- Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines
Institut des sciences de la cognition et de la communication
7, Pierre à Mazel
2000 Neuchatel - Switzerland - +41 32 718 18 07
- University of Neuchâtel, Department of language and communication science, Department Memberadd
- Languages and Linguistics, Communication, Theories of Meaning, Manipulation (Psychology), Argumentation Theory, Cognitive Science, and 29 moreTense and Aspect Systems, Theoretical Linguistics, Relevance Theory, Meaning, Discourse Analysis, Manipulation in Discourse, French language, Semantics, Cognitive Bias, Argumentation, Critical Thinking, DIscourse, Philosophy Of Language, Pragmatics, French linguistics, French, Satire & Irony, Adverbs, Linguistics, Modality, Tense aspect modality, La pragmatique et l'implicite, Evidentiality, Presuppositions, Discourse Markers, Aspect, Linguistique, Tenses (semantics and Pragmatics), Grammaticalization, Pragmatique, and Language Evolutionedit
- Professor of linguistics and discourse analysis. Areas of specialization: semantics and pragmatics, French language, ... moreProfessor of linguistics and discourse analysis. Areas of specialization: semantics and pragmatics, French language, Tense / aspect / modality, persuasion in discourse, history and epistemology of linguistics. Founder member of the Cognitive Science Centre of the University of Neuchateledit
This volume presents two works elaborating a general theory of words and their struc- ture written by René de Saussure, younger brother of Ferdinand de Saussure. Although originating in René de Saussure’s concerns for the structure of... more
This volume presents two works elaborating a general theory of words and their struc- ture written by René de Saussure, younger brother of Ferdinand de Saussure. Although originating in René de Saussure’s concerns for the structure of Esperanto, these essays are clearly intended to articulate a general account of word formation in natural lan- guage. They appear here in the French original with facing English translations, accom- panied by some remarks on René de Saussure’s life and followed by essays on the Es- perantist background of his analysis (by Marc van Oostendorp), the contemporary rele- vance of his morphological theory (by Stephen Anderson), and the semantic theory of words underlying his analysis (by Louis de Saussure). These two works have remained essentially unknown to the community of scholars in general linguistics since their pub- lication in 1911 and 1919, respectively, although Esperantists have been aware of them. They develop in quite explicit form a theory of what would later be called morphemic analysis, based primarily on data from French (with some material from German and English, as well as occasional examples from other Indo-European languages). In its fun- damental aspect, René’s view of word formation differed significantly from that of his brother, who saw the structure of complex words as revealed not through their decom- position into smaller “atomic” units but rather in the relations between words, relations which could be presented in analogical form and which anticipate rule-based theories of morphological structure. The contrast between the two brothers’ views thus anticipates basic issues in current theorizing about word structure.
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Prenant le vocabulaire des couleurs comme fil rouge et parfois comme prétexte, cet essai à l'écriture libérée du jargon habituel des spécialistes invite à une réflexion contemporaine sur un ensemble de thèmes relatifs au langage, à la... more
Prenant le vocabulaire des couleurs comme fil rouge et parfois comme prétexte, cet essai à l'écriture libérée du jargon habituel des spécialistes invite à une réflexion contemporaine sur un ensemble de thèmes relatifs au langage, à la catégorisation du monde et aux ressorts complexes de la communication langagière. Laissant une place significative aux sciences cognitives tout en discutant les positions classiques sur la question de l'universalité, il aborde plusieurs lignes d'investigation dans un ensemble de domaines qui éclairent cette vaste problématique. Le caractère fondamentalement ineffable des termes de perception, comme des émotions, suscite en filigrane une interrogation plus profonde sur ce que nous sommes capables de partager grâce au langage et parfois malgré lui dans nos tentatives, quotidiennes ou même littéraires, de se faire écho les uns aux autres.
