There can often be a gap between what someone says (their utterance), and what they mean (their communicative intention). For example, there is a subtle but very important difference between the remark “it is cold here”, uttered by a Spanish tourist on arriving in Edinburgh for the Festival, and the implicit request “it is cold here”, uttered by your office mate on entering the office, noticing the window is open, and politely suggesting you should close it.

Understanding intentions is critical to communicative success, and adult speakers can (usually!) make the required inference that they ought to shut the window in order to keep the peace. However, this ability takes some time to acquire – very small children are not able to draw this kind of inference. [Read more…]