Abstract
Theoretical accounts of imprecision (e.g., saying that a line is straight when it is not 'perfectly' straight) claim that this is a type of pragmatic adjustment licensed by context. However, it is unclear how this adjustment translates to online sentence processing: Does it require more mental effort to understand imprecise relative to precise usages of the word 'straight'? In this talk I will present evidence from pupillometry in support of theoretical accounts of the pragmatics of imprecision. I will also discuss possible linking hypotheses between pupil dilation and pragmatic language processing with the goal of better understanding the temporal dynamics of lexical pragmatic processing.
Biography
Camilo is a post-doctoral researcher at UiO working in Experimental Pragmatics. He is interested in exploring the links between theoretical and empirical work for pragmatic phenomena such as metaphor, irony, imprecision, expressives, among others.