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Français English Cet article tente de dresser un panorama général du rôle que joue, pour un locuteur ou une locutrice, en particulier en ce qui concerne une langue seconde, ce que nous nous proposons d'appeler ici l'expérience... more
Français English Cet article tente de dresser un panorama général du rôle que joue, pour un locuteur ou une locutrice, en particulier en ce qui concerne une langue seconde, ce que nous nous proposons d'appeler ici l'expérience linguistique. Par ce terme, nous entendons le fait d'expérimenter de manière répétée et intime l'usage d'une langue. Cette expérience linguistique conduit à un ensemble d'effets qui s'inscrivent avant tout dans une dimension de la pratique langagière qui échappe au monde de la description conceptuelle. Par ailleurs, elle est en lien avec le monde affectif, et conduit à une forme particulière d'attachement pour une langue et pour une culture spécifique à laquelle elle donne accès, par la familiarisation avec une pratique linguistique commune. This article attempts to provide a general overview of the role that, particularly for a speaker in the context of a second language, we propose to call "linguistic experience". By this term, we mean the repeated and intimate experimentation with the use of language. This linguistic experience results in a set of effects primarily embedded in the dimension of language practice that eludes conceptual and propositional description. Furthermore, it is connected to the realm of affectivity and leads to a distinctive form of attachment to a language and a specific culture it grants access to through familiarity with a common linguistic practice.
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Les articles rassembles dans ce recueil sont issus d'une selection de communications portant sur la semantique et la pragmatique du francais du colloque - Le francais en contextes - de "l'Association for French Language... more
Les articles rassembles dans ce recueil sont issus d'une selection de communications portant sur la semantique et la pragmatique du francais du colloque - Le francais en contextes - de "l'Association for French Language Studies," tenu a l'Universite de Neuchatel en septembre 2009. Ils apportent des eclairages nouveaux et des solutions inedites a un ensemble de problematiques classiques qui relevent des dimensions semantique et pragmatique du francais. Qu'il s'agisse de definir les usages et interpretations des marqueurs aspectuo-temporels, des operateurs modaux ou des quantificateurs, ou qu'il s'agisse de tracer les contours d'un materiau lexical difficilement saisissable (noms de couleurs ou noms d'idealites), les auteurs apportent un soin particulier a l'identification des niveaux de sens; ils s'emploient non seulement a distinguer les parts respectives du code et du contexte dans l'interpretation, mais, plus subtilement encore, examinent l'encodage semantique sous l'angle de la selection d'informations contextuelles qu'il implique."
Research Interests: Philosophy and Humanities
... Avant-propos pragmatique radicale pose sur cette question un regard dynamique, concevant une explication causale des phénomènes interprétatifs, alors que les analyses du discours considèrent le discours plutôt comme un objet complexe,... more
... Avant-propos pragmatique radicale pose sur cette question un regard dynamique, concevant une explication causale des phénomènes interprétatifs, alors que les analyses du discours considèrent le discours plutôt comme un objet complexe, faisant abstraction de sa linéarité ...
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This chapter synthesizes an account of emotions and emotion-reading that fitswith work on emotions in cognitive science (Cosmides and Tooby 2000; Deonna and Teroni 2012) and cognitive models of pragmatics (Blakemore 2002; Carston 2001;... more
This chapter synthesizes an account of emotions and emotion-reading that fitswith work on emotions in cognitive science (Cosmides and Tooby 2000; Deonna and Teroni 2012) and cognitive models of pragmatics (Blakemore 2002; Carston 2001; Sperber and Wilson [1986] 1995, 2015; Wilson 2015). From cognitive science, we adopt two ideas: firstly, that an emotion is a kind of superordinate cognitive mechanism, the function of which is to mobilize cognitive processes responsible for perception and attention, physiological changes, etc.; secondly, that emotions are viewed as attitudes bearing on evaluations. Our account builds on these observations using relevance-theoretic pragmatics. The kind of information conveyed during emotional communication puts the user into a state in which emotional procedures are highly activated, and are therefore much more likely to be recognized and selected by an audience (Wharton 2009, 2015). Central to this thinking is the idea that the notion of cognitive effect needs to be complemented by a new notion of affective effect, typically activated by emotion-reading procedures. Our account can be extended to all emotional states, but we concentrate here on positive and negative states, with particular attention paid to their role in argumentation, epistemic attitudes and poetic artefacts.
