Pragmatics and modularity: a developmental perspective

Abstract

Cognitive research on pragmatics relies on the idea that pragmatic comprehension is a matter of inferring speaker intentions. Sperber and Wilson elaborate on this idea from a modular perspective by positing the existence of a mental module dedicated to pragmatic comprehension. The purported modularity of pragmatics is debated in the contemporary landscape, but little effort has been dedicated so far to exploring the possible developmental implications of this modular view. This paper aims to fill this gap by reconciling extant findings from developmental psychology with the hypothesis of a pragmatics module for interpreting overt communicative behaviors.