Testing pragmatic accounts of complex linguistic constraints
If a speaker says “John said that he was tired”, “he” probably means “John”. But if a speaker says “He said that John was tired”, “he” cannot mean “John”.
In this work package we used behavioural experiments and computational modelling to build and test a pragmatic account which explains both why languages have these types of restrictions and how children come to learn them.
Project Team: Ben Ambridge (lead), Liam Blything, Silke Brandt, Anna Theakston
Duration: 3 years, starting March 2021
Project Number: 2.1
Key Outputs
Blything, L., Theakston, A., Brandt, S., & Ambridge, B. (2025). Easy as ABC. Functional-pragmatic factors explain “binding-principle” constraints on pronoun interpretation: Evidence from nine pre-registered rating studies. Cognitive Psychology, 158, Article 101733