Herbert H. Clark

GROUNDING IN COMMUNICATION

GROUNDING It takes two people working together to play a duet, shake hands, play chess, waltz, teach, or make love. To succeed, the two of them have to coordinate both the content and process of what they are doing. Alan and Barbara, on the piano, must come to play the same Mozart duet. This is coordination of content. They must also synchronize their entrances and exits, coordinate how loudly to play forte and pianissimo, and otherwise adjust to each others tempo and dynamics. This is coordination of process. They cannot even begin to coordinate on content without assuming a vast amount of shared information or common ground-that is, mutual knowledge, mutual beliefs, and mutual assumptions And to coordinate on process, they need to update their common ground moment by moment. All collective actions are built on common ground and its accumulation. We thank many colleagues for discussion of the issues we take up here.

The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy: A critique of language statistics in psychological research

Current investigators of words, sentences, and other language materials almost never provide statistical evidence that their findings generalize beyond the specific sample of language materials they have chosen. Nevertheless, these same investigators do not hesitate to conclude that their findings are true for language in general. In so doing, it is argued, they are committing the language-as-fixed-effect fallacy, which can lead to serious error. The problem is illustrated for one well-known series of studies in semantic memory. With the appropriate statistics these studies are shown to provide no reliable evidence for most of the main conolusions drawn from them. A review of other experiments in semantic memory shows that many of them are likewise suspect. It is demonstrated how this fallacy can be avoided by doing the right statistics, selecting the appropriate design, and sampling by systematic procedures, or, alternatively, by proceeding according to the so-called method of single cases.

Referring as a collaborative process

In conversation, speakers and addressees work together in the making of a definite reference. In the model we propose, the speaker initiates the process by presenting or inviting a noun phrase. Before going on to the next contribution, the participants, if necessary, repair, expand on, or replace the noun phrase in an iterative process until they reach a version they mutually accept. In doing so they try to minimize their joint effort. The preferred procedure is for the speaker to present a simple noun phrase and for the addressee to accept it by allowing the next contribution to begin. We describe a communication task in which pairs of people conversed about arranging complex figures and show how the proposed model accounts for many features of the references they produced. The model follows, we suggest, from the mutual responsibility that participants in conversation bear toward the understanding of each utterance.

What's new? Acquiring New information as a process in comprehension

Linguistically, sentences contain both Given information (what the listener is expected to know already) and New information (what the listener is not expected to know already). According to a proposed Given-New Strategy, the listener, in comprehending a sentence, first searches memory for antecedent information that matches the sentences Given information; he then revises memory by attaching the New information to that antecedent. To provide evidence for this strategy, we presented subjects with pairs of sentences, where the first (the context sentence) provided a context for the second (the target sentence). The subjects were required to press a button when they felt they understood the target sentences. Consistnet with the proposed strategy, Experiment I showed that a target sentence with a definite noun phrase presupposing existence took less time to comprehend when its Given information had a direct antecedent in the context sentence than when it did not. Experiment II ruled out a repetition explanation for Experiment I, and Experiment III demonstrated the same phenomenon for target sentences containing the adverbs still, again, too , and either .

Conceptual pacts and lexical choice in conversation.

When people in conversation refer repeatedly to the same object, they come to use the same terms. This phenomenon, called lexical entrainment, has several possible explanations. Ahistorical accounts appeal only to the informativeness and availability of terms and to the current salience of the objects features. Historical accounts appeal in addition to the recency and frequency of past references and to partner-specific conceptualizations of the object that people achieve interactively. Evidence from 3 experiments favors a historical account and suggests that when speakers refer to an object, they are proposing a conceptualization of it, a proposal their addresses may or may not agree to. Once they do establish a shared conceptualization, a conceptual pact, they appeal to it in later references even when they could use simpler references. Over time, speakers simplify conceptual pacts and, when necessary, abandon them for new conceptualizations.

SPACE, TIME, SEMANTICS, AND THE CHILD1

Publisher Summary This chapter presents the thesis that the child acquires English spatial expressions by learning how to apply them to the childs prior knowledge about space and that the child acquires English temporal expressions in turn by extending the spatial terms in a metaphor about time. The main evidence for this thesis is the strong correspondence between the properties of the spatial terms and the properties of mans innate perceptual apparatus, and between English spatial and temporal expressions. The correspondence is so strong that it simply could not be coincidental, and it, therefore, needs explanation. Time, for example, is not just expressed with an occasional spatial simile, but rather it is based on a thoroughly systematic spatial metaphor, suggesting a complete cognitive system that space and time expressions have in common. The chapter outlines the thesis, its evidence, and what it could mean for the acquisition of English. This theory argues that grammatical relations are fundamentally locative in nature, and they are, therefore, derived ultimately from notions of location.

Understanding by Addressees and Overhearers

Abstract In conversation speakers design their utterances to be understood against the common ground they share with their addressees—their common experience, expertise, dialect, and culture. That ordinarily gives addressees an advantage over overhearers in understanding. Addressees have an additional advantage, we propose, because they can actively collaborate with speakers in reaching the mutual belief that they have understood what was said, whereas overhearers cannot. As evidence for the proposal, we looked at triples of people in which one person told another person in conversation how to arrange 12 complex figures while an overhearer tried to arrange them too. All three began as strangers with the same background information. As predicted, addressees were more accurate at arranging the figures than overhearers even when the overhearers heard every word. Other evidence suggests that the very process of understanding is different for addressees and overhearers.

References in Conversation Between Experts and Novices

In conversation, two people inevitably know different amounts about the topic of discussion, yet to make their references understood, they need to draw on knowledge and beliefs that they share. An expert and a novice talking with each other, therefore, must assess each others expertise and accommodate to their differences. They do this in part, it is proposed, by assessing, supplying, and acquiring expertise as they collaborate in completing their references. In a study of this accommodation, pairs of people who were or were not familiar with New York City were asked to work together to arrange pictures of New York City landmarks by talking about them. They were able to assess each others level of expertise almost immediately and to adjust their choice of proper names, descriptions, and perspectives accordingly. In doing so, experts supplied, and novices acquired, specialized knowledge that made referring more efficient.

Collaborating on contributions to conversations

Abstract Contributing to conversation, it is proposed, is accomplished in two phases. In the presentation phase, one participant ordinarily presents a stretch of speech intended to specify the content of his or her contribution. In the acceptance phase, all the participants work together to establish the mutual belief that everyone else has understood that content well enough for current purposes. The two phases together constitute a unit of conversation we call a contribution. The two phases may each have contributions embedded within them, so conversations consist of both sequential and hierarchical arrangements of contributions. As evidence for these proposals, we examine four types of contributions that occurred in directory enquiries of the telephone company. From this and other evidence, we argue that contributions appear to be a general feature of conversations.

Responding to indirect speech acts

Abstract Indirect speech acts, like the request Do you know the time?, have both a literal meaning, here “I ask you whether you know the time,” and an indirect meaning “I request you to tell me the time.” In this paper I outline a model of how listeners understand such speech acts and plan responses to them. The main proposals are these. The literal meaning of indirect speech acts can be intended to be taken seriously (along with the indirect meaning) or merely pro forma. In the first case listeners are expected to respond to both meanings, as in Yes, I do—its six, but in the second case only to the indirect meaning, as in Its six. There are at least six sources of information listeners use in judging whether the literal meaning was intended seriously or pro forma, as well as whether there was intended to be any indirect meaning. These proposals were supported in five experiments in which ordinary requests for information were made by telephone of 950 local merchants.