Download or read book Experimental Perspectives on Presuppositions written by Florian Schwarz and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-09-12 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together some of the most recent developments in the field of experimental pragmatics, specifically empirical approaches to theoretical issues in presupposition theory. It includes studies of the online processing of presupposed content; investigations of the interpretive properties of presuppositions in various linguistic contexts; comparative perspectives relative to other aspects of meaning, such as asserted content and implicatures; cross-linguistic comparisons of presupposition triggers; and perspectives from language acquisition. Taken together, these novel contributions provide a snapshot of state-of-the art developments in this area and will serve as a point of reference for numerous emerging avenues of future work. It makes for an ideal set of readings for advanced university courses on experimental studies of meaning and is a must-read for anyone interested in experimental research on meaning in natural language.

Download or read book Presuppositions written by Robert Reinecke and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speakers communicate more than what they explicitly state. For this reason, addressees rely on linguistic and extra-linguistic cues to recover different levels of explicit and implicit meaning. Presupposition triggers are one of these cues. These are linguistic expressions or constructions (e.g. change of state verbs, factive verbs, it-clefts, etc.) which trigger the recovery of propositions that the speaker presupposes, or takes for granted, for the purpose of the conversation. This thesis investigates the phenomenon of presupposition within the framework of experimental pragmatics, and it comprises three studies based on the following experimental methods: judgement-tasks, EEG method and grip-force sensor method. This thesis combines a social perspective, which focuses on reputation-management via alternative discourse strategies (Study 1), with a cognitive perspective, which examines the cognitive costs and sensori-motor correlates associated with presupposition processing (Studies 2 and 3). Study 1 examines the impact of different discourse strategies (saying, implicating and presupposing) on the attribution of speaker commitment towards the message communicated. By operationalizing commitment as a function of the reputational cost (drop of trust) related to the transmission of false information, Study 1 shows that presupposing is perceived as equally committal than saying and more committal than implicating. Study 2 investigates the cognitive costs associated with targeting presuppositions in discourse continuations. By focusing on additive contexts introduced by the French discourse particle aussi, Study 2 shows that felicitous discourse continuations targeting a presupposition elicit the same ERP response than felicitous discourse continuations targeting an asserted context. This finding suggests that when presupposition processing is part of an appropriate, pragmatically felicitous, discourse strategy, it does not come with any additional cognitive costs. Study 3 examines the sensori-motor correlates of processing action-related language in presuppositional constructions (complement clause of factive verbs) and non-presuppositional ones (complement clause of non-factive verbs). The results show that the former elicit a greater sensori-motor activation than the latter, thus revealing that presupposed information, whose truth is taken for granted, is processed differently from information whose truth has not been established in discourse. Overall, this thesis contributes to the study of presupposition by providing empirical evidence in support of the theoretical distinction between different layers of meaning. On the one hand, it shows that their employment leads to different commitments in discourse and has implications on the interpersonal negotiation of trust. On the other hand, it shows that while presupposition processing is not inherently more costly from a cognitive perspective, its cognitive correlates (such as the engagement of the sensori-motor system) can differ from those mapping information with a different discourse status.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics written by Chris Cummins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook is the first to explore the growing field of experimental semantics and pragmatics. In the past 20 years, experimental data has become a major source of evidence for building theories of language meaning and use, encompassing a wide range of topics and methods. Following an introduction from the editors, the chapters in this volume offer an up-to-date account of research in the field spanning 31 different topics, including scalar implicatures, presuppositions, counterfactuals, quantification, metaphor, prosody, and politeness, as well as exploring how and why a particular experimental method is suitable for addressing a given theoretical debate. The volume's forward-looking approach also seeks to actively identify questions and methods that could be fruitfully combined in future experimental research. Written in a clear and accessible style, this handbook will appeal to students and scholars from advanced undergraduate level upwards in a range of fields, including semantics and pragmatics, philosophy of language, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, cognitive science, and neuroscience.

Download or read book Negation and Polarity Experimental Perspectives written by Pierre Larrivée and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers insights on experimental and empirical research in theoretical linguistic issues of negation and polarity, focusing on how negation is marked and how negative polarity is emphatic and how it interacts with double negation. Metalinguistic negation and neg-raising are also explored in the volume. Leading specialists in the field present novel ideas by employing various experimental methods in felicity judgments, eye tracking, self-paced readings, prosody and ERP. Particular attention is given to extensive crosslinguistc data from French, Catalan and Korean along with analyses using semantic and pragmatic methods, corpus linguistics, diachronic perspectives and longitudinal acquisitional studies as well as signed and gestural negation. Each contribution is situated with regards to major previous studies, thereby offering readers insights on the current state of the art in research on negation and negative polarity, highlighting how theory and data together contributes to the understanding of cognition and mind.

Download or read book Presuppositions and Cognitive Processes written by Filippo Domaneschi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-29 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book breaks new ground towards an understanding of the mental processes involved in presupposition, the comprehension of information taken for granted. Various psycholinguistic experiments are discussed to support the idea that involved in ordinary language comprehension are complex and demanding cognitive processes. The author demonstrates that these processes exist not only at the explicit level of an utterance but also at a deeper level of computing, where the background information taken for granted as already known and shared between interlocutors is processed. The author shows that experimental research can suggest new theoretical models for presupposition, thus this book will be of interest to researchers and students of psycholinguistics, the philosophy of language and experimental pragmatics.

