Accounting for the preference for literal meanings in autism spectrum conditions

Pragmatic difficulties are considered a hallmark of autism spectrum conditions (ASC), but remain poorly understood. We discuss and evaluate existing hypotheses regarding the literalism of ASC individuals, that is, their tendency for literal interpretations of non-literal communicative intentions. We present evidence that reveals a developmental stage at which neurotypical children also have a tendency for literalism and suggest an explanation for such behaviour that links it to other behavioural, rule-following, patterns typical of that age. We discuss evidence showing that strict adherence to rules is also widespread in ASC, and suggest that literalism might be linked to such rule-following behaviour.This paper is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 853211). Funding for this research was also supported by Agencia Estatal de Investigación, Spain grant number: PGC2018-093464-B-I00; by the Basque Government, grant number: IT1396-19; and by the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), grant numbers: GIU18/221 and US20/03

Accounting for the preference for literal meanings in ASC

Impairments in pragmatic abilities, that is, difficulties with appropriate use and interpretation of language – in particular, non-literal uses of language – are considered a hallmark of Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC). Despite considerable research attention, these pragmatic difficulties are poorly understood. In this paper, we discuss and evaluate existing hypotheses regarding the literalism of ASC individuals, that is, their tendency for literal interpretations of non-literal communicative intentions, and link them to accounts of pragmatic development in neurotypical children. We present evidence that reveals a developmental stage at which neurotypical children also have a tendency for literal interpretations and provide a possible explanation for such behaviour, one that links it to other behavioural, rule-following, patterns typical of that age. We then discuss extant evidence that shows that strict adherence to rules is also a widespread feature in ASC, and suggest that literalism might be linked to such rule-following behaviour

The lexical pragmatics of count-mass polysemy

This paper investigates a subtype of systematic polysemy which in English (and several other languages) appears to rest on the distinction between count and mass uses of nouns (e.g., shoot a rabbit/eat rabbit/wear rabbit). Computational semantic approaches have traditionally analysed such sense alternations as being generated by an inventory of specialised lexical inference rules. The paper puts the central arguments for such a rule-based analysis under scrutiny, and presents evidence that the linguistic component provided by count-mass syntax leaves a more underspecified semantic output than is usually acknowledged by rule-based theories. The paper develops and argues for the positive view that count-mass polysemy is better given a lexical pragmatic analysis, which provides a more flexible and unified account. Treating count-mass syntax as a procedural constraint on NP referents, it is argued that a single, relevance-guided lexical pragmatic mechanism can cover the same ground as lexical rules, as well as those cases in which rule-based accounts need to appeal to pragmatics

Polysemi. En relevansteoretisk tilnærming

I denne artikkelen diskuterer jeg fenomenet polysemi, der et språklig uttrykk innehar to eller flere beslektede betydninger (et eksempel er adjektivet frisk, som kan bety ‘uskjemt’, ‘ny’, ‘sunn’, ‘livlig’, ‘dristig’, ‘forfriskende’, og så videre). I en kommunikasjonssituasjon utgjør det sjelden noe problem at ordene vi bruker knyttes til flere betydninger. Taleren kan som regel stole på at tilhøreren vil ta konteksten til hjelp for å danne seg en oppfatning om den intenderte betydningen til et polysemt ord. Innenfor semantisk-pragmatisk teori representerer polysemifenomenet derimot en stor utfordring. For hva betyr det egentlig at et ord innehar flere beslektede betydninger? Hvordan reflekteres dette i våre mentale leksikon? Og hvordan oppstår polyseme betydninger? Artikkelen søker å gi leseren en innføring i hver av disse problemstillingene, og foreslår deretter hvordan polysemifenomenet kan gjøres rede for innenfor et relevansteoretisk pragmatisk rammeverk, der ordbetydninger anses for å være underspesifiserte semantiske enheter som er gjenstand for pragmatisk beriking i kontekst

The how and why of polysemy: A pragmatic account

A large number of word forms in natural language are polysemous, that is, associated with several related senses (e.g., line, run, tight, etc.). While such polysemy appears to cause little difficulty in verbal communication, it poses a range of theoretical and descriptive problems. One concerns its very existence: What is it about our language systems that make them so susceptible to polysemy? In this paper I discuss two approaches to polysemy with different answers to this question: (i) A code-based approach that treats polysemy in terms of the operation of lexicon-internal generative rules, and (ii) an inference-based approach that takes polysemy to be governed by pragmatic inferential processes applying at the level of individual words. After evaluating how each of these accounts fares with respect to some empirical data, I look more broadly at their implications for the emergence and development of polysemy. I conclude that, overall, the pragmatic approach provides the most promising basis for a unified account of the role of polysemy in several domains, and for explaining what motivates its proliferation natural language

La phrase clivée : outil pragmatique ou convention langagière ? : une étude contrastive de textes originaux français et norvégiens et leurs traductions correspondantes

