The disambiguation and processing of coherence relations is often investigated with a focus on explicit connectives, such as but or so. Other, non-connective cues from the context also facilitate discourse inferences, although their precise disambiguating role and interaction with connectives have been largely overlooked in the psycholinguistic literature so far. This study reports on two crowdsourcing experiments that test the role of contextual cues in the disambiguation of contrast and consequence relations. We compare the effect of contextual cues in conceptually (...) different relations, and with connectives that differ in their semantic precision. Using offline tasks, our results show that contextual cues significantly help disambiguating contrast and consequence relations in the absence of connectives. However, when connectives are present in the context, the effect of cues only holds if the connective is acceptable in the target relation. Overall, our study suggests that cues are decisive on their own, but only secondary in the presence of connectives. These results call for further investigation of the complex interplay between connective types, contextual cues, relation types and other linguistic and cognitive factors. (shrink)

The disambiguation and processing of coherence relations is often investigated with a focus on explicit connectives, such asbutorso. Other, non-connective cues from the context also facilitate discourse inferences, although their precise disambiguating role and interaction with connectives have been largely overlooked in the psycholinguistic literature so far. This study reports on two crowdsourcing experiments that test the role of contextual cues (parallelism, antonyms, resultative verbs) in the disambiguation of contrast and consequence relations. We compare the effect of contextual cues in (...) conceptually different relations, and with connectives that differ in their semantic precision. Using offline tasks, our results show that contextual cues significantly help disambiguating contrast and consequence relations in the absence of connectives. However, when connectives are present in the context, the effect of cues only holds if the connective is acceptable in the target relation. Overall, our study suggests that cues are decisive on their own, but only secondary in the presence of connectives. These results call for further investigation of the complex interplay between connective types, contextual cues, relation types and other linguistic and cognitive factors. (shrink)

« Si l’on peut envoyer un homme sur la lune, pourquoi ne pas tous les y envoyer? » C’est cette boutade de la romancière états-unienne Rona Jaffe que Colette Pipon a choisie pour exergue. La suggestion trouve d’ailleurs son illustration sur la couverture de l’ouvrage : une jeune femme s’apprête à envoyer un homme sur la lune au moyen d’une catapulte géante, tandis que d’autres représentants du genre masculin attendent leur tour avec anxiété. Le titre lui-même, Et on tuera tous (...) les affreux, es... (shrink)

L’une des difficultés majeures de l’idée européenne s’énonce aujourd’hui en termes de définition du modèle fédéral le mieux adapté au projet européen. À la séduction qu’exercent les formules politiques fédérales se joint régulièrement la crainte qu’il ne s’agisse pas d’une solution adaptée aux problèmes et aux besoins de l’Europe contemporaine. Y aurait-il une forme de fédéralisme particulièrement adaptée ou adaptable aux besoins de l’Europe contemporaine? Dispose-t-on d’une série d’expériences historiques déjà réalisées qui seraient transposables sous certaines conditions? Ou s’agit-il plutôt (...) de définir, sur la base de l’histoire et des tensions que l’Europe incarne de manière inédite, une nouvelle espèce de fédéralisme? (shrink)

Diachronic studies of discourse markers suggest they follow a unidirectional developmental path, from propositional to textual and expressive uses. The present study tests whether children acquire the propositional (literal) before the expressive (pragmatic) functions of two adversative discourse markers in French and English, which have similar core meanings and pragmatic functions. Our results partially confirm the propositional-first hypothesis but semantics and pragmatics appear to work together, rather than first one then the other, at least in this case, and this runs (...) counter to both diachronic theories and usage-based accounts of L1 acquisition. 88 occurrences of en fait and 174 of actually were extracted from the CHILDES database, and coded for two functions (adversative and elaborative) and three domains (propositional, textual, expressive). The results suggest that the pragmatic functions of actually are used by children as young as two years old, but the same is not true of en fait, which is almost exclusively propositional in the early years. By contrast, before age 5, French children start to use en fait for textual and elaborative functions to a greater extent than actually. The role of syntactic position and parental input are discussed. (shrink)

One of the most experimentally studied scales in the literature on scalar implicatures is the quantifier scale. While the truth of some is entailed by the truth of all, some is felicitous only when all is false. This opens the possibility that some would be felicitous if, e.g., 99% of the objects in the domain of quantification fall under it, a conclusion that clashes with native speakers’ intuitions. In Experiment 1 we report a questionnaire study on the perception of quantifier (...) meanings in English, French, Slovenian and German which points to a cross-linguistic variation with respect to the perception of numerical bounds of the existential quantifier. In Experiment 2, using a picture choice task, we further examine whether the numerical bound differences correlate with differences in pragmatic interpretations of the quantifier some in English and quelques in French and interpret the results as supporting our hypothesis that some and its cross-linguistic counterparts are subjected to different processes of pragmatic enrichment. (shrink)

Reprenant pour titre un célèbre et provocateur slogan féministe des années 1970, l’ouvrage collectif Prolétaires de tous les pays, qui lave vos chaussettes? Le genre de l’engagement dans les années 1968 s’inscrit dans le sillon de récents travaux consacrés aux « années 1968 » et pose à nouveaux frais la question de la fabrique du genre au sein d’une séquence historique caractérisée par l’essor des groupes féministes et l’affirmation de la conflictualité sociale. Ambitieux par la diversité de...