Herbert H Clark
Biographic Data
| ID | 659243 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Herbert H Clark |
| GIVEN NAMES | Herbert H |
| FAMILY NAME | Clark |
| SIGNATURE | CLARK H H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stanford University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1252-666X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 735 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1968 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Common Ground
Common ground is the type of shared information that two people need in order to do things together – play tennis, walk side by side, or talk. Two people's common ground is not given a priori , but is something they have to infer. People base these inferences on two main sources of information – the cultural communities they both belong to, and their joint personal experiences. Conversation emerges with the structure it does to enable the partici…
Depicting as a method of communication.
In everyday discourse, people describe and point at things, but they also depict things with their hands, arms, head, face, eyes, voice, and body, with and without props. Examples are iconic gestures, facial gestures, quotations of many kinds, full-scale demonstrations, and make-believe play. Depicting, it is argued, is a basic method of communication. It is on a par with describing and pointing, but it works by different principles. The proposal…
Coordinating with each other in a material world
In everyday joint activities, people coordinate with each other by means not only of linguistic signals, but also of material signals - signals in which they indicate things by deploying material objects, locations, or actions around them. Material signals fall into two main classes: directing-to and placing-for. In directing-to, people request addressees to direct their attention to objects, events, or themselves. In placing-for, people place ob…
Speaking while monitoring addressees for understanding
Navigating Joint Projects in Telephone Conversations
Conversation coordinates joint activities and the joint projects that compose them. Participants coordinate (1) vertical transitions on entering and exiting joint projects; and (2) horizontal transitions in continuing within them. Transitions are coordinated using project markers such as uh-huh, yeah, right, and okay. In the authors’ proposal, participants use uh-huh, yeah, and right to continue within joint projects, and okay and all right to en…
Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking
Repeating Words in Spontaneous Speech
Speakers often repeat the first word of major constituents, as in, "I uh I wouldn't be surprised at that." Repeats like this divide into four stages: an initial commitment to the constituent (with "I"); the suspension of speech; a hiatus in speaking (filled with "uh"); and a restart of the constituent ("I wouldn't."). An analysis of all repeated articles and pronouns in two large corpora of spontaneous speech shows that the four stages reflect di…
Using Language
Dogmas of understanding
Investigators of language understanding have made a number of idealizations in order to study it, but many of these idealizations have turned into dogmas—convictions that are impervious to evidence. Because of these dogmas, investigators have often ignored, dismissed, or ruled out of court common features of everyday language such as indirect meaning, word innovation, phrasal utterances, interjections, listener roles, listener background, special…
Using Language
This book, first published in 1996, argues that language use is more than the sum of a speaker speaking and a listener listening. It is the joint action that emerges when speakers and listeners - writers and readers - perform their individual actions in coordination, as ensembles. The author argues strongly that language use embodies both individual and social processes.
Conceptual pacts and lexical choice in conversation.
Arenas of Language Use
When we think of the ways we use language, we think of face-to-face conversations, telephone conversations, reading and writing, and even talking to oneself. These arenas of language use--theaters of action in which people do things with language. But what exactly are they doing with language? What their goals and intentions? By what processes do they achieve these goals? In these twelve essays, Herbert H. Clark and his colleagues discuss the col…
On the Course of Answering Questions
Grounding in communication.
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 othe…
Quotations as Demonstrations
The theory developed here is that quotations are demonstrations that are component parts of language use. Demonstrations are unlike descriptions in two main ways. They are nonserious rather than serious actions. A person demonstrating a limp isn't actually or really limping. And they depict rather than describe their referents, though they depict only selected aspects of the referents. The demonstrator of the limp depicts some but not all of its …
Ostensible invitations
People sometimes extend invitations they don't intend to be taken seriously. We call these ostensible invitations. From a collection of spontaneous examples, we argue that they require: a pretense of sincerity by the speaker; mutual recognition of the pretense by speaker and addressee; collusion on the pretense by the addressee; ambivalence by the speaker about its acceptance; and an off-record purpose by the speaker. We describe seven techniques…
Understanding by addressees and overhearers
Contributing to Discourse
For people to contribute to discourse, they must do more than utter the right sentence at the right time. The basic requirement is that they add to their common ground in an orderly way. To do this, we argue, they try to establish for each utterance the mutual belief that the addressees have understood what the speaker meant well enough for current purposes. This is accomplished by the collective actions of the current contributor and his or her …
Collaborating on contributions to conversations
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 …
References in conversation between experts and novices.
What Is Said to Whom
In Clark & Carlson 1982a, it was noted that traditional theories of speech acts cannot account for what is said to whom when a person speaks to more than one hearer at a time. The proposal was to add a new type of illocutionary act, the informative, in what was called the informative analysis. Allan 1986 has offered a critique of that proposal. This rejoinder considers the major defects in that critique: the fallacious use of illocutionary points…
On the pretense theory of irony.
