A miscommunication may be said to take place when there is a mismatch
between the speaker's intention and the hearer's interpretation. When two
persons do communicate successfully. it is clear that much more is involved
than the mapping of internal structures (or linguistic rules) on to external
sequences. or conversely (from the listener's point of view). mapping
external sequences on to internal structures (Bever. 1970. p. 286). A
number of perceptual strategies or .. short-cuts .. appear to be implemented
by a listener in decoding utterances. and it is probably most sensible to adopt
for the moment Aitchison's notion of a person's grammar as a ''linguistic
archive··. available and ready for consultation in interpreting utterances. but
not necessarily consulted. Thus. a sentence like the following is difficult to
comprehend. although it is perfectly grammatical:
The pig pushed in front of the piglets ate all the food.