This paper presents an analysis of face emoji (disc-shaped pictograms with stylized facial expressions) that accompany written text. We propose that there is a use of face emoji in which they comment on a target proposition expressed by the accompanying text, as opposed to making an independent contribution to discourse. Focusing on positively valenced and negatively valenced emoji (which we gloss as _happy_ and _unhappy_, respectively), we argue that the emoji comment on how the target proposition bears on a contextually (...) provided discourse value endorsed by the author. Discourse values embody what an author desires, aspires to, wishes for, or hopes for. Our analysis derives a range of non-trivial generalizations, including (i) ordering restrictions with regards to the placement of emoji and text, (ii) cases of apparent mixed emotions, and (iii) cases where the lexical content of the accompanying text influences the acceptability of a face emoji. (shrink)

We used Chinese prenominal relative clauses to test the predictions of two competing accounts of sentence comprehension difficulty: the experience-based account of Levy () and the Dependency Locality Theory. Given that in Chinese RCs, a classifier and/or a passive marker BEI can be added to the sentence-initial position, we manipulated the presence/absence of classifiers and the presence/absence of BEI, such that BEI sentences were passivized subject-extracted RCs, and no-BEI sentences were standard object-extracted RCs. We conducted two self-paced reading experiments, using (...) the same critical stimuli but somewhat different filler items. Reading time patterns from both experiments showed facilitative effects of BEI within and beyond RC regions, and delayed facilitative effects of classifiers, suggesting that cues that occur before a clear signal of an upcoming RC can help Chinese comprehenders to anticipate RC structures. The data patterns are not predicted by the DLT, but they are consistent with the predictions of experience-based theories. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe two film conventions for representing what a character sees: point of view (POV) and sight link. On a POV interpretation, the viewpoint of a shot represents the viewpoint of a particular character; while in sight link, a shot of a character looking off-screen is associated with a shot of what they are looking at. Our account of both treats them as spatial in nature, and relates them to similar spatial interpretative principles that generalize beyond character (...) eyelines. We additionally observe that whether the object shot in a sight link takes a POV interpretation depends on whether the glance shot precedes or follows it. We offer a processing account of this effect of order on interpretation, which relies on the assumption that spatial coherence in film is established by incremental viewpoint grounding. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a foundation for studying the interplay between emoji and linguistic (natural language) expressions; it does so by proposing a formal semantic classification of emoji-text combinations, focusing on two core sets of emoji: face emoji and activity emoji. Based on different data sources (introspective intuitions, naturalistic Twitter examples, and experimental evidence), we argue that activity emoji (case study I) are essentially event descriptions that serve as separate discourse units (similar to free adjuncts) and connect to the (...) accompanying (linguistic) text by virtue of suitable discourse relations. By contrast, face emoji (case study II) are expressive elements that are anchored to an attitude holder and comment on a proposition provided by the accompanying text. We provide further evidence for the distinct behavior of face emoji and activity emoji by looking at their scopal behavior with respect to linguistically-expressed negation. In particular, we probe interactions of emoji and texts that contain clausal negation, and conclude that both face emoji and activity emoji generally do not scope under negation. However, the appearance of such a scope relation arises with activity emoji when the emoji are connected to the accompanying text by virtue of an Explanation discourse relation. With face emoji, scopal interactions seem to appear in cases where the default interpretation would result in a discourse contribution that is pragmatically infelicitous, and also in cases that involve a specialized emoji-repetition construction where a repeated alternation of face emoji with words assumes a scope-marking role. (shrink)

Information structure deals with the question of how—and specifically, in what order—we choose to present the informational content of a proposition. In English and many other languages, this content is structured in such a way that given, or familiar, information precedes new, or unfamiliar, information. Because givenness and newness are largely matters of what has come previously in the discourse, information structuring is inextricably tied to matters of context—in particular, the prior linguistic context—and this is what makes information structure quintessentially (...) pragmatic in nature. While it has long been recognized that various non-canonical word orders function to preserve a given-before-new ordering in an utterance, a great deal of research has focused on how to determine the specific categories of givenness and newness that matter for information structuring. A growing body of psycholinguistic work explores the role that these categories play in language comprehension. (shrink)

