The pragmatics of negation across contexts

Pragmatics of negation 1 Running head : PRAGMATICS OF NEGATION

Negation is a fundamental element of language and logical systems, but processing negative sentences can be challenging. Early investigations suggested that this difficulty was due to the representational challenge of adding an additional logical element to a proposition, but in more recent work, supportive contexts mitigate the processing costs of negation, suggesting a pragmatic explanation. ...

Uninformative negation is infelicitous to both adults and children

Why do some negative sentences sound strange, even when they are both true and grammatical? Past work suggests that both adults (e.g., Clark & Chase, 1972) and children (e.g., Kim, 1985) find negation difficult, but context can facilitate the processing of negative sentences (e.g., Wason, 1965). We argue that the effect of context on negation is driven by general pragmatic principles rather tha...

Cross-linguistic Influence at Syntax-pragmatics Interface: A Case of OPC in Persian

Recent research in the area of Second Language Acquisition has proposed that bilinguals and L2 learners show syntactic indeterminacy when syntactic properties interface with other cognitive domains. Most of the research in this area has focused on the pragmatic use of syntactic properties while the investigation of compliance with a grammatical rule at syntax-related interfaces has not received...

Assessing Pragmatics through MDCTs: A Case of Iranian EFL Learners

Testing pragmatic competence has always posed daunting challenges to researchers and practitioners. As a step to address the gap in pragmatic testing, this paper delineates the procedural stages of developing and validating a context-sensitive Multiple Choice Discourse Completion Test (MDCT). Following a unitary view of validity, tenable argument and empirical evidence was accumulated to suppor...

The pragmatics of negation simulation 1