Setningskløyvning, eller utbrytning, er et svært karakteristisk fenomen på fransk, men er samtidig også utbredt på norsk I denne oppgaven har jeg ønsket å se på forskjeller og ulikheter i bruk av denne konstruksjonen på disse to språkene. I hvilke tilfeller vil for eksempel den franske oversetteren velge setningskløyvning der den norske originalteksten kun har en enkel ukløyvd setning, og hvilke grunner kan det være til dette? Utgangspunktet for undersøkelsen har vært den fransk-norske delen av Oslo Multilingual Corpus (OMC), som inneholder originaltekster og oversettelser på begge språk. Muller (2001) har i en undersøkelse av setningskløyvning på fransk og tysk funnet at denne konstruksjonen forekommer langt oftere på fransk enn på tysk. Eriksson (1997) har i sin studie av fransk og svensk setningsstruktur funnet at der fransk har setningskløyvning, har svensk som regel kun en enkel, ukløyvd setning. Resultatene fra OMC tyder på at dette også gjelder for forholdet mellom fransk og norsk. Der den franske teksten har en setningskløyvning, har den tilsvarende norske setningen oftest en enkel, ukløyvd setning. Jeg har derfor undersøkt hvilke typer av konstituenter som ofte brytes ut på fransk, og hva de tilsvarer i de norske tekstene. Disse undersøkelsene viser at der det er samsvar mellom fransk og norsk når det gjelder bruk av setningskløyvning, er det utbrutte elementet oftest en substantivfrase med subjektsfunksjon på begge språk. I de tilfellene der det ikke er samsvar mellom de to språkene, er de utbrutte elementene i de franske oversettelsene hovedsakelig preposisjonsfraser eller adverbfraser. Jeg har i tillegg vært interessert i det pragmatiske aspektet i forhold til bruk av setningskløyvning, og jeg har sett på hvordan konstruksjonen brukes til å uttrykke forskjeller i informasjonsstruktur, med utgangspunkt i Lambrechts (1994) teori om informasjonsstrukturering. Observasjonene jeg har gjort med utgangspunkt i OMC tyder på at setningskløyvningen har et betydelig større bruksområde enn den norske tilsvarende konstruksjonen. I noen tilfeller synes kløyvningens informasjonsstrukturerende funksjon å være fremtredende, i andre tilfeller synes det å være andre grunner til at man på fransk velger den, for eksempel av prosodiske årsaker, eller som resultat av en språklig konvensjon. Der kan derfor se ut til at den franske kløyvningskonstruksjonen er pragmatisk sett mindre markert enn den norske, ettersom den kan brukes i tilfeller der den norske tilsvarende konstruksjonen ville vært pragmatisk sett uakseptabel

Accounting for the preference for literal meanings in autism spectrum conditions

Pragmatic difficulties are considered a hallmark of autism spectrum conditions (ASC), but remain poorly understood. We discuss and evaluate existing hypotheses regarding the literalism of ASC individuals, that is, their tendency for literal interpretations of non-literal communicative intentions. We present evidence that reveals a developmental stage at which neurotypical children also have a tendency for literalism and suggest an explanation for such behaviour that links it to other behavioural, rule-following, patterns typical of that age. We discuss evidence showing that strict adherence to rules is also widespread in ASC, and suggest that literalism might be linked to such rule-following behaviour

Irony and perspective-taking in children: The roles of norm violations and tone of voice

In order to understand most, if not any communicative act, the listener needs to make inferences about what the speaker intends to convey. This perspective-taking process is especially challenging in the case of nonliteral uses of language such as verbal irony (e.g., “Thanks for your help!” uttered to someone who has not provided the expected support). Children have been shown to have difficulties with the comprehension of irony well into the school years, but the factors that hamper or facilitate children’s perspective-taking in irony comprehension are not well understood. This study takes as its starting point the relevance-theoretic echoic analysis of verbal irony, and focuses on two of irony’s distinctive features as defined by this theory: (i) the normative bias and (ii) the characteristic tone of voice. In this study, we investigated the comprehension of irony in children aged 3–8. We manipulated these two factors, namely, the violation of different types of norms and the use of different tones of voice – to see how they affected children’s processing and interpretation of irony. Using an irony comprehension task that combined picture selection and eye-tracking, we found that the type of norm violation affected 4-to 5-year-olds’ offline understanding of irony, with a better performance on moral compared with social norm violations. Tone of voice had an effect on gaze behavior in adults, but not children, although a parodic, pretense-oriented tone of voice tended to lead to more looks to the angry compared with the happy emoticon at the offset of the ironical utterance, potentially facilitating children’s irony understanding. Our results show that the understanding of irony can be detected on explicit measures around age 6 – with the emergence of second-order perspective-taking abilities – but that a sensitivity to some of irony’s features can be detected several years earlier. Finally, our study provides a novel input to the debate on the existence of a so-called literal stage in pragmatic development, in particular regarding 3-year-olds’ differential performance on the offline and online measures of irony understanding, suggesting that they are not naively mistaking ironical utterances for “ordinary” literal ones