Download or read book Scalar Implicatures written by Penka Stateva and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2019-10-18 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scalar implicatures have enjoyed the status of one of the most researched topics in both theoretical and experimental pragmatics in recent years. This Research Topic presents new developments in studying the comprehension, as well as the production of scalar inferences, suggests new testing paradigms that trigger important discussions about the methodology of experimental investigation, explores the effect of prosody and context on inference rates. To a great extent the articles reflect the state of the art in the domain and outline promising paths for future research.

Download or read book The Role of Alternatives in Language written by Sophie Repp and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2021-06-21 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Pragmatics written by Anne Barron and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-01-20 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Pragmatics provides a state-of-the-art overview of the wide breadth of research in pragmatics. An introductory section outlines a brief history, the main issues and key approaches and perspectives in the field, followed by a thought-provoking introductory chapter on interdisciplinarity by Jacob L. Mey. A further thirty-eight chapters cover both traditional and newer areas of pragmatic research, divided into four sections: Methods and modalities Established fields Pragmatics across disciplines Applications of pragmatic research in today’s world. With accessible, refreshing descriptions and discussions, and with a look towards future directions, this Handbook is an essential resource for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in pragmatics within English language and linguistics and communication studies.

Download or read book Common Ground in First Language and Intercultural Interaction written by Istvan Kecskes and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-03-06 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years the traditional approach to common ground as a body of information shared between participants of a communicative process has been challenged. Taking into account not only L1 but also intercultural interactions and attempting to bring together the traditional view with the egocentrism-based view of cognitive psychologists, it has been argued that construction of common ground is a dynamic, emergent process. It is the convergence of the mental representation of shared knowledge that we activate, assumed mutual knowledge that we seek, and rapport as well as knowledge that we co-construct in the communicative process. This dynamic understanding of common ground has been applied in many research projects addressing both L1 and intercultural interactions in recent years. As a result several new elements, aspects and interpretations of common ground have been identified. Some researchers came to view common ground as one component in a complex contextual information structure. Others, analyzing intercultural interactions, pointed out the dynamism of the interplay of core common ground and emergent common ground. The book brings together researchers from different angles of pragmatics and communication to examine (i) what adjustments to the notion of common ground based on L1 communication should be made in the light of research in intercultural communication; (ii) what the relationship is between context, situation and common ground, and (iii) how relevant knowledge and content get selected for inclusion into core and emergent common ground.

Download or read book Bayesian Natural Language Semantics and Pragmatics written by Henk Zeevat and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-06-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributions in this volume focus on the Bayesian interpretation of natural languages, which is widely used in areas of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and computational linguistics. This is the first volume to take up topics in Bayesian Natural Language Interpretation and make proposals based on information theory, probability theory, and related fields. The methodologies offered here extend to the target semantic and pragmatic analyses of computational natural language interpretation. Bayesian approaches to natural language semantics and pragmatics are based on methods from signal processing and the causal Bayesian models pioneered by especially Pearl. In signal processing, the Bayesian method finds the most probable interpretation by finding the one that maximizes the product of the prior probability and the likelihood of the interpretation. It thus stresses the importance of a production model for interpretation as in Grice’s contributions to pragmatics or in interpretation by abduction.

Download or read book The Syntax of Argument Structure written by Artemis Alexiadou and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-11-08 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Die Buchreihe Linguistische Arbeiten hat mit über 500 Bänden zur linguistischen Theoriebildung der letzten Jahrzehnte in Deutschland und international wesentlich beigetragen. Die Reihe wird auch weiterhin neue Impulse für die Forschung setzen und die zentrale Einsicht der Sprachwissenschaft präsentieren, dass Fortschritt in der Erforschung der menschlichen Sprachen nur durch die enge Verbindung von empirischen und theoretischen Analysen sowohl diachron wie synchron möglich ist. Daher laden wir hochwertige linguistische Arbeiten aus allen zentralen Teilgebieten der allgemeinen und einzelsprachlichen Linguistik ein, die aktuelle Fragestellungen bearbeiten, neue Daten diskutieren und die Theorieentwicklung vorantreiben.

Download or read book Exhaustivity Contrastivity and the Semantics of Mandarin Cleft related Structures written by Ying Liu and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exhaustivity, Contrastivity, and the Semantics of Mandarin Cleft-related Structures investigates the semantics of the cleft and cleft-related structures in Mandarin, which, over several decades, have presented analytical challenges for semantic theory. The goal of this book, in broad terms, is three-fold: (i) to figure out what clefting adds to the semantics of a sentence; (ii) to set apart the meaning and the discourse function of each type of cleft-related structure; and (iii) to provide a uniform analysis of Mandarin clefts and their related structures. More specifically, it addresses the following questions: (i) what is the semantics of Mandarin clefts? (ii) what do exhaustivity and contrastivity contribute to the meaning of clefts? (iii) what are the semantic (or pragmatic) factors that determine the variation of clefts, related structures, and canonical sentences? and (iv) cross-linguistically speaking, how do Mandarin shi...de cleft and its related structures differ from similar constructions such as English it-cleft, French c’est cleft, and German es-cleft? This book will be informative for linguists who are working on cleft constructions and focus on sensitive structures cross-linguistically, and those interested in experimental semantics and pragmatics.

