Papers by Nausicaa Pouscoulous
Folia Linguistica, 2024
How the speaker presents information linguistically may impact the recipient’s epistemic vigilanc... more How the speaker presents information linguistically may impact the recipient’s epistemic vigilance. For instance, information communicated through a presupposition suggests it does not warrant thorough scrutiny. Traditionally, presuppositions arise from the use of various linguistic triggers, but it has been suggested that a focal status can suspend the triggering of the presupposition. Using a mistake recognition task, we investigate whether the information structure of the utterance (specifically, topic-focus articulation) and different triggers (definite descriptions vs temporal clauses) influence presuppositions’ persuasive potential, both immediately and after one week. Our findings suggest that while a focal status of the presupposition does not seem to affect immediate mistake recognition rates, it shapes memorial representation, but only for one of the tested triggers (definite descriptions). Thus, this study provides further support that presupposition serves as a persuasive strategy; specifically, it indicates that for memory formation, this is influenced by the interplay between the information structure of the utterance and the type of trigger.
Autism & Developmental Language Impairments, 2018
Background and aims Difficulties with aspects of morphosyntax, phonology and/or vocabulary are th... more Background and aims Difficulties with aspects of morphosyntax, phonology and/or vocabulary are the hallmark of Development Language Disorder (DLD). Yet, little is known about the linguistic-pragmatic abilities of young children with DLD. Previous studies suggest that children with DLD are experiencing difficulties with idioms, sayings and slang expressions, often interpreting them in a literal or unconventional fashion. However, it is unclear whether this is caused by difficulties to make pragmatic inferences in general or whether it stems from their semantic abilities. We therefore investigated novel metaphor understanding in young children with and without DLD. Methods We assessed novel metaphor comprehension using a reference assignment task with 15 children with DLD diagnoses (ages 42–49 months) as well as typically developing peers matched on chronological age (n = 15) and on language (n = 15). Results Children with DLD performed worse than their age-matched peers but in a comp...
Over the last decade, various proposals have been made for supplanting the classical Gricean theo... more Over the last decade, various proposals have been made for supplanting the classical Gricean theory of scalar implicature with conventionalist (i.e. lexicalist or syntax-based) treatments. In contradistinction to the classical view, conventionalist theories predict that scalar inferences occur systematically and freely in embedded positions. We present experimental evidence that disproves this prediction, arguing along the way that there are rather good reasons to suspect that introspection isn’t always a reliable tool for gathering data on pragmatic inferences.
Chemla (2009) presents experimental data purporting to show that speakers ’ intuitions about so-c... more Chemla (2009) presents experimental data purporting to show that speakers ’ intuitions about so-called “embedded implicatures ” cause trouble for globalist and localist theories alike. We explain, to begin with, that the way Chemla frames the debate between localists and globalists fails to do justice to the latter. Then we turn to his experimental data, and argue that, while of half of them strengthen our own case against localism (Geurts & Pouscoulous 2009), the other half do not jeopardize the globalist view, as Chemla claims they do.
Language and Cognition, 2021
abstractReferential metonymy, e.g. ‘the moustache (= man with a moustache) sits down first’, appe... more abstractReferential metonymy, e.g. ‘the moustache (= man with a moustache) sits down first’, appears early in L1 acquisition (Falkum, Recasens & Clark, 2017). Yet how does it emerge in pragmatically mature but linguistically developing adult L2 learners? We used one comprehension and two production tasks, based on Falkum and colleagues (2017), to investigate metonymy abilities in 34 Japanese adult learners of English as an additional language (EAL) and a control group of 31 native English speakers. We also examined how time constraints and exposure to examples of referential metonymy affected production. In the comprehension task, both EAL-learner and native-speaker participants chose metonymic readings at above chance levels. In both production tasks, all participants produced innovative metonyms. Additionally, the findings indicate that, in L2, exposure to examples dramatically increases metonymy production, while time pressure decreases it. The results suggest that participants c...
