Epistemics in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge John Heritage, UCLA

A Basic Problem in Action Ascription: Giving vs. requesting information

A Basic Problem in Action Ascription: Giving vs. requesting information Polar questions can be produced in declarative form (Quirk et al 1975 )

A Basic Problem in Action Ascription: Giving vs. requesting information Polar questions can be produced in declarative form (Quirk et al 1975 ) 'Declarative questions' comprise a majority of questions in English conversation (Stivers 2010)

A Basic Problem in Action Ascription: Giving vs. requesting information Polar questions can be produced in declarative form (Quirk et al 1975 ) 'Declarative questions' comprise a majority of questions in English conversation (Stivers 2010) 16% of the world's languages lack interrogative morphosyntax to index polar requests for information (Dryer 2008)

A Basic Problem in Action Ascription: Giving vs. requesting information Polar questions can be produced in declarative form (Quirk et al 1975 ) 'Declarative questions' comprise a majority of questions in English conversation (Stivers 2010) 16% of the world's languages lack interrogative morphosyntax to index polar requests for information (Dryer 2008) Solution to the problem of which declaratives assert information and which declaratives request information is unlikely to be found in linguistic form.

WHAT ABOUT INTONATION? Final Rising intonation is said to index questioning in declarative utterances But!!!. The issue is far from conclusive1 And!!!

1. Geluykens, Ronald (1988). "On the myth of rising intonation in polar questions." Journal of Pragmatics 12: 467-485. Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth. In press. Some truths and untruths about prosody in English question and answer sequences In Questions, ed. J. P. de Ruiter. CUP.)

WHAT ABOUT INTONATION? Final Rising intonation is said to index questioning in declarative utterances But!!!. The issue is far from conclusive.1 And!!! Final rising intonation is also said to index continuation .

1. Geluykens, Ronald (1988). "On the myth of rising intonation in polar questions." Journal of Pragmatics 12: 467-485. Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth. In press. Some truths and untruths about prosody in English question and answer sequences In Questions, ed. J. P. de Ruiter. CUP.)

WHAT ABOUT INTONATION? Final Rising intonation is said to index questioning in declarative utterances But!!!. The issue is far from conclusive.1 And!!! Final rising intonation is also said to index continuation . And!!! to mobilize response (Stivers and Rossano 2010)

1. Geluykens, Ronald (1988). "On the myth of rising intonation in polar questions." Journal of Pragmatics 12: 467-485. Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth. In press. Some truths and untruths about prosody in English question and answer sequences In Questions, ed. J. P. de Ruiter. CUP.)

Epistemics: Background Bolinger (1957) blinds up/blinds down negative interrogatives A-events and B-events (Labov and Fanshel 1977) Type 1 and Type 2 Knowables (Pomerantz 1980) 'Territories of Information' (Kamio 1997)

Epistemic Status: Epistemic status involves relative epistemic access to a domain of information, stratified between interactants such that they occupy more knowledgeable [K+] or less knowledgeable [K-] positions vis a vis the information domain. 1) Inherently relative to a co-participant 2) Varies by domain of knowledge 3) Can be based in experience or social rights (or both) 4) Is a more or less settled matter

Speaker Domain

!"#$%$"&' Domain

Epistemic Stance: The moment by moment expression of epistemic status, as indexed through the design of turns at talk.

Epistemic Stance: The moment by moment expression of epistemic status, as indexed through the design of turns at talk. Persons design turns at talk to take up epistemic stances which are congruent or incongruent with their epistemic status

Declarative

Speaker Domain

= Assertion

Ex. 1

Declarative

Recipient Domain

= "Question"

Ex. 2

Declarative

Recipient Domain

= "Question"

Ex. 3: Type 2 knowable (Pomerantz 1980)

Speaker Hearer 1 ------|--------------------------- 0 1 --------------------|------------- 0 (Kamio, 1997))

Declarative

Recipient Domain

= "Question"

Ex. 4: My side telling (Pomerantz 1980)

Speaker Hearer 1 ------|--------------------------- 0 1 --------------------|------------- 0 (Kamio, 1997))

Negative Interrogative

Recipient Domain

= "Question"

Ex. 5, line 11

Common Domain

= Assertion

Negative Interrogative

Ex. 6

Common Domain

= Assertion

Negative Interrogative

Ex. 7, lines 7 and 8

Common Domain

= Assertion

Negative Interrogative

Ex. 8

Interrogative

Recipient Domain

= "Question"

Ex. 9

Speaker Domain

= Rhetorical Question

Interrogative

Ex. 10

Speaker Domain

= Exam Question

Interrogative

Ex. 11

Speaker Domain

= Unanswerable Question

Interrogative

Ex. 12

AMBIGUITIES

Declarative

Speaker/Common Domain

= Question or Assertion

Ex. 13 IE begins by treating the declarative content as known in common before, the frame leads him to doubt it.

