In this study, we are addressing the call for further research (Aikhenvald 2015) into how languages, in our case Modern Greek, mark the unexpected. Our first research question is: Can we identify a class of mirative evidential markers in Modern Greek? The expected answer is that we can, if we take account of frequency rates in a variety of sources in the real world, namely plays, corpora and tags in social media. The second research question is: Do these markers convey (...) propositional or non-propositional meaning? Our findings suggest that the Greek data involves predominantly non-propositional types of meaning since mirativity is not delivered by the semantic content of the utterance (e.g., Ooo! Tí vlépoun ta mátia mou? “Oh! What do I see?”, Ma ti les tóra? “But what are you saying now?”, Ba ba ti akoúo? “Well, well, what do I hear?” Mi mou pis! ‘Don’t tell me!’). (shrink)

Cognitive-pragmatic approaches to how metaphors are understood view the activation of perceptual or motor effects as inferred. Crucially, inferences elicit conceptual representations, e.g. in the form of implicatures, and/or mental simulations, e.g. in the form of imagery, memory, an impression and other private elements. Emotional effects, being non-conceptual, must be left out of this picture. But evidence in neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics has shown that metaphors activate brain regions linked to emotions, and that in L2, in the absence of fully-propositional meaning, (...) metaphors yield meaningful interpretations by evoking imagery, impressions, emotions. Drawing on relevance-theoretic views, we would like to argue that metaphors are processed in not entirely propositional terms. Subjective experience heuristics allows making rapid responses by absorbing emotions, imagery, impressions, into the interpretation process, an ability which outweighs standard inferential reasoning processes. Such a position is likely to apply to non-metaphorical language, too and thus pervade linguistic processing in general. (shrink)

The paper investigates the acquisition of the semantics/pragmatics of two Modern Greek evidential markers taha (¿supposedly¿) and dithen (¿as if¿, ¿so-called¿) and possible correlations with children¿s mind-reading abilities. Between (a) an evidential¿ironical interpretation and (b) a pretence interpretation, earliest uses of these particles (in spontaneous children¿s speech) suggest that pretence-interpretations, rather than evidential ones, are the first to develop (Ifantidou, to appear). This production finding is mapped onto input occurrences of taha and dithen in (i) children¿s readers, (ii) adults¿ prose, (...) and (iii) adults¿ speech. High prevalence of pretence interpretations is observed in (i), with high prevalence of evidential interpretations in (ii) and (iii). These findings are cross-checked by linguistic tasks run with nursery (4¿5 years old) and 6¿12 year-old children. The results also point to an early acquisition of the pretence-interpretation and a later acquisition of the particles¿ evidential uses. Finally, non-linguistic experiments are run with the nursery (4¿5 year-old) children to assess their evidential cognitive abilities. Two questions arise: (1) If children lack the semantics/pragmatics of evidential taha and dithen, do they also lack the relevant mind-reading abilities? (2) If children exhibit an earlier working capacity of pretence-interpretations, is there an explanation for why this is so? In addressing these issues, I will explore the possibility that availability of evidential lexical items in language presupposes availability of relevant concepts, and suggest, in turn, a degree of developmental interdependence between cognition and language. (shrink)

Cognitive-pragmatic approaches to how metaphors are understood view the activation of perceptual or motor effects as inferred (Steinhart 2001; Bergen 2005; Wilson and Carston 2006; Carston 2010; Gibbs and de Macedo 2010; Wilson and Carston 2019). Crucially, inferences elicit conceptual representations, e.g. in the form of implicatures, and/or mental simulations, e.g. in the form of imagery, memory, an impression and other private elements. Emotional effects, being non-conceptual, must be left out of this picture. But evidence in neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics has (...) shown that metaphors activate brain regions linked to emotions (for a review, see Ifantidou 2019; Citron 2020), and that in L2, in the absence of fully-propositional meaning (due to unknown words), metaphors yield meaningful interpretations by evoking imagery, impressions, emotions (Ifantidou 2019, 2021a, 2021b; Ifantidou and Hatzidaki 2019). Drawing on relevance-theoretic views, we would like to argue that metaphors are processed in not entirely propositional terms. Subjective experience heuristics (originally proposed as “availability heuristic” by Tversky and Kahneman 1974; Schwarzand and Wänke 2002; “affect heuristic” by Zajonc 1980) allows making rapid responses by absorbing emotions, imagery, impressions, into the interpretation process, an ability which outweighs (the need for) standard inferential reasoning processes. Such a position is likely to apply to non-metaphorical language, too and thus pervade linguistic processing in general. (shrink)

The paper investigates the acquisition of the semantics/pragmatics of two Modern Greek evidential markers taha and dithen and possible correlations with children's mind-reading abilities. Between an evidential-ironical interpretation and a pretence interpretation, earliest uses of these particles suggest that pretence-interpretations, rather than evidential ones, are the first to develop. This production finding is mapped onto input occurrences of taha and dithen in children's readers, adults' prose, and adults' speech. High prevalence of pretence interpretations is observed in, with high prevalence of (...) evidential interpretations in and. These findings are cross-checked by linguistic tasks run with nursery and 6-12 year-old children. The results also point to an early acquisition of the pretence-interpretation and a later acquisition of the particles' evidential uses. Finally, non-linguistic experiments are run with the nursery children to assess their evidential cognitive abilities. Two questions arise: If children lack the semantics/pragmatics of evidential taha and dithen, do they also lack the relevant mind-reading abilities? If children exhibit an earlier working capacity of pretence-interpretations, is there an explanation for why this is so? In addressing these issues, I will explore the possibility that availability of evidential lexical items in language presupposes availability of relevant concepts, and suggest, in turn, a degree of developmental interdependence between cognition and language. (shrink)