Bart Geurts
Biographic Data
| ID | 3824282 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bart Geurts |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bart |
| FAMILY NAME | Geurts |
| SIGNATURE | GEURTS B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Radboud University Nijmegen |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 73 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Normativity, interactivity, and meta‐communication
On the grammar and pragmatics of self-talk
Having sounded a cautionary note on the precarious empirical basis that all theories of self-talk have to build on, I suggest that self-talk often involves some sort of pretence and that pragmatics may have a bigger role to play in accounting for Wiltschko’s data than she allows for
Evolutionary pragmatics: From chimp-style communication to human discourse
Joint attention and perceptual experience
Joint attention customarily refers to the coordinated focus of attention between two or more individuals on a common object or event, where it is mutually “open” to all attenders that they are so engaged. We identify two broad approaches to analyse joint attention, one in terms of cognitive notions like common knowledge and common awareness, and one according to which joint attention is fundamentally a primitive phenomenon of sensory experience. …
Communication as commitment sharing: Speech acts, implicatures, common ground
The main tenet of this paper is that human communication is first and foremost a matter of negotiating commitments, rather than one of conveying intentions, beliefs, and other mental states. Every speech act causes the speaker to become committed to the hearer to act on a propositional content. Hence, commitments are relations between speakers, hearers, and propositions. Their purpose is to enable speakers and hearers to coordinate their actions:…
Commitments continued
n Contains fulltext :\n 206383.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
Fictional Commitments
n Contains fulltext :\n 195851.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
Scalar Diversity
We present experimental evidence showing that there is considerable variation between the rates at which scalar expressions from different lexical scales give rise to upper-bounded construals. We investigated two factors that might explain the variation between scalar expressions: first, the availability of the lexical scales, which we measured on the basis of association strength, grammatical class, word frequencies and semantic relatedness, and…
Embedded scalars
For over a decade, the interpretation of scalar expressions under embedding has been a much debated issue, with proposed accounts ranging from strictly pragmatic, on one end of the spectrum, to lexico-syntactic, on the other. There has been some confusion as to what exactly the controversy is about, and we argue that what is at stake is the division of labour between pragmatic and truth-conditional mechanisms. All parties to the debate agree that…
Quantity Implicatures
In recent years, quantity implicatures - a type of pragmatic inference - have been widely debated in linguistics, philosophy, and psychology, and have been subject to an enormous variety of analyses, ranging from lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic, to various hybrid accounts. In this first book-length discussion of the topic, Bart Geurts presents a theory of quantity implicatures that is resolutely pragmatic, arguing that the orthodox Gr…
Background Materials for "Embedded implicatures?!?"
Background materials for "Embedded implicatures?!?"
Embedded implicatures
Over the last decade, various proposals have been made for supplanting the classical Gricean theory of scalar implicature with conventionalist (i.e. lexicalist or syntax-based) treatments. In contradistinction to the classical view, conventionalist theories predict that scalar inferences occur systematically and freely in embedded positions. We present experimental evidence that disproves this prediction, arguing along the way that there are rath…
Free choice for all: A response to Emmanuel Chemla
Chemla (2009) presents experimental data purporting to show that speakers’ intuitions about so-called “embedded implicatures” cause trouble for globalist and localist theories alike. We explain, to begin with, that the way Chemla frames the debate between localists and globalists fails to do justice to the latter. Then we turn to his experimental data, and argue that, while of half of them strengthen our own case against localism (Geurts & Pousco…
Really fucking brilliant
The title of this note has a two-tiered interpretation. On the “use” level, it expresses my admiration for the ingenuity and elegance of Christopher Potts's paper, which is not diminished by the fact that I disagree with him practically across the board. On the “mention” level, my title denotes the key phrase in Potts's example (2), which will figure rather prominently in the following remarks
At least et al: The semantic of scalar modifiers
On the naive account of scalar modifiers like more than and at least, At least three girls snored is synonymous with More than two girls snored, and both sentences mean that the number of snoring girls exceeded two (the same, mutatis mutandis, for sentences with at most and less/fewer than). We show that this is false and propose an alternative theory, according to which superlative modifiers (at least/most) are quite different from comparative o…
Entertaining Alternatives: Disjunctions as Modals
Interpreting focus
n Contains fulltext :\n 59973.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
Interpreting focus again
Semantics as lexicography
