The Metaphysics of Light in the Hexaemeral Literature: From Philo of Alexandria to Ambrose of Milan

This study investigates the concept of light in the early Jewish-Christian exegesis of the biblical creation narrative (Gen. 1, so-called ‘hexaemeron’). The study argues that the early hexaemeral exegetes theorised light from a dual perspective, both physical and metaphysical. The physical exegesis explained how light emerges as the natural capacity or power of the first material element of the world: fire. The metaphysical exegesis aimed to capture that light is the first immanent form of creation. The argument evolves in three stages. The first chapter discusses contemporary objections to the possibility of an investigation into the nature of light in ancient sources. It argues for the coherence of an ancient ‘physics of light,’ properly speaking, that was also used by hexaemeral authors in the course of their scriptural exegesis. The second chapter addresses modern and ancient objections to the justifiability of a scientific reading of Scripture. It aims to show that in the eyes of early Christian exegetes the rational enquiry into the physicality of light was indispensable for a proper understanding of the skopos (intended meaning) of the biblical creation narrative. Once the historiographical and hermeneutical objections have been removed, the study proceeds with the investigation of the nature of hexaemeral light itself. The third chapter proposes a systematic reconstruction of the hexaemeral theory of light, as it would appear at the end of the fourth century, taking into account its historical development from Philo to Ambrose, with Origen, Basil and Nyssen as the main protagonists. It shows that, from a premodern perspective, the rational account of the nature of light leads through the study of the physical properties to the grasp of the logos or intelligible cause of light. The three chapters build gradually towards the insight that the logos of light is the first manifestation of the logos of God in creation. The study offers a performative argument that, in the eyes of early hexaemeral exegetes, the metaphysics of creation is inherently incarnational: the contemplation of the light of the world reveals Christ as the creative logos of God at work. In this way, the study points towards a Christological answer to the much-debated question whether the talk of God as light (socalled ‘metaphysics of light’) is literal, metaphorical or anagogical. It thus provides the necessary background to deciphering the precise meaning of the Nicene formula ‘light from light.’AHRC (Pembroke College) The Vergottis Fund (CHESS) The Theological Studies Fund (Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge) The Church of Greece The Leventis Foundatio

Reference and Informativeness as cognitive processes in verbal communication

Overspecification in reference is the provision of more information than is minimally required for a hearer to identify an intended referent, e.g. ‘the stripy bowl’ in the context of a single bowl. Since this kind of referring expression is not predicted by traditional accounts of reference, this chapter reviews research documenting the frequency of such expressions in various contexts. Drawing together recent empirical findings, it proposes reasons for overspecified reference from both the speaker’s and the addressee’s perspective. The pragmatic, cognitive and social significance of overspecification is discussed, and applications of research in this area are considered. We close by suggesting promising future directions for this strand of research

Investigating a shared mechanism in the priming of manner and quantity implicature

In the current paper, we investigate the existence of a shared derivation mechanism between manner and quantity implicature. As per the Gricean-inspired perspective, both manner and quantity implicature are derived in a substantially analogous fashion, relying on the consideration of alternative ways in which the speaker could have spoken, but didn’t. In contrast, other accounts (e.g., grammatical accounts) of quantity implicature consider manner implicature and quantity implicature to be distinct in their derivational mechanisms.Previous studies have found that quantity implicature can prime the derivation of subsequent quantity implicature both within and between quantity implicature subtypes in a structural priming paradigm, suggesting that ad hoc, numeral and some quantity implicature are governed by the same derivational mechanism. We have applied a structural priming paradigm to the case of manner implicature to investigate 1) whether manner implicature can be primed, 2) whether manner implicature can prime manner implicature and 3) whether manner implicature can be primed by quantity implicature. Through manner-manner priming, the paper addresses the psycholinguistic reality of manner. While quantity-manner priming probes the existence of a shared derivational mechanism between the phenomena.We show that manner implicature can prime manner implicature under certain experimental circumstances and that ad hoc quantity, but not some quantity implicature can also prime manner implicature, whereas some quantity implicature cannot

