Scenario-Building in Linguistic Understanding
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Abstract
Navigating the impasse between rule-based literalism and radical contextualism, this article addresses a central challenge for both: explaining how speakers effortlessly understand deviant or novel utterances. It proposes a scenario-building model that treats understanding as a dynamic, collaborative process in which linguistic conventions function as scaffolding for the joint construction of plausible interpretive scenarios. By integrating insights from the epistemology of understanding, the model seeks to demonstrate that communicative success is a matter of degree, determined by the overlap between the scenarios constructed by speakers and hearers and by successful intention recognition. This provides a structured framework for modeling partial understanding and communicative alignment.
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