AMBIGUITIES

Declarative

Speaker/Recipient Domain

= Question or Assertion

Ex. 14 B begins by treating the information as within his domain and corrects it. A then treats the information as within her domain and corrects B.

AMBIGUITIES

Speaker/Recipient Domain

= Question or Assertion

Interrogative

Ex. 15 Russ treats Mom interrogative as a pre-sequence that clears the way for her to convey information within her domain. His goahead founders when Moms response reveals that her initial interrogative was a real question.

Consequences: 1) Epistemic status dominates morphosyntax and intonation in shaping a fundamental dimension of social action: whether it asserts or requests information.

Consequences: 1) Epistemic status dominates morphosyntax and intonation in shaping a fundamental dimension of social action: whether it asserts or requests information. 2) Morphosyntax provides general guidance that is reliable in interrogatives, less so in declaratives, but is not definitive in either case.

Consequences: 1) Epistemic status dominates morphosyntax and intonation in shaping a fundamental dimension of social action: whether it asserts or requests information. 2) Morphosyntax provides general guidance that is reliable in interrogatives, less so in declaratives, but is not definitive in either case. 3) Role of intonation is limited, and intonation is largely 'released' as a resource for response mobilization (Stivers and Rossano 2010).

Consequences: 1) Epistemic status dominates morphosyntax and intonation in shaping a fundamental dimension of social action: whether it asserts or requests information. 2) Morphosyntax provides general guidance that is reliable in interrogatives, less so in declaratives, but is not definitive in either case. 3) Role of intonation is limited, and intonation is largely 'released' as a resource for response mobilization (Stivers and Rossano 2010). 4) Persons cannot 'code' many (a majority of?) utterances into actions without keeping track of the relative epistemic status of speaker and addressee at all times.

Consequences: 1) Epistemic status dominates morphosyntax and intonation in shaping a fundamental dimension of social action: whether it asserts or requests information. 2) Morphosyntax provides general guidance that is reliable in interrogatives, less so in declaratives, but is not definitive in either case. 3) Role of intonation is limited, and intonation is largely 'released' as a resource for response mobilization (Stivers and Rossano 2010). 4) Persons cannot 'code' many (a majority of?) utterances into actions without keeping track of the relative epistemic status of speaker and addressee at all times. 5) Epistemic status is an unavoidable and fundamental input for models of the production and recognition of action.

Consequences: How costly is all this? 1) Deploys a strategy found in other aspects of language use notably the lexicon: save resources at the encoding end and let the environment take care of ambiguities and specifications.

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Consequences: How costly is all this? 1) Deploys a strategy found in other aspects of language use notably the lexicon: save resources at the encoding end and let the environment take care of ambiguities and specifications. 2) Cost at the decoding end is an epistemic ticker possibly exapted from forms of epistemic vigilance that originally had, and may still have, more direct value for biological fitness (Sperber et al 2010). May be part of a broader trend associated with group expansion (Dunbar 2003).

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Consequences: How costly is all this? 1) Deploys a strategy found in other aspects of language use notably the lexicon: save resources at the encoding end and let the environment take care of ambiguities and specifications. 2) Cost at the decoding end is an epistemic ticker possibly exapted from forms of epistemic vigilance that originally had, and may still have, more direct value for biological fitness (Sperber et al 2010). May be part of a broader trend associated with group expansion (Dunbar 2003). 3) Environmental knowledge is a given and therefore free from the point of view of language function.

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Consequences: How costly is all this? 1) Deploys a strategy found in other aspects of language use notably the lexicon: save resources at the encoding end and let the environment take care of ambiguities and specifications. 2) Cost at the decoding end is an epistemic ticker possibly exapted from forms of epistemic vigilance that originally had, and may still have, more direct value for biological fitness (Sperber et al 2010). May be part of a broader trend associated with group expansion (Dunbar). 3) Environmental knowledge is a given and therefore free from the point of view of language function. 4) Other costs are small compared with the well documented cognitive gymnastics of languages deploying cardinal points of the compass for orientation (e.g. Guugu Yimithirr) or that obligatorily mark the relative closeness (whether physical or social) of referents between speaker and recipient (e.g., Korean).

Thank you!

heritage@ucla.edu (

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