Facilitating Automation in Sentence Processing: The Emergence of Topic and Presupposition in Human Communication

Vallauri, Edoardo Lombardi; Masia, Viviana

doi:10.1007/s11245-016-9417-9

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Over the last decades, research has provided empirical evidence supporting the idea that some implicitly encoded contents correlate with less accurate or shallow processing (cf. Loftus 1975;Erickson/ Mattson 1981;Barton/Sanford 1993;Sanford/Sturt 2002;Sturt et al 2004;Schwarz 2015;Lombardi Vallauri/Masia 2015;Masia et al 2017). These studies suggest that semantic and pragmatic anomalies go significantly undetected when referring to implicitly conveyed contents (mostly presuppositions).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Manipulative impact of implicit communication:

Cominetti¹,

Cimmino²,

Coppola³

et al. 2023

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This paper presents the application of a quantitative model for measuring the impact of manipulative implicit linguistic strategies on a small comparable corpus of Italian, German and French political discourses. The aim is to show the cross-linguistic applicability of the model, originally developed and put to test on Italian. Furthermore, the analysis allows a quantitative and qualitative comparison of the three comparable corpora: some statistical correlations and tendencies in the frequency and type of linguistic implicit strategies are presented and put in relation not only with the language, but also with the political orientation of the speaker and with other parameters (context, subject, rhetorical style). Results show that the model can be applied to multiple languages and that inter- and intra-linguistic tendencies in the use of manipulative implicit linguistic strategies can be appreciated.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Manipulative impact of implicit communication:

Cominetti¹,

Cimmino²,

Coppola³

et al. 2023

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show abstract

“…The book was expensive" (Schwarz, 2013:535). Finally, in cognitive pragmatics, definite descriptions are defined as a linguistic mean, among other presupposition triggers, that allow the listener to spare cognitive efforts on information that is not relevant (Sperber and Wilson 1987;Saussure, 2012;Saussure, 2013;Vallauri et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introduction Definite Descriptions: a Brief Review From Frege To Eegmentioning

confidence: 99%

Definite Descriptions in the Light of the Comprehension vs. Acceptance Distinction: Comparing Self-Paced Reading with Eye-Tracking Measures

Mari

Müller

2021

Front. Commun.

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This paper presents two experiments on the processing of informative definite descriptions in plausible vs. implausible contexts. Experiment 1 is a self-paced reading task (with French native speakers, n = 69), with sentences containing a definite vs. indefinite NP, each preceded by plausible or implausible contexts. Our study replicated Singh and colleagues’ findings, namely that definite descriptions are significantly costlier when they occur in implausible contexts. The translation of the original stimuli from English to French did not affect the results, suggesting that the phenomenon applies cross-linguistically. Experiment 2 consists in an eye-tracking task, designed to measure the participants’ (n = 44) gaze patterns on complete sentences with the same four conditions (definite vs. indefinite NP; implausible vs. implausible contexts). A mixed effect model analysis revealed that (a) the total gaze duration on target segments and (b) the processing of the complete sentence were significantly longer in implausible conditions. These results show that implausible contexts predict a marked increase in the offline processing costs of definite descriptions. However, no significant difference was found for online processing measures (i.e., first fixation duration, first-pass reading time and regression path time measures) across all experimental conditions. These results suggest that it is only once the sentence is fully processed that implausible contexts increase processing costs. Furthermore, these results raise methodological issues related to the study of the online processing of definite descriptions, to the extent that self-paced reading and eye-tracking methods in the present study lead to incompatible results. With respect to the eye-tracking results, we suggest that the contrast between online and offline processing is likely to reflect the fact that participants first adopt a stance of trust to understand utterances before filtering the information through their epistemic vigilance module.

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Recalling presupposed information

Masia,

Garassino,

Brocca

et al. 2023

P&C

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This article addresses, experimentally, the question of how presuppositions are cognitively processed and retrieved in discourse. In the proposed research, we have administered tweets produced by Italian politicians to native speakers so as to assess how easily they could retrieve the presupposed content of two presupposition triggers (definite descriptions and change of state verbs), as opposed to their explicit paraphrase, by answering verification questions. Results showed that content presupposed by change of state verbs was likely to receive more attention than content conveyed by definite descriptions; this could possibly be due to the greater effort involved in mentally representing the event taken for granted by the predicates. Definite descriptions, on the contrary, seem to instruct to a shallower processing modality, which means that their content is processed less attentively or in a ‘good-enough’ way.

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Facilitating Automation in Sentence Processing: The Emergence of Topic and Presupposition in Human Communication

Cited by 4 publications

References 43 publications

Manipulative impact of implicit communication:

Manipulative impact of implicit communication:

Definite Descriptions in the Light of the Comprehension vs. Acceptance Distinction: Comparing Self-Paced Reading with Eye-Tracking Measures

Recalling presupposed information

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