Autism & Developmental Language Impairments, 2018
Background and aims Difficulties with aspects of morphosyntax, phonology and/or vocabulary are th... more Background and aims Difficulties with aspects of morphosyntax, phonology and/or vocabulary are the hallmark of Development Language Disorder (DLD). Yet, little is known about the linguistic-pragmatic abilities of young children with DLD. Previous studies suggest that children with DLD are experiencing difficulties with idioms, sayings and slang expressions, often interpreting them in a literal or unconventional fashion. However, it is unclear whether this is caused by difficulties to make pragmatic inferences in general or whether it stems from their semantic abilities. We therefore investigated novel metaphor understanding in young children with and without DLD. Methods We assessed novel metaphor comprehension using a reference assignment task with 15 children with DLD diagnoses (ages 42–49 months) as well as typically developing peers matched on chronological age (n = 15) and on language (n = 15). Results Children with DLD performed worse than their age-matched peers but in a comp...
Intercultural Pragmatics
Little is known about presuppositional skills in pre-school years. Developmental research has mos... more Little is known about presuppositional skills in pre-school years. Developmental research has mostly focused on children’s understanding of too and evidence is mixed: some studies show that the comprehension of too is not adult-like at least until school age, while more recent findings suggest that even pre-schoolers can interpret too-sentences in more age-appropriate tasks. Importantly, no study has tested directly, within the same experiment, pre-schoolers’ presupposition understanding in satisfaction versus accommodation, nor with respect to other trigger types. Yet, it is well known that adults’ processing of a presupposition is costlier when accommodation is required and that the type of trigger influences the processing demands. Therefore, both the trigger type and the contextual availability of a presupposition might influence young children’s comprehension. We tested this with a story completion task that assessed 3–5-year-olds’ comprehension of presuppositions activated by ...
Frontiers in Psychology
Until at least 4 years of age, children, unlike adults, interpret some as compatible with all. Th... more Until at least 4 years of age, children, unlike adults, interpret some as compatible with all. The inability to draw the pragmatic inference leading to interpret some as not all, could be taken to indicate a delay in pragmatic abilities, despite evidence of other early pragmatic skills. However, little is known about how the production of these implicature develops. We conducted a corpus study on early production and perception of the scalar term some in British English. Children's utterances containing some were extracted from the dense corpora of five children aged 2;00 to 5;01 (N = 5,276), and analysed alongside a portion of their caregivers' utterances with some (N = 9,030). These were coded into structural and contextual categories allowing for judgments on the probability of a scalar implicature being intended. The findings indicate that children begin producing and interpreting implicatures in a pragmatic way during their third year of life, shortly after they first produce some. Their production of some implicatures is low but matches their parents' input in frequency. Interestingly, the mothers' production of implicatures also increases as a function of the children's age. The data suggest that as soon as they acquire some, children are fully competent in its production and mirror adult production. The contrast between the very early implicature production we find and the relatively late implicature comprehension established in the literature calls for an explanation; possibly in terms of the processing cost of implicature derivation. Additionally, some is multifaceted, and thus, implicatures are infrequent, and structurally and contextually constrained in both populations.
Topics in Cognitive Science
Conversation is often cast as a cooperative effort, and some aspects of it, such as implicatures,... more Conversation is often cast as a cooperative effort, and some aspects of it, such as implicatures, have been claimed to depend on an assumption of cooperation . But any systematic class of inference derived from assumptions of cooperation, such as implicatures, could also be, on occasion, used to deceive listeners strategically. Here, we explore the extent to which speakers might choose different kinds of implicature triggers in an uncooperative game of communication. Concretely, we present a study in the form of a cooperative or competitive signaling game where communicators can exploit three kinds of implicatures: exact reading of numeral expressions, scalar implicatures linked to the quantifier some and ad hoc scalar implicatures. We compare how these implicatures are used depending on whether the participants' co-player is cooperative, a strategic opponent, or a non-strategic opponent. We find that when the strategy of the co-player is clear to the participants, the three types of implicatures are used to exploit the co-player's interpretation strategy. Indeed, participants use numeral implicatures as reliably as truth conditional content in all three conditions, while scalar quantifiers and ad hoc implicature elicit different strategies. We interpret these findings as evidence that speakers expect their interlocutors to infer implicatures from their utterances even in contexts where they know that they will be perceived as uncooperative.
