Focus Particles in Information Processing: An Experimental Study on Pragmatic Scales with Spanish incluso

Lamas, Óscar Loureda; Cruz, Adriana; Rudka, Martha; Nadal, Laura Filloy; Recio, Inés; Zuloaga, Margarita Borreguero

doi:10.13092/lo.71.1781

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 24 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…also König 1991: 100). Furthermore, Loureda et al (2015) showed that processing a closed class of alternatives, ordered on a pragmatic, or evaluative scale, is less costly than processing an open class of alternatives, ordered on a pragmatic, or evaluative scale, and that the role of the focus particle differs with respect to the two different classes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The processing of German modal particles andtheir counterparts

Dörre,

Czypionka,

Trotzke

et al. 2018

Linguistische Berichte (LB)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Modal particles (MPs) like German bloß form a heterogeneous lexical category. One common property is that they do not contribute to the propositional meaning of a sentence, but rather display a Not-At-Issue (NAI) meaning. All of these words are ambiguous between the NAI meaning of the MP and an At-Issue (AI) meaning of a counterpart (e.g., focus particles, adverbs, and conjunctions). Unlike MPs, the counterpart typically affects truth conditions, like bloß as a focus particle with the translation 'only'. So far, there has been little psycholinguistic research on the processing of MPs, the counterparts and their differing contributions to sentence meaning. We present the results of a corpus study where we measured the relative frequencies of both MP and counterpart readings (i.e., whether a specific word occurs more often as an MP or a counterpart) and a self-paced reading experiment on the processing of both meaning types. In our experiment, we varied MP and counterpart readings, and the position of the disambiguating region. We also examined the influence of the relative frequencies of both meaning types on the processing. The results point to processing differences between the NAI and the AI meaning of German MPs and their counterparts, suggesting that the two meanings are represented in different dimensions of meaning.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another resemblance can be found between bloß and the focus particle auch, with bloß discarding all the other elements of a set and auch indicating that the information conveyed by the sentence is valid for all elements of the set (cf. Loureda et al 2015). The processing steps for the different counterparts are not fundamentally different.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The processing of German modal particles andtheir counterparts

Dörre,

Czypionka,

Trotzke

et al. 2018

Linguistische Berichte (LB)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A contrastive focus (as opposed to an informative focus, that is, the focus that adds new information to the common ground by widening and expanding it [Escandell Vidal and Leonetti 2009: 15]) applies to the linguistic material "that the speaker calls to the addressee's attention, thereby o en evoking a contrast with other entities that might ll the same position" (Gundel and Fretheim 2005: 181). For an overview of other denominations, see Portolés 2010, Loureda et al 2015.…”

Section: Incluso 'Even' As An Additive Focus Operatormentioning

confidence: 99%

Processing additivity in Spanish

Nadal

Fernandez

Rudka

et al. 2017

Pragmatics &Amp; Beyond New Series

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

is paper o ers an experimental analysis of how additive discourse relations are processed in Spanish. e processing data were obtained from an eye-tracking reading experiment on utterances in which the focus operator incluso 'even' and the additive connective además 'furthermore' were either absent or present. Incluso acts fundamentally on the level of the information structure, whereas además is generally found in argumentative relations. Results show that, despite some di erences during semantic and syntactic integration, the presence of a discourse marker a ects principally high-level processing. ese results seem to underpin theoretical studies that claim for a mainly procedural meaning of discourse markers.

show abstract

Stepping back to look ahead: neuter encapsulation and referent extension in counter-argumentative and causal relations in Spanish

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In discourse comprehension, if all goes well, people tend to create a rich and coherent mental representation of the events described in the text. To do so, referential and relational coherence must be established in order to construct a connected discourse. The objective of this follow-up eye-tracking study (N = 72) is to explore the existence of an interaction effect between two factors: (a) the extension of the referent (short and long antecedent), and (b) the semantic relation (counter-argumentativea pesar de, and causalpor), when processing the neuter pronounelloin texts written in Spanish. No previous study has systematically compared the on-line processing of texts in which different extensions of the encapsulated anaphoric antecedent by the neuter pronounello(‘this’ or ‘it’ in English) are presented in diverse marked semantic relations (causal and counter-argumentative). Based on three eye-tracking measures, we found distinctive patterns of reading behavior when anaphoric neuter reference and semantic relations must be processed conjointly in order to construct a coherent mental representation. The main findings show that reading longer and more complex antecedents encapsulated by the neutral pronounselloexerts more cognitive effort in late processing (Look Back measure), particularly when simultaneously and in the same discourse construction there is an explicitly marked counter-argumentative semantic relation. Implications for theories of referential and relational coherence are discussed.

show abstract

Focus Particles in Information Processing: An Experimental Study on Pragmatic Scales with Spanish incluso

Cited by 4 publications

References 24 publications

The processing of German modal particles andtheir counterparts

The processing of German modal particles andtheir counterparts

Processing additivity in Spanish

Stepping back to look ahead: neuter encapsulation and referent extension in counter-argumentative and causal relations in Spanish

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About