认知负荷与预设失灵

The cognitive load of presupposition triggers: mandatory and optional repairs in presupposition failure

---

摘要

If a speaker utters a sentence \(p\) containing a presupposition trigger that activates a presupposition \(q\), and \(q\) does not belong to the common ground of presuppositions, it is a case of presupposition failure. If this occurs, speakers are required to repair the failure to make sense of the utterance.
According to Glanzberg, two subcategories of being infelicitous may emerge in the case of presupposition failure:

• one is that strong presuppositions lead to obligatoryrepair,
• and the other is that weak presuppositions lead only to an optional repair.

Following Glanzberg’s suggestion,in this paper we present the results of an experiment supporting the idea that, depending on the kind of trigger,processing the information conveyed by a presupposition can be either optional or mandatory in case of presupposition failure.

The conclusion of this paper is that the cognitive demands of different presupposition triggers do not primarily depend on whether they optionally or obligatorily lead to process the presuppositions activated.Rather, their cognitive demands seem to be related with the complexity of the mental representation of the presupposition required.

Keywords: experimental pragmatics; presuppositions; presupposition triggers; cognitive load

---

---

Outline

本文将分三个环节进行讲述：

• 文章的研究主题与相关知识术语的介绍
• 对实验设计的理解
• 对实验结果的分析讨论

---

讨论的主要对象

Presupposition

如何在 Semantic 的角度理解 预设？

Examples:

1. My wife is in Paris.
   • 预设：I have a wife.
   • 原句的反面：My wife is not in Paris.
   • 仍然有相同的预设：I have a wife.
2. The present Kind of France is bald.
   • 预设：There is currently a King of France.
   • 预设失灵：But France has no king!

Properties of presuppositions:

• 预设并不会因为否定而关闭
  • \(\therefore p\) presupposes \(q\) if
    • when \(p\) is true, so is \(q\)
    • when \(p\) is false, q is still true
    • when \(q\) is true, \(p\) could be ether true or false
• 预设是会失灵的
  • Presupposition failure if
    • the use of \(p\) would be inappropriate
    • \(q\) did not belong to the background of common presuppositions in a conversation.
• 预设会在表达中被触发
  • Presupposition trigger
    • syntactic construction or a lexical item
• 预设非常敏感
  • Strongly sensitive to linguistic context

Interim Summary

上面我们了解到 Presupposition trigger 是触发预设的关键，那么问题就在于当 Presupposition failure 发生时，是否必须修复这个失误（也就是重新分析处理预设带来的信息）取决于什么？

• 论文的出发点是 Presupposition trigger 的不同分类

Aimed at evaluating the idea that:

depending on the kind of trigger contained in an utterance, processing the information conveyed by a presupposition can be either optional or mandatory in case of presupposition failure.

---

Presupposition Trigger

介绍后面实验中将涉及的几种预设触发器：

首先解释 Update Instruction：

\[{c[\downarrow x(x=p)] = \begin{cases} c, &if c \subseteq p \cr fail, &otherwise\end{cases}}\]

也就是检测在一个上下文环境 \(c\) 中，是否明确的包含了命题 \(p\) 。定义这个操作的目的是作为对预设触发器进行分类的标准。

• Definite Description 确定性描述

  • The king of Sweden ...
  • This cat ...
  • 包含 the, this, that 等词，意味着某种存在定义。

• Change of state verbs 状态变化动词

  • John stopped /didn’t stop beating his wife.
  • \(>>\) John had been beating his wife.
  • 包含 stop, continue, keep, arrive, begin, come等关键词。

• Focus sensitive particles 焦点敏感粒子

  • John only drinks whískey.
  • John only introduced BíllF’s mother to Sue.
  • 包含only等词，带有焦点敏感词的表达。

• Factive Verbs 述实动词/事实动词

  • She didn't realize he was ill. \(>>\) He was ill.
  • We regret telling him. \(>>\) We told him.
  • I wasn't aware that she was married. \(>>\) She was married
  • 包含realize，regret，aware 等含有 “factive component”的表达方式。

