Seeing clearly: Frame Semantic, Psycholinguistic, and Cross ...

CHAPTER 3. OTHER COGNITIVE APPROACHES 117
(with luck, the same as the intended message) in conceptual space. Then, depending on the
degree to which theseer believes the content to be true, a state of a airs (SOA') is set up
in conceptual space (the correspondence between the message and the believed SOA' is the
dashed line inside conceptual space). The usual default mapping into base space causes us
to set up the both physical news medium and the state of a airs depicted by it in base space.
The conceptual space is foregrounded; the visual percept is backgrounded and consequently
less speci c. (I have symbolized this by the dashed circle around the perceptual space.)
read is in some ways similar to news, except that there is a restriction that the
physical source of the image is a text, and the type of processing from percept to conceptual
space can be speci ed as reading. Depending on the nature of the writing, there may or
may not be any other entities set up in conceptual space or base space. Here base space
is foregrounded, so that the object of see is the text. Consider the di erences among the
following:
(1) a. ?I saw theChronicle this morning. read
b. I see that there's going to be a parade today. news
c. IsawintheChronicle this morning that there's going to be a parade today.
news
Ex. (1-a) presupposes that the seer read at least the usual portion of the newspaper, but
has nothing to say about whether he or she believed anything written there. Ex. (1-b) talks
only about the concept; it would be most appropriate when the source of the concept is
either known from context (e.g. the newspaper is in front of the speaker).
Ex. (1-c) foregrounds the concept (assumed to be true) and also gives the source,
perhaps by way of corroboration; a mental spaces diagram for this would add the Chronicle
to the base and perceptual spaces, with an in relation between the Chronicle and the article
in both spaces.
Note that Ex. (1-a) is marginal for some speakers, probably because of the di culty
of knowing how much of the newspaper the speaker is claiming to have read. On the other
hand, the negative Ex. (2-a) and the question Ex. (2-b) are ne, since the hearer doesn't
need to estimate the portion read. Because of this uncertainty, in reply to the question, a
\no" is acceptable, but a simple \yes" Ex. (2-c) is too little to satisfy the Maxim of Quantity
(Grice 1975; Grice 1978). A cooperative responsemust further specify the amount read, as