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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
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    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The defeasibility of discourse-relation inferences is better explained by pragmatic cancellability than by a distinct linguistic module.

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Discourse relations exhibit structural properties (binding constraints, island effects) characteristic of linguistic modules, not pragmatics.
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    • 2.Some discourse inferences are automatic and pre-conscious, resisting the deliberative cancellation characteristic of pragmatic reasoning.
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    • 3.Pragmatic accounts struggle to explain why certain discourse relations are strongly preferred regardless of speaker communicative goals.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Discourse inferences show the same cancellation patterns as scalar implicatures, which are paradigmatically pragmatic phenomena.
      ?

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    • 2.Positing a dedicated linguistic module for discourse relations multiplies theoretical entities beyond what empirical evidence requires.
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    • 3.Pragmatic accounts explain why discourse inferences vary with context, speaker intentions, and listener expectations uniformly.
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