Background: Age is a key factor when dealing with language and speech disorders, as it entails a progressive loss of neuroplasticity even in healthy individuals. Apart from this, ageing also affects our word-retrieval abilities, and thus, our discursive skills, particularly in people suffering from neurodegenerative diseases. Therefore,…

Many psycholinguistic studies examine how people parse sentences in isolation; however, years of work in discourse processing have shown that sentence-level interpretations are influenced at some stage by discourse-level information. Evidence over the past 20 years remains mixed as to the temporal dynamics of such top-down interactions. In…

Schizophrenic discourse is characterized by thought disorder, or a lack of coherence, prompting substantial research into identifying and measuring the incoherent discourse of schizophrenics. Much of this research has examined short extracts of elicited spoken data and used researcher judgments. This study examines the connectedness of…

Scalar inference, the process by which we infer meanings stronger than what was explicitly said, has long been a central topic of investigation in theoretical semantics-pragmatics, as well as in psycholinguistics. Upon encountering the sentence "Mary ate some of the deep dish", for instance, hearers regularly compute the pragmatic…

Background: Core lexicon (CL) analysis is a time efficient and possibly reliable measure that captures discourse production abilities. For people with aphasia, CL scores have demonstrated correlations with aphasia severity, as well as other discourse and linguistic measures. It was also found to be clinician-friendly and clinically sensitive…

The use of discourse markers, like that of any other linguistic element, is dependent on contextual factors that interact at the specific moment of an enunciation. The utterers, with the need to adjust their language product to their communicative intentions, perform an analysis of the contextual, material, and relational factors involved,…

The use of language in digital discourse for marketing has rapidly developed through mass media. This paper elucidates how advertisers employ various pragmatic strategies to persuade the recipient to act (behavior) by purchasing specific products. This study utilized different theoretical and conceptual frameworks (Theory of Reasoned Action and…

Speech in everyday conversations is riddled with discourse markers (DMs), such as "well," "you know," and "like." However, in many lab-based studies of speech comprehension, such DMs are typically absent from the carefully articulated and highly controlled speech stimuli. As such, little is known about how these DMs…

This article discusses, from a sociocognitive perspective, the integration of usage-based linguistics (UBL) models in favor of conversation analysis (CA) for second language acquisition (SLA). On this basis, it presents a pedagogical approach, viz. role-based interaction analysis (RBIA) for foreign language learning (FLL), by scaffolding, tracking…

Work and learning are essential facets of our existence, yet sociocultural barriers have historically limited access and opportunity for women in multiple contexts, including their professional pursuits. Such sociocultural barriers are particularly pronounced in technical domains and have relegated minoritized voices to the margins. As a result of…

Songs, along with poetry, short stories, novels, and dramas, belong to the language of humanity (literary language). As an art form that began to be popular in the last century, it has come into the view of linguists more frequently today. Between its lines, vivid expressions such as "city can sleep", "animals can talk to each…

Young law students often get confused over the appropriateness and logic of using different terms in contracts and contractual clauses. This improper understanding of the right usage in the initial years usually sustains in their profession as well. Consequently, vague terms and ambiguities often become the root causes of contract interpretation…

In two experiments, we investigated whether speakers' referential communication benefits from an explicit focus on addressees' perspective. Dyads took part in a referential communication game and were allocated to one of three experimental settings. Each of these settings elicited a different perspective mind-set (baseline, self-focus,…

Although still disputed by some authors, complement anaphora interpretations are widely accepted today. However, they are marked and subject to strict interpretation conditions. Most commonly, monotone decreasing quantifiers facilitate a salient complement set interpretation that is suitable for subsequent anaphoric reference, whereas monotone…

Negative sentences are hard to process when they are presented out of context. When embedded in a context of plausible denial their processing difficulty decreases or is completely eliminated. We investigated in six behavioral experiments whether the processing of negation is eased in a denial context triggered by discourse markers (e.g.…