (potentiality, desirability)
Cognitive Linguistics (Pérez & Ruiz 2002, Pérez 2013)
Sentences get illocutionary force if part of illocutionary scenarios
Jary & Kissine (2014)
A sentence-type encodes a bundle of semantic features
FOR RT, Major sentence-types in English hardly identifiable

6. Experimental data (1): Gibbs
Empirical evidence against literalism
Sentence meaningfulness task (Gibbs 1983)
Context
Rod was talking with his psychiatrist.
He was having lots of problems in establishing relationships.
“Everyone I meet I seem to alienate,” Rod said.
“I just turn very hostile for no reason,” he continued.
Target remark
The shrink said,
“Can’t you be friendly?”
Probe sentence
(literal paraphrase)
Are you unable to act friendly?

7. Experimental data (1): Gibbs
‘Indirect’ context
Context
Mrs. Norman was watching her kids play in the backyard.
One of the neighbor’s children had come over to play.
But Mrs. Norman’s kids refused to share their toys.
This upset Mrs. Norman.
Target remark
She angrily walked outside and said to one of her children,
“Can’t you be friendly?”
Probe sentence
(indirect paraphrase)
Please be friendly to other people.

8. Experimental data (1): Gibbs
Results
Reading times: indirect remarks < literal remarks
Judgments times: indirect paraphrases < literal paraphrases in both contexts
Suggest that indirect request interpretation does not always entail deriving literal SA
Evidence against literalism

9. Experimental data (2): Holtgraves
Empirical evidence for literalism?
Lexical decision task (Holtgraves 2008, exp. 2)
Context
Jane is late for class and doesn’t have a watch.
She needs to know the time.
So she approaches someone and says to them:
Target remark
Jane: “What time is it?”
Probe word
Ask

10. Experimental data (2): Holtgraves
Control version
Context
Jane is late for class and doesn’t have a watch.
She needs to know if she has time to get a soda.
But her friend Nancy says to her:
Target remark
Nancy: “It’s time for class.”
Probe word
Ask

11. Experimental data (2): Holtgraves
Holtgraves’ design
Target remarks and SA probes
I swear I will… (promise) vs. I swear I was…
Don’t forget to… (reminder) vs. I’ll bet you forgot to…
The bank must pay for the fee (demand) vs. I’m so happy the bank will pay for the fee
Results
Stronger priming effect for ‘compatible’ remarks and with very short inter-stimulus interval

12. Experimental data (2): Holtgraves
Replication of Holtgraves (2008, exp. 2)
Without any context preceding the target remark
Found similar differences in priming effects
Context /
Target sentence
Nancy: “What time is it?”
Probe word
Ask

13. Experimental data (2): Holtgraves
Holtgraves’ experiments: critical discussion
Stronger priming effect in ‘compatible’ condition
Primes semantically related to illocutionary force: Don’t forget to, I swear I will, …
Processing correlates of standardized utterances?
Evidence for weak literalism
Priming expected for generic illocutionary forces?

14. Experimental data (2): Holtgraves
Inference: lexical priming  “automatic” SA activation
Unwarranted: priming could be just a corollary of processing
Alternative explanation: SA probes reach higher activation because prototypical uses of target remarks
Conclusion:
No evidence that SA representation is necessary

15. Experimental data (3) Personal contribution: follow-up study
Investigating generic SAs & major sentence-types
Experimental design (French material)
Lexical decision task and trials // Holtgraves (2008)
BUT sentences not biased towards a specific SA
‘Compatible’ condition: question (interrogative), inform (declarative), command (imperative)
1) That is, investigating STRONG LITERALISM

16. Experimental data (3) Results of pilot experiments Discussion
Absence of significant differences in priming effects between the ‘compatible’ vs. ‘incompatible’ conditions
Discussion
Evidence against systematic SA activation (strong literalism)
BUT difficult to conclude anything from null results

17. Conclusions Contextualism Literalism
Experiments on “indirect speech acts”
Holtgraves’ experiments
Literalism

18. Many thanks for your attention !

19. References
Gibbs, R. W. (1983). Do people always process the literal meanings of indirect requests? Journal of experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 9 (3):
Holtgraves, T. R. (2008). Automatic intention recognition in conversation processing. Journal of Memory and Language 58: 627–645.
Holtgraves, T. R., & Ashley, A. (2001). Comprehending illocutionary force. Memory & Cognition 29 (1): 83–90.
Jary, M. & Kissine, M. (2014). Imperatives. Cambridge: CUP.
Pérez Hernández, L. (2013). Illocutionary constructions: (Multiple source)-in-target metonymies, illocutionary ICMs, and specification links. Language and Communication, 33 (2),
Pérez Hernández, L., & Ruiz de Mendoza, F. J. (2003). Cognitive operations and pragmatic implications. In K.-U. Panther & L. Thornburg (Eds.), Metonymy and Pragmatic Inferencing (pp ). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

20. References
Ruytenbeek, N. (forthcoming). The comprehension of indirect requests: Previous work and future directions. Depraetere, I. & Salkie, R. Semantics and Pragmatics. Drawing a line. Amsterdam: Springer.
Searle, J. R. (1975). Indirect Speech Acts. Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press,
Searle, J. R. (1979). Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge: CUP.
Vanderveken, D. (1990). Meaning and Speech Acts. Cambridge: CUP.
Wilson, D., & Sperber, D. (1988). Mood and the analysis of non-declarative sentences. In J. Dancy & J. Moravcsik & C. Taylor (Eds.), Human agency: Language, duty and value. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press,