--- abstract: 'The central problem for pragmatics is that sentence meaning vastly underdetermines speaker’s meaning. The goal of pragmatics is to explain how the gap between sentence meaning and speaker’s meaning is bridged. This paper defends the broadly Gricean view that pragmatic interpretation is ultimately an exercise in mind-reading, involving the inferential attribution of intentions. We argue, however, that the interpretation process does not simply consist in applying general mind-reading abilities to a particular (communicative) domain. Rather, it involves a dedicated comprehension module, with its own special principles and mechanisms. We show how such a metacommunicative module might have evolved, and what principles and mechanisms it might contain.' altloc: - http://www.dan.sperber.com/pragmatics-modularity-and-mindreading.htm chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: ~ conference: ~ confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: [] creators_name: - family: Sperber given: Dan honourific: '' lineage: '' - family: Wilson given: Deirdre honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 2001 date_type: published datestamp: 2002-01-13 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/20/32 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 2032 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/text_html.png;/2032/1/pragmatics%2Dmodularity%2Dand%2Dmindreading.htm full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: ~ issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: 'cognition an communication, theory of mind, mind-reading, mindreading, modularity, evolutionary psychology, evolution of language, linguistics, philosophy of language, pragmatics, psychology, relevance, relevance theory' lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:52 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: ~ pagerange: ~ pubdom: FALSE publication: ~ publisher: ~ refereed: TRUE referencetext: |+ Astington, J., Harris, P. and Olson, D. 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