Common ground at the understanding of demonstrative reference
Audience Design in Meaning and Reference
Hearers and Speech Acts
In conversations involving more than two people, most utterances are intended to be understood not only by the people being addressed, but also by the others. These utterances cannot be accounted for in current theories of speech acts unless several basic changes are made. In our proposal, the speaker performs two types of illocutionary act with each utterance. One is the traditional kind, such as an assertion, promise, or apology; this is direct…
The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy
Quotations as Demonstrations
The theory developed here is that quotations are demonstrations that are component parts of language use. Demonstrations are unlike descriptions in two main ways. They are nonserious rather than serious actions. A person demonstrating a limp isn't actually or really limping. And they depict rather than describe their referents, though they depict only selected aspects of the referents. The demonstrator of the limp depicts some but not all of its …
Contributing to Discourse
For people to contribute to discourse, they must do more than utter the right sentence at the right time. The basic requirement is that they add to their common ground in an orderly way. To do this, we argue, they try to establish for each utterance the mutual belief that the addressees have understood what the speaker meant well enough for current purposes. This is accomplished by the collective actions of the current contributor and his or her …
Hearers and Speech Acts
In conversations involving more than two people, most utterances are intended to be understood not only by the people being addressed, but also by the others. These utterances cannot be accounted for in current theories of speech acts unless several basic changes are made. In our proposal, the speaker performs two types of illocutionary act with each utterance. One is the traditional kind, such as an assertion, promise, or apology; this is direct…
When Nouns Surface as Verbs
People readily create and understand denominal verbs they have never heard before, as in to porch a newspaper and to Houdini one's way out of a closet. The meanings are best accounted for by a theory of interpretation that specifies what the verbs mean on particular occasions of their use. Our proposal is that their use is regulated by a convention: in using such a verb, the speaker means to denote the kind of state, event, or process that, he ha…
Understanding what is meant from what is said
Ostensible invitations
People sometimes extend invitations they don't intend to be taken seriously. We call these ostensible invitations. From a collection of spontaneous examples, we argue that they require: a pretense of sincerity by the speaker; mutual recognition of the pretense by speaker and addressee; collusion on the pretense by the addressee; ambivalence by the speaker about its acceptance; and an off-record purpose by the speaker. We describe seven techniques…
Coordinating with each other in a material world
In everyday joint activities, people coordinate with each other by means not only of linguistic signals, but also of material signals - signals in which they indicate things by deploying material objects, locations, or actions around them. Material signals fall into two main classes: directing-to and placing-for. In directing-to, people request addressees to direct their attention to objects, events, or themselves. In placing-for, people place ob…
Telephone goodbyes
In urban American telephone conversations, we propose, the final exchange of goodbyes doesn't terminate the conversation per se but brings to completion a process of leave-taking in which the two parties reaffirm their acquaintance before breaking contact. This process is optional, so that if the two parties are not acquainted, they should omit the process and not exchange goodbyes. We tested this proposal by examining goodbyes offered to operato…
Dogmas of understanding
Investigators of language understanding have made a number of idealizations in order to study it, but many of these idealizations have turned into dogmas—convictions that are impervious to evidence. Because of these dogmas, investigators have often ignored, dismissed, or ruled out of court common features of everyday language such as indirect meaning, word innovation, phrasal utterances, interjections, listener roles, listener background, special…
Navigating Joint Projects in Telephone Conversations
Conversation coordinates joint activities and the joint projects that compose them. Participants coordinate (1) vertical transitions on entering and exiting joint projects; and (2) horizontal transitions in continuing within them. Transitions are coordinated using project markers such as uh-huh, yeah, right, and okay. In the authors’ proposal, participants use uh-huh, yeah, and right to continue within joint projects, and okay and all right to en…
The Semantics of Sentence Subjects
It is proposed that subjects of transitive verbs in English are perceived as belonging to a semantic hierarchy, with human subjects most acceptable and non-human subjects less so. As a test, six semantically defined classes of subjects were systematically interchanged in simple, well-formed sentences: in Experiment I, 25 students rated the resultant sentences for acceptability; in Experiment II, 25 more students altered one word in the same sente…
The Use of Syntax in Understanding Sentences
The present study explored the processes by which people understand sentences. Simple sentences with subjects, verbs and objects, but with specific semantic anomalies, were constructed from naturally occurring sentences. Sentences so derived were given to participants in Expts. I and III to judge for sensibleness and to participants in Expts. II and IV to alter so that they made more sense. The results showed the existence of two levels of proces…
Semantics in the Perception of Verticality
Seymour has shown recently that people take less time to judge that the word above correctly describes the spatial position of a small circle drawn above a large reference square than they do for the word below and the circle below the square. Seymour has attributed this asymmetry to the tendency for people to invariably scan a picture from top to bottom. In the present study, the first experiment confirms Seymour's results, but the next three de…
What Is Said to Whom
