Putting ifs to work: goal-based relevance in conditional directives

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Linguistics
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Conditional statements are crucial for communication, guiding actions or predicting events.
• Distinguishing between directives (instructions) and indicatives (predictions) is key to understanding conditional language.
• Previous research has not fully explored the pragmatic and cognitive distinctions between these conditional types.

Purpose of the Study:

• To differentiate conditional directives from indicative conditionals in terms of their function and interpretation.
• To investigate how speakers formulate and test conditional directives based on their goals.
• To examine how the clarity of conditional directive formulations affects hearer comprehension of speaker intentions.

Main Methods:

• Two sets of experiments were conducted to analyze speaker and hearer behavior.
• Experiment 1 focused on information selection for verifying conditional directives, linking it to goal structures.
• Experiment 2 examined the impact of conditional directive formulation clarity on perceived speaker intentions and hearer understanding.

Main Results:

• Goal structures influence the information speakers use to verify conditional directives, but not their interpretation of necessity/sufficiency.
• Variations in conditional directive phrasing affect how clearly speakers convey their intentions.
• Hearers accurately interpret the intended actions from clearly formulated conditional directives.

Conclusions:

• Conditional directives and indicative conditionals serve distinct communicative functions.
• Speaker goals shape the verification process for conditional directives.
• Effective formulation of conditional directives is crucial for successful communication and accurate interpretation of intended actions.
• Findings highlight social rationality in everyday communication, expanding normative theories of conditionals.