Exploring the neurophysiological underpinnings of conversational implicature processing in Korean

초록

Conversational implicature involves recovering speaker-intended meaning beyond an utterance's literal content. This study examined the neural time course of pragmatic inference in Korean using event-related potentials (ERPs). Across four conditions, such as Direct Answer (DA), Moderately Implicit (MI), Highly Implicit (HI), and Unrelated Answer (UA), an offline norming study confirmed a graded appropriateness pattern (DA > MI > HI > UA). In the ERP experiment (N = 28), participants read dialogue pairs via rapid serial visual presentation. Reaction times were longer for MI and HI, reflecting greater processing demands. Three ERP effects emerged: (1) an N400 (300–450 ms) at the first word in HI, reflecting an unbridged referent cost; (2) a frontal P600 (450–600 ms) at the sentence-final predicate in HI, indexing implicature derivation; and (3) in UA, an N400 at the second word and a late left-anterior negativity (600–800 ms) at sentence-final predicate, reflecting semantic/pragmatic violation at the early stage and failed pragmatic repair. MI and DA showed no reliable ERP differences. These results support a model in which pragmatic inference engages both semantic integration (N400) and higher-order meaning construction (frontal P600).

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