In this paper, we compare the comprehension of the speech act meaning of non-canonical speech acts (i.e., rhetorical questions and surprise-disapproval questions) with the comprehension of indirect speech acts (i.e., indirect requests). Both speech act types are ‘mixed’ in the sense that they involve secondary and primary illocutionary forces, but our hypothesis is that they differ in their degree of how salient their primary illocutionary force is: On the one hand, the primary illocution is signaled by non-contextual cues (non-canonical speech acts); on the other hand, it is derived via pragmatic inferencing (indirect speech acts). We thus expect their comprehension processes to be different. We conducted a judgment experiment to test whether both speech act types differ regarding how accurate the primary illocutionary force is identified and regarding how fast that force can be identified. Our results suggest that non-canonical speech acts and indirect speech acts are indeed two distinct pragmatic and psychological phenomena: While non-canonical speech acts are more accurately identified with their primary illocutionary force than indirect speech acts, participants need more time to perform this identification for non-canonical speech acts than for indirect speech acts. Our findings shed new light on the mapping between linguistic form and illocutionary force and on the pragmatic typology of speech acts in general.

中文翻译：

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理解德语中的非规范和间接言语行为

在本文中，我们将非规范言语行为（即反问句和惊讶不赞成问题）的言语行为意义的理解与间接言语行为（即间接请求）的理解进行了比较。两种言语行为类型都是“混合”的，因为它们都涉及次要和主要的言外行为力量，但我们的假设是，它们的主要言外行为力量的显着程度不同：一方面，主要的言外行为由非上下文线索（非规范言语行为）；另一方面，它是通过语用推理（间接言语行为）得出的。因此，我们预计他们的理解过程会有所不同。我们进行了一项判断实验，以测试两种言语行为类型在识别主要言外力量的准确性以及识别该力量的速度方面是否存在差异。我们的结果表明，非规范言语行为和间接言语行为确实是两种不同的语用和心理现象：虽然非规范言语行为比间接言语行为更能准确地识别其主要言外之力，但参与者需要更多时间来执行这种识别对于非规范言语行为比间接言语行为更重要。我们的研究结果为语言形式和言外之力之间的映射以及一般言语行为的语用类型学提供了新的线索。