Copredication in Context: A Predictive Processing Approach

Abstract

We propose a cognitive-psychological model of linguistic intuitions about copredication statements. In copredication statements, like “The book is heavy and informative,” the nominal denotes two ontologically distinct entities at the same time. This has been considered a problem for standard truth-conditional semantics. In this paper, we discuss two questions that have so far received less attention: What kinds of word representations and cognitive mechanisms are responsible for judgments about the felicitousness of copredication statements? Relatedly, why can similar copredication statements have different degrees of felicitousness? We first propose a cognitive-computational model of copredication within the predictive processing framework. We then suggest that certain asymmetries in felicitousness judgments can be modeled in terms of a set of expectations that are influenced by higher-order priors associated with discourse context and world knowledge.