Syntactic satiation is the phenomenon where some sentences that initially seem ungrammatical appear more acceptable after repeated exposures (Snyder 2000). We investigated satiation by manipulating two factors known to affect syntactic priming, a phenomenon where recent exposure to a grammatical structure facilitates subsequent processing of that structure (Bock 1986). Specifically, we manipulated (i) Proximity of exposure (number of sentences between primes and targets) and (ii) Lexical repetition (type of phrase repeated across primes and targets). Experiment 1 investigated whether acceptability ratings (...) of Complex-NP Constraint (CNPC) and Subject islands improve as consequence of these variables. If so, priming and satiation may be linked. When primes were separated from targets by one sentence, CNPC islands’ acceptability was improved by a preceding island of the same type, but Subject islands’ acceptability was not. When prime-target pairs were separated by five sentences, we found no improvement for either island type. Experiment 2 asked whether improvements in Experiment 1 reflected online processing or offline end-of-sentence effects. We used a self-paced reading paradigm to diagnose online structure-building and processing facilitation (Ivanova 2012) during processing. We found priming for Subject islands when primes and targets were close together, but not when they were further apart. No effects were detected when CNPC islands were close together, but there was a localized effect when sentences were further apart. The disjunction between Experiments 1 and 2 suggests repetition of the structure in Subject islands facilitated online processing but did not ‘spill over’ to acceptability ratings. Meanwhile, results for CNPC islands suggest that acceptability rating improvements in Experiment 1 may be driven by factors distinct from online processing facilitation. Together, our experiments show that satiation may not be a one-size-fit-all phenomenon but, instead, appears to manifest itself differently for different types of structures. Priming is possible and may be linked to satiation in some purportedly “unbuildable” structures (e.g. Subject islands), but not for all types (e.g. CNPC islands). Despite this, it appears that while the types of mechanisms targeting different island types are distinct, they are nevertheless similarly sensitive to the proximity between individual exposures. (shrink)

This chapter explores the relationship between information structure and language comprehension from a psycholinguistic perspective. More specifically, it considers how information structure, when signalled by syntactic or prosodic cues, is processed during language comprehension. It begins with a brief review of some of the key psycholinguistic methods that have been used to investigate questions about information structure, including reaction-time-based measures, attention-based measures, and off-line methods. It then discusses major research findings regarding the comprehension of syntactic cues and prosodic cues to (...) information structure. It also considers the relationship between prosody and information structure and its importance to our understanding of focus and focus alternatives. The article concludes by outlining broader issues and directions for psycholinguistic research on information structure. (shrink)

Many languages have logophoric pronouns which refer to the person whose speech, thoughts or feelings are being reported, and some languages also have antilogophoric pronouns. This paper investigates logophoricity in the pronominal system of Finnish, in particular in reported speech and free indirect discourse. I first show that the referential patterns exhibited of two types of third person pronouns in Finnish – the human third-person pronoun hän and the non-human third person pronoun se, which can also be used for human (...) antecedents in certain contexts – seem to be very different in reported speech vs. FID contexts. However, I argue that the hän/se variation can be derived from a basic generalization – namely that hän refers to SELF New reflections on grammaticalization. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, pp 327–344, 2002) – as long as we take into account the size of the logophoric domain and the different defaults of standard Finnish and colloquial Finnish. Furthermore, I suggest that we do not need to posit an additional association between se and NON-SELF, because the referential behavior of se can be derived from the size of the logophoric domain and the register defaults. In addition, once we look at how these two pronominal forms interact with the demonstrative pronoun tämä in Finnish, it becomes clear that theories of reference resolution need to consider both logophoricity and salience. (shrink)