"Wh"-words have been analysed as existential quantifiers (Chierchia in Logic in grammar: polarity, free choice, and intervention. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013; Fox, in Sauerland U, Stateva P (eds) Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics (Palgrave studies in pragmatics, language and cognition). Palgrave…

This study aims to advance our understanding of the nature and source(s) of individual differences in pragmatic language behavior over the adult lifespan. Across four story continuation experiments, we probed adults' (N = 496 participants, ages 18-82) choice of referential forms (i.e., names vs. pronouns to refer to the main character). Our…

In this task-repetition intervention study, L2 learners' reuse of linguistic constructions was analyzed to investigate to what extent recurring reliance on specific constructions during the same task repetition predicts fluency development. English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners performed oral narrative tasks three times per day under two…

It has been reported for decades that preschool children (age 4-7) tend to assign non-adult-like interpretations for sentences with pre-subject exclusive only. This study reports findings from two experiments investigating (1) the effects of (in)congruent implicit questions in discourse contexts and (2) word order transformation on children's…

In this study, we analyse a 9-year-old child's argumentative participation in a group discussion, from a microgenetic development angle. Specifically, we follow one child through the discussion and analyse the development process, defined as changed participation and as interactionally contingent upon the other participants and the teacher. The…

We performed three experiments to investigate whether adjectives can modulate the sensorimotor activation elicited by nouns. In Experiment 1, nouns of graspable objects were used as stimuli. Participants had to decide if each noun referred to a natural or artifact, by performing either a precision or a power reach-to-grasp movement. Response grasp…

Background: Despite its importance, in-depth analysis of connected speech is often neglected in the diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) -- especially for the logopenic variant (lvPPA) for which unreliable differential diagnosis has been documented. Only a few studies have been conducted on this topic in lvPPA. Aims: The aim of this…

The present study investigated the canonical position of instrumental and locative adverbial phrases in both Japanese sentences and noun phrases to determine whether the canonical positions are parallel. A series of sentence/phrase decision tasks were used to compare sentences with different word-orders, including sentences with SA"dv"OV…

We explored how a physical education teacher education (PETE) programme at an Australian university influenced physical education pre-service teacher (PEPST) sport teaching identities. Our methodology utilised Elias's [2012a [1970, 1978]. "What is sociology? Collected works" (Vol. 5). University College Dublin Press] "personal…

In this paper, the meaning and processing of the German conditional connectives (CCs) such as "wenn" 'if' and "nur wenn" 'only if' are investigated. In Experiment 1, participants read short scenarios containing a conditional sentence (i.e., If P, Q.) with "wenn"/"nur wenn" 'if/only if' and a confirmed or…

Verb-object idioms such as "kick the bucket" are very common in Spanish. This research set out to find what systematic differences exist between the literal and idiomatic interpretations of idioms of this kind from three different experimental perspectives: production, perception, and acceptability judgments focused on verbal aspect.…

Evidence that L2 learners of Spanish overgeneralize indirect object pronouns (OPs) to direct object contexts with human referents and direct OPs to indirect object contexts with nonhuman referents has been provided by Zyzik (2006), Malovrh (2008), and Olsen and Juffs (2022). However, the effect of instruction on this phenomenon has not been…

We discuss the causative-inchoative alternation in Turkish Sign Language (Türk Isaret Dili -- TID), and the age of acquisition effects on multi-predicate, complex constructions that are observed in both causative and inchoative events. We present a picture-description task performed by 24 adult signers, half of which were exposed to TID from birth…

Informally speaking, presuppositions are meaning components which are part of the common ground for speakers in a conversation, that is, background information which is taken for granted by interlocutors. The current literature suggests an immediate processing of presuppositions, starting directly on the word triggering the presupposition. In the…

We investigated the acquisition of Hindi split ergativity (zero or "-ne" marking) and Hindi differential object marking (DOM; zero or "-ko" marking) by L1 speakers of Dutch. Both grammatical phenomena are conditioned by multiple syntactic and semantic features. On a descriptive level, the study aims to examine when and how…