ABSTRACT

Accounts of language comprehension have long recognized that language is inherently underdetermined—the meaning of a statement or other instance of spoken or written language is necessarily less than or potentially different from the reasonably predictable intended comprehended meaning of a use of that language by a speaker or a writer, for a hearer(s) or a reader(s), in a context. Processes such as referential assignment, ambiguity resolution, inference generation, and others nearly always take place in language comprehension and result in intended comprehended meanings that go far beyond language meanings. Indeed, even relatively straightforward, veridical language (e.g., the oft used, “The cat is on the mat”) is at best a skeleton of the meaning comprehended from that language by a hearer or reader in a real-world context.