1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910163141703321

Autore

Gotzner Nicole

Titolo

Alternative Sets in Language Processing : How Focus Alternatives are Represented in the Mind / / by Nicole Gotzner

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2017

ISBN

3-319-52761-4

Edizione

[1st ed. 2017.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xiv,162 pages) : 15 illustrations,  12 illustrations in color.)

Collana

Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition

Disciplina

410

Soggetti

Linguistics

Psycholinguistics

Cognitive grammar

Semantics

Pragmatics

Phonology

Theoretical Linguistics

Cognitive Linguistics

Phonology and Phonetics

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.

Nota di contenuto

Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Theoretical and empirical background -- Chapter 3. Long-term representation of the entire alternative set -- Chapter 4. The mechanisms of activation and competitive inhibition -- Chapter 5. What's included in the set of alternatives? -- Chapter 6. Contrastive pitch accents and focus particles -- Chapter 7. Conclusions.

Sommario/riassunto

This book presents a novel experimental approach to investigating the mental representation of linguistic alternatives. Combining theoretical and psycholinguistic questions concerning the nature of alternative sets, it sheds new light on the theory of focus and the cognitive mechanisms underlying the processing of alternatives. In a series of language comprehension experiments, the author shows that



intonational focus and focus particles such as ‘only’ shape the representation of alternatives in a listener’s mind in a fundamental way. This book is relevant to researchers interested in semantics, pragmatics, language processing and memory. Nicole Gotzner is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS) in Berlin, Germany. She is affiliated with the DFG Priority Programme Xprag.de “New Pragmatic Theories Based on Experimental Evidence”. Her research combines semantic and pragmatic theory with language processing and child language acquisition.