The Role of Perspective-Taking in Children’s Quantity Implicatures

Young children excel at pragmatic inferences known as ad hoc quantity implicatures: they can infer, for example, that a speaker who said “the card with apples” meant the card with nothing but apples. However, it is not known whether children take into account the speaker’s perspective in deriving such inferences, as adults are able to do, and as the received theories of pragmatics claim. In two experiments, we tested children (5-7 years, N = 33 and N = 25) and adults using a picture-matching director task, in which participants played a game giving cards to the speaker, with some cards being in common ground and some in privileged ground. We found that adults can both derive implicatures when all information is in common ground and not derive them when relevant information is in privileged ground. Children also derive ad hoc implicatures when relevant information is in common ground but, crucially, fail to not derive them when it is in privileged ground. Children’s difficulty to integrate perspective-taking with pragmatic inferencing challenges the received theories about the necessity of perspective-taking in pragmatics

Recognising and Protecting the Communication Rights of Autistic Children

•Autistic children are at risk of having their communication rights violated. This risk is heightened for autistic children with communication disability, which can emerge from factors inherent autism, co-occurring language disorders and societal barriers. This risk is also unacceptably high for autistic children from minority groups. • The autistic community, researchers, clinicians and policymakers must work together to promote the communication rights of all autistic children. In particular, Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs) can contribute valuable expertise to the development and implementation of impactful policies in this field. • We propose three areas of policy action to better protect the communication rights of autistic children: o Area 1: Promoting more Inclusive Communication practices in our society; o Area 2: Enabling the co-creation of communication support services with autistic children and other relevant stakeholders; o Area 3: Increasing the visibility, access and inclusivity of specialist services

A Distinction Between Linguistic and Social Pragmatics Helps the Precise Characterization of Pragmatic Challenges in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders and Developmental Language Disorder.

Purpose Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and children with developmental language disorder (DLD) face challenges with pragmatics, but the nature and sources of these difficulties are not fully understood yet. The purpose of this study was to compare the competence of children with ASD and children with DLD in two pragmatics tasks that place different demands on theory of mind (ToM) and structural language. Method Twenty Spanish-speaking children with ASD, 20 with DLD, and 40 age- and language-matched children with neurotypical development were assessed using two pragmatics tasks: a linguistic pragmatics task, which requires competence with structural language, and a social pragmatics task, which requires competence with ToM as well. Results For linguistic pragmatics, the ASD group performed similarly to the DLD and language-matched groups, and performance was predicted by structural language. For social pragmatics, the ASD group performed lower than the DLD and language-matched groups, and performance was predicted both by structural language and ToM. Conclusions Children with ASD and children with DLD face difficulties in linguistic pragmatics tasks, in keeping with their structural language. Children with ASD face exceptional difficulties with social pragmatics tasks, due to their difficulties with ToM. The distinction between linguistic and social pragmatic competences can inform assessment and intervention for pragmatic difficulties in different populations.British Academy Project (SG-47135

Why some children accept under-informative utterances

Binary judgement on under-informative utterances (e.g. Some horses jumped over the fence, when all horses did) is the most widely used methodology to test children’s ability to generate implicatures. Accepting under-informative utterances is considered a failure to generate implicatures. We present off-line and reaction time evidence for the Pragmatic Tolerance Hypothesis, according to which some children who accept under-informative utterances are in fact competent with implicature but do not consider pragmatic violations grave enough to reject the critical utterance. Seventy-five Dutch-speaking four to nine-year-olds completed a binary (Experiment A) and a ternary judgement task (Experiment B). Half of the children who accepted an utterance in Experiment A penalised it in Experiment B. Reaction times revealed that these children experienced a slow-down in the critical utterances in Experiment A, suggesting that they detected the pragmatic violation even though they did not reject it. We propose that binary judgement tasks systematically underestimate children’s competence with pragmatics