Investigating the causal link between context triggers and context: An adaptive approach

Abstract

This paper focuses on the relation between certain linguistic elements (‘context triggers’) and the set of assumptions they provide access to, which is necessary to the interpretation of their host utterances. The question it seeks to address is how to go about investigating that relation, which it takes to be causal, but to involve elements pertaining to two levels of description that do not appear to interface, namely, the linguistic level and that of underlying processes and mental representations. Such question can be divided into two sub-questions: one about what might be a suitable approach, the other, about the type of trigger that provides an optimal point of departure. In terms of approach I favor an adaptive one, as it contains the rationale for linking those two levels, and provides the mediating structures and systems to implement that linkage. With regard to the optimal types of trigger, I argue that they are to be found at the discourse level. The ones I will be discussing have contents that bear a strong resemblance to presumed lower-level analogues.