BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Pragmatic me\, pragmatic you: the development of informativeness f
 rom a speaker's and a comprehender's perspective - Dr. Napoleon Katsos\, R
 esearch Centre for English and Applied Linguistics\, Cambridge
DTSTART:20080620T120000Z
DTEND:20080620T130000Z
UID:TALK12023@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Bhismadev Chakrabarti
DESCRIPTION:It’s not enough to tell the truth\, if it is not the whole t
 ruth. But how do young children come to master this conversational princip
 le? One way of looking into this question is by studying whether children 
 reject other people’s utterances that contain only some of the informati
 on that they could have communicated. Another way of looking into this que
 stion is by studying whether children themselves give all the information 
 that they should give. These two paradigms address the twin aspects of the
  same pragmatic skill\, informativeness\, that is\, the ability to estimat
 e how much information should be communicated in a situation\, from a comp
 rehender’s and a speaker’s perspective respectively. \nTo the best of 
 our knowledge\, the two aspects of informativeness have not been investiga
 ted in combination\, and their developmental trajectory is not established
 . We present a number of studies that look into both aspects of informativ
 eness within the same population of 5-\, 7-\, 9-\, and 11-year old typical
 ly-developing English-speaking children\, as well as an adult control grou
 p. \nIn this presentation we will pay particular attention to cases where 
 partial information is given (a) in circumstances of knowledge of the outc
 ome\, in which case partial information is indeed under-informative\, and 
 (b) in circumstances of uncertainty and ignorance (as when one makes a bet
  or a guess when they do not know the outcome of a story). We will see tha
 t participants do take the knowledge state of the interlocutor into accoun
 t when judging if an utterance is under-informative or not. We will explor
 e the implications of this research for investigations into populations wi
 th a language and/or a theory-of-mind deficit. 
LOCATION:Large Meeting Room (groundfloor)\, Douglas House\, 18 B\, Trumpin
 gton Road
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR