Beyond the core networks of language

Speakers and listeners do more than exchanging propositional content. They try to get things done with their utterances. For speakers this requires planning of utterances with knowledge about the listener in mind, whereas listeners need to make inferences that go beyond simulating sensorimotor aspects of propositional content. For example, the statement "It is hot in here" will usually not be answered with a statement of the kind "Yes, indeed it is 32 degrees Celsius", but rather with the answer "I will open the window", since the listener infers the speaker's intention behind her statement. I will discuss a series of studies that identify the network of brain regions involved in audience design and inferring speaker meaning. Likewise for indirect replies that require conversational implicatures, as in A: "Did you like my talk?" to which B replies: "It is hard to give a good presentation." I will show that in these cases the core language network needs to be extended with brain systems providing the necessary inferential machiner