• Iteratives 反复

  • He came again.
  • 包含again, anymore,return等带有多次重复行为语义的词。

分类

• Weak presuppositions
  • Focus sensitive particles 焦点敏感粒子
  • Iteratives 反复
• Strong presuppositions
  • Definite Description 确定性描述
  • Change of state verbs 状态变化动词
  • Factive Verbs 述实动词/事实动词

---

实验

实验目的

• First Goal
  • 强弱预设是否与触发器的类别相关
• Further Goal
  • 不同类的触发器所导致的认知负荷的情况

实验方式

• 参与者需要进行两个任务
  • First： 听音频资料然后回答问题
  • Second：在实验前给参与者看几个图形，需要保持对图形的记忆

具体的四个实验阶段从下图可见：

任务一：听音频回答问题

• 音频的内容
  • 5 段音频， 平均每段 52’’
  • 每段音频讲述的是虚构的关于日常生活的情景
    • 减少不同参与者不同的背景知识造成的差异
  • 每段音频都有5类上面提到的触发器，且分布均匀

下面是触发器分布情况图：

• 问题的设置
  • 5个目标问题，不能直接从原文得到描述由于测试触发器的效果
  • 5个补充问题，在原文中直接出现，用于测试参与者是否理解原文
  • 所有的问题都是True-False回答
  • 将所有目标问题的答案都选为True，将所有补充问题的答案都选为False，从而来平衡这些问题。

下图是问题的示例：

任务二：记忆图形

• 在听的过程中通过记忆图形来增加大脑的负荷
• 参与者分成A，B两组
  • A 组只需要记忆一个多边形
  • B 组需要记忆三个多边形
• 对于图形的出现采用特殊的随机策略，减少参与者产生的记忆学习策略

实验变量

• 实验设置
  • 实验中的5类触发器
  • 给用户的干扰等级
• 实验结果
  • 对于问题的回答正确率
    • FACTOR 1： 在某些种类的触发器考察问题下是否更易犯错
    • FACTOR 2： A,B两组在各个种类触发器考察问题是的平均表现情况
• 实验有效性
  • 补充问题的回答情况
  • 图形记忆情况

实验方案评估

• 保证参与的 mental presentation 处理进程
  • 虽然不能确保参与者完全 accommodate 实验中提及的一些假设
  • 但是能够保证参与者需要通过内部思想上的处理去判断问题
• 实验结果反映的有效性
  • 关于 weak presuppositions 方面
    • 可能会是 optional processing， 但是另一方面可能会造成正确率不够
    • 所以可选性可以与结果的正确率结合起来

实验结果处理

• 有效实验结果筛选

  • 在多边形记忆方面的正确率不够的参与者数据排除在外
  • 在补充问题中错误较多的也排除在外

• 实验数据处理

  • 针对每个目标问题求解正确率的均值和标准差
  • 根据结果对触发器进行重新分类，然后对比

• 实验的结果如下：
  

• 分类结果
  

实验结果的分析讨论

• 数据展示的结果

  • RESULT 1： 对于每组问题的正确率确实与最初的分类有关，可以从图上看出。且在A,B 组实验中有相似的正确率（同高同底）
  • RESULT 2： 实验正确率可以分成三类，可以表示预设被分析的频率
  • RESULT 3： 在A，B组的实验中，可见DD,FC,FV的变化不大，所以他们对于认知的负荷不大。

• 总体结论：

Our conclusion is that the update instructions of a certain category of triggers (i.e. whether they require optional or mandatory processing of the information conveyed by the presuppositions required) do not primarily affect the cognitive demands involved in processing the presupposed contents.

Rather, the cognitive efforts seem to be related primarily to the complexity of the process of mentally representing the content of the presupposition triggered.

参考文献

[1] The cognitive load of presupposition triggers: mandatory and optional repairs in presupposition failure
[2] http://wenku.baidu.com/link?url=Km3ghJ5gPew8X2Dhn5-WIddi7I3jsnJPkngWmcXojjl7AtO0gpXT4yAM0hBGlVHUsKKKjmsxHSEgzd-NtOrTY1GWVKHVz8cPPby6qOONQCO