Download or read book Sociobiological Bases of Information Structure written by Viviana Masia and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2017-11-16 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book tackles the sociobiological bases of Information Structure (IS) inquiring both its evidential and neurobiological underpinnings in human communication. Its purpose is to delve into the epistemic and neurocognitive rationales behind the realization of informational hierarchies in a sentence. The book zooms in on an interplay, that between IS and evidentiality, that has never been explored in IS studies and seeks to recast IS phenomena in an epistemological perspective. The neurocognitive approaches discussed propose neurophysiological investigations on IS processing, both with ERP and ERS vs. ERD measurements. In its overall structure and general purposes, the book is conceived for interested scholars working in the fields of linguistics, neuropragmatics, experimental psychology, philosophy of language and cognitive sciences in general, and it adds some further contribution to ongoing psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic experimental research on the processing of topic-focus and presupposition-assertion dichotomies.

Download or read book Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Approaches on Implicatures and Presuppositions written by Salvatore Pistoia-Reda and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-05-03 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses developments in the study of implicatures and presuppositions, drawing on recent linguistic and psycholinguistic literature. It provides original discussions of specific formal aspects of the theoretical reconstruction of these phenomena. The authors offer innovative experimental analyses in which crucial processing questions are addressed, and new experimental methodologies are introduced. The result is an advanced debate featuring broad empirical coverage of the issues, as well as an informed discussion of the connections between a Compositional Semantics and a Pragmatic Theory of Implicit Communication, in light of the empirical data coming from Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics. This book will be a worthwhile read for those with interests in both the formal and methodological aspects of these arguments.

Download or read book Approaches to Hungarian written by Veronika Hegedűs and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2020-04-08 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains selected papers from the 13th International Conference on the Structure of Hungarian (Budapest, 2017).The contributions address current issues in Hungarian linguistics, including comparisons with other languages (e.g., English, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish). Specifically, the phonetics and phonology papers present experimental and corpus studies of /h/ voicing, the acoustics of Hungarian word stress, and vowel harmony in harmonically mixed stems. The papers on syntax and semantics discuss object agreement and its locality restrictions, equative markers in German and Hungarian diachronically and synchronically, anaphoric possessor strategies and definite article distribution, and the semantics of various aspectual adverbs. Experimental studies of information structure examine the linear placement of textually given topical constituents post-verbally, exhaustivity inferences with focus partitioning in German, English and Hungarian, and contextual factors licensing Hungarian structural focus. The broad range of topics ensures that this volume will interest scholars of Hungarian and theoretical linguists more generally.

Download or read book A Cross Linguistic Exploration of Context Updating Mechanisms written by Xue Bai and published by Universitätsverlag Göttingen. This book was released on 2021 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presupposition is what people make use of on a daily basis. It is therefore crucial to comprehend how a presupposition gets projected in a sentence. This thesis focuses on three major presupposition projection mechanisms, namely left-right asymmetric, symmetric and hierarchical approaches. For the reason that the majority of previous research is undertaken on the basis of English data, this thesis evaluates these mechanisms employing Japanese and Chinese empirical evidence. The analyses and experimental data in this thesis confirm that, firstly, the left-right asymmetric account which is substantiated by English empirical evidence is not tenable in Japanese and Chinese. Secondly, the symmetric approach appears to be promising in both English and Japanese, though it has not been sufficiently investigated. Thirdly, the hierarchical framework can account for English, Japanese and Chinese empirical evidence preliminarily. Much more attention should be paid to the hierarchical approach to presupposition projection in further studies. Further investigation into this topic can deepen the comprehension of human language and language processing.

Download or read book Context in Communication A Cognitive View written by Gabriella Airenti and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Context is what contributes to interpret a communicative act beyond the spoken words. It provides information essential to clarify the intentions of a speaker, and thus to identify the actual meaning of an utterance. A large amount of research in Pragmatics has shown how wide-ranging and multifaceted this concept can be. Context spans from the preceding words in a conversation to the general knowledge that the interlocutors supposedly share, from the perceived environment to features and traits that the participants in a dialogue attribute to each other. This last category is also very broad, since it includes mental and emotional states, together with culturally constructed knowledge, such as the reciprocal identification of social roles and positions. The assumption of a cognitive point of view brings to the foreground a number of new questions regarding how information about the context is organized in the mind and how this kind of knowledge is used in specific communicative situations. A related, very important question concerns the role played in this process by theory of mind abilities (ToM), both in typical and atypical populations. In this Research Topic, we bring together articles that address different aspects of context analysis from theoretical and empirical perspectives, integrating knowledge and methods derived from Philosophy of language, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental and Clinical Psychology.