In Clark & Carlson 1982a, it was noted that traditional theories of speech acts cannot account for what is said to whom when a person speaks to more than one hearer at a time. The proposal was to add a new type of illocutionary act, the informative, in what was called the informative analysis. Allan 1986 has offered a critique of that proposal. This rejoinder considers the major defects in that critique: the fallacious use of illocutionary points…
Psychology and Language
The Use of Syntax in Understanding Sentences
The present study explored the processes by which people understand sentences. Simple sentences with subjects, verbs and objects, but with specific semantic anomalies, were constructed from naturally occurring sentences. Sentences so derived were given to participants in Expts. I and III to judge for sensibleness and to participants in Expts. II and IV to alter so that they made more sense. The results showed the existence of two levels of proces…
The Semantics of Sentence Subjects
It is proposed that subjects of transitive verbs in English are perceived as belonging to a semantic hierarchy, with human subjects most acceptable and non-human subjects less so. As a test, six semantically defined classes of subjects were systematically interchanged in simple, well-formed sentences: in Experiment I, 25 students rated the resultant sentences for acceptability; in Experiment II, 25 more students altered one word in the same sente…
Semantics in the Perception of Verticality
Seymour has shown recently that people take less time to judge that the word above correctly describes the spatial position of a small circle drawn above a large reference square than they do for the word below and the circle below the square. Seymour has attributed this asymmetry to the tendency for people to invariably scan a picture from top to bottom. In the present study, the first experiment confirms Seymour's results, but the next three de…
On the process of comparing sentences against pictures
Space, Time, Semantics, and the Child11the Preparation of This Paper Was Supported in Part by Public Health Service Grant Mh-20021 From the National Institute of Mental Health. I Wish to Thank Eve v. …
The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy
What's new? Acquiring New information as a process in comprehension
Understanding what is meant from what is said
Responding to indirect speech acts
When Nouns Surface as Verbs
People readily create and understand denominal verbs they have never heard before, as in to porch a newspaper and to Houdini one's way out of a closet. The meanings are best accounted for by a theory of interpretation that specifies what the verbs mean on particular occasions of their use. Our proposal is that their use is regulated by a convention: in using such a verb, the speaker means to denote the kind of state, event, or process that, he ha…
Psychology and Language
Polite responses to polite requests
Telephone goodbyes
In urban American telephone conversations, we propose, the final exchange of goodbyes doesn't terminate the conversation per se but brings to completion a process of leave-taking in which the two parties reaffirm their acquaintance before breaking contact. This process is optional, so that if the two parties are not acquainted, they should omit the process and not exchange goodbyes. We tested this proposal by examining goodbyes offered to operato…
Audience Design in Meaning and Reference
Hearers and Speech Acts
In conversations involving more than two people, most utterances are intended to be understood not only by the people being addressed, but also by the others. These utterances cannot be accounted for in current theories of speech acts unless several basic changes are made. In our proposal, the speaker performs two types of illocutionary act with each utterance. One is the traditional kind, such as an assertion, promise, or apology; this is direct…
Common ground at the understanding of demonstrative reference
On the pretense theory of irony.
What Is Said to Whom
In Clark & Carlson 1982a, it was noted that traditional theories of speech acts cannot account for what is said to whom when a person speaks to more than one hearer at a time. The proposal was to add a new type of illocutionary act, the informative, in what was called the informative analysis. Allan 1986 has offered a critique of that proposal. This rejoinder considers the major defects in that critique: the fallacious use of illocutionary points…
Collaborating on contributions to conversations
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 …
References in conversation between experts and novices.
Understanding by addressees and overhearers
Contributing to Discourse
For people to contribute to discourse, they must do more than utter the right sentence at the right time. The basic requirement is that they add to their common ground in an orderly way. To do this, we argue, they try to establish for each utterance the mutual belief that the addressees have understood what the speaker meant well enough for current purposes. This is accomplished by the collective actions of the current contributor and his or her …
Quotations as Demonstrations
The theory developed here is that quotations are demonstrations that are component parts of language use. Demonstrations are unlike descriptions in two main ways. They are nonserious rather than serious actions. A person demonstrating a limp isn't actually or really limping. And they depict rather than describe their referents, though they depict only selected aspects of the referents. The demonstrator of the limp depicts some but not all of its …
Ostensible invitations
People sometimes extend invitations they don't intend to be taken seriously. We call these ostensible invitations. From a collection of spontaneous examples, we argue that they require: a pretense of sincerity by the speaker; mutual recognition of the pretense by speaker and addressee; collusion on the pretense by the addressee; ambivalence by the speaker about its acceptance; and an off-record purpose by the speaker. We describe seven techniques…
Grounding in communication.
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 othe…
Psychology (32 works) · Linguistics (29 works) · Computer Science (27 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (26 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (23 works) · Philosophy (20 works) · Communication (14 works) · Speech and dialogue systems (14 works) · Cognitive psychology (10 works) · Natural language processing (8 works)