CHAPTER I-V - Digilib UIN Malang

assumptions about the hearer’s cognitive abilities and contextual resources. This
will necessarily be reflected in the way she communicated, and in particular in
what she chooses to make explicit or what she chooses to leave implicit. 14
Third, however apparently grammaticalized linguistic structure may be,
utterances are, as we have seen, radically under-determined. So a single semantic
relation may represent a very wide range of logical and semantic relations. Even
the determination of sense requires an inferential process. 15
Fourth, once the proportional form of an utterance has been fully
elaborated. The utterance may be regarded as a premise. Which, taken together
with other, non-linguistic premises available to the hearer as contextual resources.
Enable him to deduce the relevant understanding. 16
Fifth, the most accessible interpretation is the most relevant. This is an
important notion because it enables us to discriminate in a principled way, i.e.: by
taking into account the degree of processing effort, between the various inferences
which, time allowing, we might recover. Hence there is a trade off between
relevant and processing effort; ‘an assumption is relevant to an individual to the
extent that the positive cognitive effect achieved when it is optimally processed
are large (Sperber and Wilson in Grundy), (Positive cognitive effects, are changes
in beliefs resulting from new information being added). Thus the greater the effect
of an utterance the more relevant it is.
14 Ibid, 2000;106
15 Ibid, 2000;106
16 Ibid, 2000: 106