Over the past few decades, the interpretation of language has gradually come to be accepted as a subject deserving its own academic regalia, such as conferences, journals, and university chairs. The definition of the emerging field of inquiry is, as yet, very moot. It is not even decided that it is a single field, rather than several related ones, and whether it (or they) should be subsumed under linguistics, psychology, or somewhere else. But th…
Specifics
In all these examples there appears to be mismatch between the position at which an indefinite appears and its preferred interpretation. Following many of the more recent contributions to the literature, I will assume that this is the hallmark of specificity (e.g. Ahusch 1994, Reinhart 1997, Winter 1997, van Geenhoven 1998). Such mismatches are not the norm: indefinites are often interpreted in situ, and there is some reason for taking this to be…
Function or fashion? Reply to Martin Haspelmath
n Contains fulltext :\n 131009.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
Explaining grammaticalization (the standard way)
Since nobody knows how to draw the line between lexical expressions and grammatical devices, it is natural to suppose that, in some sense, the tran-sition from lexicon to grammar is a gradual one. There is a continuum, it seems, bounded by purely lexical items on one end and purely grammatical items on the other, with many expressions lying somewhere between these opposites. This, at any rate, is the view that underlies the notion of gram-matical…
Indefinites and Choice Functions
Linguistic Inquiry - Volume 31, Number 4, Fall 2000
Semantics in Generative Grammar
The Mechanisms of Denial
Normally, the negation of a sentence S serves to reverse the assertion that S would have made, and does not affect other types of information S would have conveyed, such as presuppositions, implicatures, and so on. Occasionally, however, it seems as if negation is directed precisely at presuppositions, implicatures, or even at purely formal aspects of a sentence (such as intonation, pronunciation, and so on). The following are cases in point: Mar…
The Mechanisms of Denial
Normally, the negation of a sentence S serves to reverse the assertion that S would have made, and does not affect other types of information S would have conveyed, such as presuppositions, implicatures, and so on. Occasionally, however, it seems as if negation is directed precisely at presuppositions, implicatures, or even at purely formal aspects of a sentence (such as intonation, pronunciation, and so on). The following are cases in point: Mar…
Entertaining Alternatives: Disjunctions as Modals
At least et al: The semantic of scalar modifiers
On the naive account of scalar modifiers like more than and at least, At least three girls snored is synonymous with More than two girls snored, and both sentences mean that the number of snoring girls exceeded two (the same, mutatis mutandis, for sentences with at most and less/fewer than). We show that this is false and propose an alternative theory, according to which superlative modifiers (at least/most) are quite different from comparative o…
Indefinites and Choice Functions
Linguistic Inquiry - Volume 31, Number 4, Fall 2000
Evolutionary pragmatics: From chimp-style communication to human discourse
Explaining grammaticalization (the standard way)
Since nobody knows how to draw the line between lexical expressions and grammatical devices, it is natural to suppose that, in some sense, the tran-sition from lexicon to grammar is a gradual one. There is a continuum, it seems, bounded by purely lexical items on one end and purely grammatical items on the other, with many expressions lying somewhere between these opposites. This, at any rate, is the view that underlies the notion of gram-matical…
Generics
There is a fairly general tendency to analyse generic statements as referring to the entities that are commonly identified as “kinds”. Apart from the fact that, thus far, none of these analyses have proven to be satisfactory, there always remains the problem of explaining what a kind is. I propose, instead, to do away with kinds altogether, and to regard generics as expressing stereotypical assumptions. Although, at the moment, I have just the br…
Cleft and Pseudo-Cleft Constructions in English
Dynamic semantics vs DRT
L'A. propose une etude critique de la semantique dynamique, en se referant plus particulierement a l'approche developpee par Heim, Barwise, Groenendijk et Stokhof. Sa critique se base sur le fait que l'un des principaux tenants de la semantique dynamique, selon lequel certains effets de l'ordre lineaire sont encodes dans la signification lexicale des conjonctions de coordination, et notamment dans celle de et, est peu plausible et conduit a faire…
The Mechanisms of Denial
Normally, the negation of a sentence S serves to reverse the assertion that S would have made, and does not affect other types of information S would have conveyed, such as presuppositions, implicatures, and so on. Occasionally, however, it seems as if negation is directed precisely at presuppositions, implicatures, or even at purely formal aspects of a sentence (such as intonation, pronunciation, and so on). The following are cases in point: Mar…
Semantics in Generative Grammar
Function or fashion? Reply to Martin Haspelmath
n Contains fulltext :\n 131009.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
Explaining grammaticalization (the standard way)
Since nobody knows how to draw the line between lexical expressions and grammatical devices, it is natural to suppose that, in some sense, the tran-sition from lexicon to grammar is a gradual one. There is a continuum, it seems, bounded by purely lexical items on one end and purely grammatical items on the other, with many expressions lying somewhere between these opposites. This, at any rate, is the view that underlies the notion of gram-matical…
Indefinites and Choice Functions
Linguistic Inquiry - Volume 31, Number 4, Fall 2000
Specifics
