April 7, 2015: Yurie Hara

Time:: 3:30pm, April 7, 2015
Place:: Keio University, Mita Campus,
North Building, Conference Room 3.
Speaker:: Yurie Hara (City University of Hong Kong) and Eric McCready (Aoyama Gakuin University)
Title:: Unexpectedness and Gricean Cooperativity: A Default Logic Approach
Abstract:: In the framework of Conversation Analysis, Luke (1990) shows that the meaning of Cantonese sentence-final particle /wo/ involves the violation of expectations. In particular, /wo/ can indicate not only the unexpectedness of the content but also that of the current discourse move that the speaker makes. This paper takes Luke’s insight and provides a default-logic analysis of /wo/. The notion of unexpectedness is formally characterized by normality conditionals. The analysis has a further implication on the Gricean Cooperative Principle in that the use of /wo/ makes reference to the general knowledge which includes conditions on how the discourse should normally proceed.

Semantics Research Group Meeting, April 7, 2015