Semantics and Pragmatics
Over the last decade, various proposals have been made for supplanting the classical theory of sc... more Over the last decade, various proposals have been made for supplanting the classical theory of scalar implicature with a conventionalist (i.e. lexicalist or syntax-based) treatment. In contradistinction to the classical view, conventionalist theories predict that scalar inferences occur systematically and freely in embedded positions. We present experimental evidence that disproves this prediction, arguing along the way that there are rather good reasons for suspecting that introspection is an unreliable tool for gathering data on pragmatic inferences.
Psychologie Française, 2004
Certaines inférences pragmatiques liées à des items lexicaux particuliers sont traitées différemm... more Certaines inférences pragmatiques liées à des items lexicaux particuliers sont traitées différemment par les enfants et par les adultes. Il s'agit des implicatures scalaires, qui nous amènent, par exemple, à interpréter certains comme signifiant pas tous, et de l'enrichissement pragmatique de et en et puis. Les adultes font les implicatures liées aux termes scalaires et à la conjonction alors que les enfants les interprètent avec leur sens littéral, apparaissant ainsi plus logiques que les adultes. Nous montrerons que les enfants, même les plus jeunes, ne sont pas limités dans leurs capacités pragmatiques, qu'ils sont aptes à faire ce type d'inférences et que leurs mauvaises performances s'expliquent par le rôle fondamental que joue l'effort dans la production d'implicatures. © 2004 Société française de psychologie. Publié par Elsevier SAS. Tous droits réservés.
Psychologie Française, 2004
Certaines inférences pragmatiques liées à des items lexicaux particuliers sont traitées différemm... more Certaines inférences pragmatiques liées à des items lexicaux particuliers sont traitées différemment par les enfants et par les adultes. Il s'agit des implicatures scalaires, qui nous amènent, par exemple, à interpréter certains comme signifiant pas tous, et de l'enrichissement pragmatique de et en et puis. Les adultes font les implicatures liées aux termes scalaires et à la conjonction alors que les enfants les interprètent avec leur sens littéral, apparaissant ainsi plus logiques que les adultes. Nous montrerons que les enfants, même les plus jeunes, ne sont pas limités dans leurs capacités pragmatiques, qu'ils sont aptes à faire ce type d'inférences et que leurs mauvaises performances s'expliquent par le rôle fondamental que joue l'effort dans la production d'implicatures. © 2004 Société française de psychologie. Publié par Elsevier SAS. Tous droits réservés.
Autism & Developmental Language Impairments, 2018
Difficulties with aspects of morphosyntax, phonology and/or vocabulary are the hallmark of Develo... more Difficulties with aspects of morphosyntax, phonology and/or vocabulary are the hallmark of Development Language Disorder (DLD). Yet, little is known about the linguistic-pragmatic abilities of young children with DLD. Previous studies suggest that children with DLD are experiencing difficulties with idioms, sayings and slang expressions, often interpreting them in a literal or unconventional fashion. However, it is unclear whether this is caused by difficulties to make pragmatic inferences in general or whether it stems from their semantic abilities. We therefore investigated novel metaphor understanding in young children with and without DLD.
Semantics and Pragmatics, 2009
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Much developmental work has been devoted to scalar implicatures. These are implicitly communicate... more Much developmental work has been devoted to scalar implicatures. These are implicitly communicated propositions linked to relatively weak terms (consider how Some pragmatically implies Not all) that are more likely to be carried out by adults than by children. Children tend to retain the linguistically encoded meaning of these terms (wherein Some is compatible with All).
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Papers by Nausicaa Pouscoulous