In all these examples there appears to be mismatch between the position at which an indefinite appears and its preferred interpretation. Following many of the more recent contributions to the literature, I will assume that this is the hallmark of specificity (e.g. Ahusch 1994, Reinhart 1997, Winter 1997, van Geenhoven 1998). Such mismatches are not the norm: indefinites are often interpreted in situ, and there is some reason for taking this to be…
Semantics as lexicography
Over the past few decades, the interpretation of language has gradually come to be accepted as a subject deserving its own academic regalia, such as conferences, journals, and university chairs. The definition of the emerging field of inquiry is, as yet, very moot. It is not even decided that it is a single field, rather than several related ones, and whether it (or they) should be subsumed under linguistics, psychology, or somewhere else. But th…
Interpreting focus
n Contains fulltext :\n 59973.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
Interpreting focus again
Entertaining Alternatives: Disjunctions as Modals
Really fucking brilliant
The title of this note has a two-tiered interpretation. On the “use” level, it expresses my admiration for the ingenuity and elegance of Christopher Potts's paper, which is not diminished by the fact that I disagree with him practically across the board. On the “mention” level, my title denotes the key phrase in Potts's example (2), which will figure rather prominently in the following remarks
At least et al: The semantic of scalar modifiers
On the naive account of scalar modifiers like more than and at least, At least three girls snored is synonymous with More than two girls snored, and both sentences mean that the number of snoring girls exceeded two (the same, mutatis mutandis, for sentences with at most and less/fewer than). We show that this is false and propose an alternative theory, according to which superlative modifiers (at least/most) are quite different from comparative o…
Background Materials for "Embedded implicatures?!?"
Background materials for "Embedded implicatures?!?"
Embedded implicatures
Over the last decade, various proposals have been made for supplanting the classical Gricean theory of scalar implicature with conventionalist (i.e. lexicalist or syntax-based) treatments. In contradistinction to the classical view, conventionalist theories predict that scalar inferences occur systematically and freely in embedded positions. We present experimental evidence that disproves this prediction, arguing along the way that there are rath…
Free choice for all: A response to Emmanuel Chemla
Chemla (2009) presents experimental data purporting to show that speakers’ intuitions about so-called “embedded implicatures” cause trouble for globalist and localist theories alike. We explain, to begin with, that the way Chemla frames the debate between localists and globalists fails to do justice to the latter. Then we turn to his experimental data, and argue that, while of half of them strengthen our own case against localism (Geurts & Pousco…
Quantity Implicatures
In recent years, quantity implicatures - a type of pragmatic inference - have been widely debated in linguistics, philosophy, and psychology, and have been subject to an enormous variety of analyses, ranging from lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic, to various hybrid accounts. In this first book-length discussion of the topic, Bart Geurts presents a theory of quantity implicatures that is resolutely pragmatic, arguing that the orthodox Gr…
Embedded scalars
For over a decade, the interpretation of scalar expressions under embedding has been a much debated issue, with proposed accounts ranging from strictly pragmatic, on one end of the spectrum, to lexico-syntactic, on the other. There has been some confusion as to what exactly the controversy is about, and we argue that what is at stake is the division of labour between pragmatic and truth-conditional mechanisms. All parties to the debate agree that…
Scalar Diversity
We present experimental evidence showing that there is considerable variation between the rates at which scalar expressions from different lexical scales give rise to upper-bounded construals. We investigated two factors that might explain the variation between scalar expressions: first, the availability of the lexical scales, which we measured on the basis of association strength, grammatical class, word frequencies and semantic relatedness, and…
Fictional Commitments
n Contains fulltext :\n 195851.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
Communication as commitment sharing: Speech acts, implicatures, common ground
The main tenet of this paper is that human communication is first and foremost a matter of negotiating commitments, rather than one of conveying intentions, beliefs, and other mental states. Every speech act causes the speaker to become committed to the hearer to act on a propositional content. Hence, commitments are relations between speakers, hearers, and propositions. Their purpose is to enable speakers and hearers to coordinate their actions:…
Commitments continued
n Contains fulltext :\n 206383.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)\n
Joint attention and perceptual experience
Joint attention customarily refers to the coordinated focus of attention between two or more individuals on a common object or event, where it is mutually “open” to all attenders that they are so engaged. We identify two broad approaches to analyse joint attention, one in terms of cognitive notions like common knowledge and common awareness, and one according to which joint attention is fundamentally a primitive phenomenon of sensory experience. …
Philosophy (21 works) · Linguistics (20 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (16 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (8 works) · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis (7 works) · Mathematics (7 works) · Artificial Intelligence (5 works)