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The impact of pragmatic markers and hedging on sentence comprehension: a case study of comme and genre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2016

INGA HENNECKE
INGA HENNECKE*
Affiliation:
Universität Tübingen
*
Address for correspondence: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Romanisches Seminar, Raum 431, Wilhelmstr. 50, 72074 Tübingen, Germany e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Current research on conceptual and semantic representations is mainly based on prototypical word classes, such as nouns and verbs. Hence, most models of language processing and language representation rely on experimental investigations on these word classes. Until today, only a few psycholinguistic studies centre on the processing of pragmatic markers and hedges and their effect on speech comprehension. The present article aims to give experimental evidence for the processing of semantic meaning patterns and pragmatic functions of pragmatic markers. The focus will be on the question, if pragmatic markers and hedges play a role in sentence processing. This main problem will be illustrated and discussed by means of experimental data. In a monolingual sentence verification task with lexical decision, the meaning patterns and functions of the partially equivalent pragmatic French markers comme and genre are investigated in Canadian and European French. The results of the sentence word verification task provide evidence for an impact of pragmatic functions and semantic meaning patterns of pragmatic markers on sentence processing.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , November 2017 , pp. 355 - 380
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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