Contrasting c'est -clefts and it-clefts in discourse

Bourns, Stacey Katz

doi:10.1075/pbns.244.10kat

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Thus, in (1b) C’est Camille qui boit un martini , the focus element is Camille and the congruent (explicit) question is of the form Who is drinking a martini? Several authors note, however, that French relies more heavily on clefting due to prosodic constraints on the sentence initial position (Bourns, 2014; Carter-Thomas, 2009; Hamlaoui, 2007), making clefts the default strategy to answer subject focus. Pragmatically, clefts are also known to associate with a specific inference, exhaustivity, whereby the clefted element is interpreted as if under the scope of an exclusive expression like ‘only’ (Clech-Darbon et al, 1999; de Cat, 2007; Horn, 1981).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Processing pragmatic inferences in L2 French speakers

Destruel

2022

Second Language Research

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A large amount of literature exists on how native speakers derive and process pragmatic inferences, yet few studies have examined the issue in second language learners, despite a controversial debate of second language (L2) ultimate attainment of phenomena situated at external interfaces. This study contributes to the debate on the integration of external interfaces in highly proficient end-state adult L2 grammars. In an effort to bridge the empirical gap in the past literature, this article reports on two sentence-picture verification tasks designed to test the processing cost of the exhaustive inference associated with cleft sentences in the L2 French of English learners with different proficiency levels. Truth-value judgments and reaction times were recorded in contexts that violated or supported the exhaustive inference. Overall, results show that L2 learners diverge from the natives in their online processing of the exhaustive inference only and that proficiency plays an important role in predicting their behavior. Nevertheless, what post-hoc observations of the data reveal that L2 length of exposure to native input might be an even better predictor, since only those L2 speakers who have had more exposure to native French input compute the exhaustive inference in clefts as fast as French natives.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Processing pragmatic inferences in L2 French speakers

Destruel

2022

Second Language Research

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“…3.1(Renans 2016b, c). Note, however, that the pragmatics of clefts differ significantly cross-linguistically, compare e.g., French and English clefts (e.g.,Bourns 2014;Lambrecht 2001;Destruel 2013). The semantics of the Ga ni-structure…”

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confidence: 99%

Definite descriptions of events: progressive interpretation in Ga (Kwa)

Renans

2019

Linguist and Philos

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This paper demonstrates that the progressive interpretation in Ga is an effect of the interaction between the imperfective aspect and a definite description of events. Crucially, the data from Ga point to the consequences of the view that definite descriptions of events encode the familiarity of the discourse referent and its uniqueness in bearing the property in question. Namely, they yield direct evidentiality and the necessary ongoingness of the event at the topic time. Thus, the paper identifies previously unattested variation in the semantics of the progressive in a cross-linguistic perspective and shows that not only lexical but also grammatical aspect exhibits striking parallelisms with the nominal domain.

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Second language acquisition of pragmatic inferences: Evidence from the Frenchc'est-cleft

Destruel

Donaldson

2016

Applied Psycholinguistics

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This paper examines the extent to which second language (L2) speakers of French acquire the semantic and pragmatic (or interpretive) properties associated with the c'est-cleft, specifically the exhaustive inference. This phenomenon is relevant to theories of language acquisition because it is situated at the interface of syntax and pragmatics. The results from a forced-choice task challenge the empirical adequacy of the interface hypothesis (Sorace, 2011, 2012; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006), which claims that external interfaces between a linguistic module and a cognitive module remain problematic even at the highest levels of L2 acquisition. The results from 40 L2 learners at three proficiency levels reveal development from nontargetlike to nativelike behavior. In particular, the high-proficiency group interprets the c'est-cleft, as well as canonical subject–verb–object sentences and sentences with exclusives (i.e., seul(ement) “only”), in a statistically identical way to the French native speaker control group.

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Contrasting c'est -clefts and it-clefts in discourse

Cited by 4 publications

References 13 publications

Processing pragmatic inferences in L2 French speakers

Processing pragmatic inferences in L2 French speakers

Definite descriptions of events: progressive interpretation in Ga (Kwa)

Second language acquisition of pragmatic inferences: Evidence from the Frenchc'est-cleft

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