Over the last few decades, a considerable number of experimental studies have been made on the time-course of literal and nonliteral comprehension. These studies have been devoted to test two incompatible models of nonliteral processing: serial model and parallel (direct) model. The serial model states that literal interpretation is an obligatory process and nonliteral interpretation is trigger...

In this paper we propose a computational model for human-agent and agent-agent conversation. This model has two fundamental characteristics: (1) it takes into account the implicit aspects of conversations by dealing with the non literal level of speech acts; (2) it models the dialogization process. Theoretically, our model uses a public approach based on social commitments and on what we call c...

This paper presents a compact multiple-valued maskprogrammable logic array (MPLA) based on a MINITSUM (MINimunl/Truncated-SU~~ two-level synthesis, A universal literal in the MIN plane is decomposed into a threshold literal and a logic-value conversion (LVC) that is shared in the same column of the MINplane. Since a threshold literal can be designed by using a singlejoating-gate MOS transistor,...

Subjects read target sentences preceded by either short or long context that induced either a metaphoric or a literal target reading. As had been found by Ortony, Schallert, Reynolds, and Antos (1978), metaphoric targets were comprehended about as quickly as literals when context was long, but more slowly than literals when context was short. The latter result may have been due to the failure o...

Psycholinguistic repercussions of early experience in informal translation (language brokering) were examined in two tasks administered to proficient Spanish-English bilingual adults who had extensive brokering experience during childhood and proficient bilinguals without prior brokering experience. It was hypothesized that experience in language brokering leads to a greater sensitivity to non-...