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This article aims at determining the type of ambiguity manifested by modal verbs, focusing on French. Modal verbs are often described as polysemous since they seem to encode a fixed number of possible meanings. Options of offer are the... more
This article aims at determining the type of ambiguity manifested by modal verbs, focusing on French. Modal verbs are often described as polysemous since they seem to encode a fixed number of possible meanings. Options of offer are the following: (i) that modal verbs are indeed polysemous according to a technical notion of polysemy, i.e. they encode a limited set of clear-cut modal meanings; (ii) that they are a mixture of polysemy and underspecification, that is, each meaning selected in the lexicon may undergo further adjustment; (iii) that modal verbs are not conceptual but rather procedural, i.e., they encode instructions based on their grammatical dimension (they take scope over propositions which they modify); (iv) they have a vague meaning; or (v) they are simply conceptual as any other full verb is and, as most conceptual expressions, they are underspecified and get a precise meaning in context through pragmatic enrichment. Our assumption is the latter, however with a nuance regarding epistemic necessity with devoir (must) following experimental results by Barbet (2013). We take the opportunity of this issue to go at large on conceptual and procedural meanings in the first part of the paper.
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This paper proposes a pragmatic solution to utterances where the various indicators of time and aspect (tenses, lexical-conceptual features of Aktionsart, adverb phrases and contextual cues) seem to have divergent temporal reference and... more
This paper proposes a pragmatic solution to utterances where the various indicators of time and aspect (tenses, lexical-conceptual features of Aktionsart, adverb phrases and contextual cues) seem to have divergent temporal reference and aspectual properties. This type of cases is usually treated at the semantic level as ‘mismatches’ and resolved compositionally through logical operations of ‘aspectual coercion’. We suggest on the contrary that no such effect of ‘mismatch resolution’ or ‘coercion’ is at work: these utterances are worked out inferentially according to the various pieces of evidence they provide for their relevance, in line of Deirdre Wilson’s and Dan Sperber’s (1995) relevance theory. Such utterances give rise to cognitive effects that are hardly attainable by apparently more literal formulations, while being cost-effective. Our analysis follows the work ofEscandell-Vidal and Leonetti (2011)about the rigidity and thus prevalence of computational linguistic expressions, called ‘procedural expressions’ byBlakemore (1987)withinSperber and Wilson’s (1995[1986])framework, relevance theory.
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Research Interests: Computer Science, Horn, Connectives, English, Linguistics, and 15 moreFrench, Accommodation, Aspect, Negation, Free Indirect Speech, Pragmatic, Coercion, And, Coordinates, H, M, E, C, L, and J
... comme-tout » produite par les théories de la cohérence et de l'analyse psychosociale, s'affronte aujourd'hui à celle du « discours-comme-processus » envisagé dans les approches dynamiques du... more
... comme-tout » produite par les théories de la cohérence et de l'analyse psychosociale, s'affronte aujourd'hui à celle du « discours-comme-processus » envisagé dans les approches dynamiques du sens, de la sémantique du discours à la pragmatique radicale (ou « cognitive ...
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Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture The series includes contributions that investigate political, social and cultural processes from a linguistic/discourse-analytic point of view. The aim is to publish monographs and... more
Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture The series includes contributions that investigate political, social and cultural processes from a linguistic/discourse-analytic point of view. The aim is to publish monographs and edited volumes which combine language-...
Research Interests: Sociology, Rhetoric, Pragmatics, Politics, Ideology, and 3 morePopulism, Linguistics, and Language Studies
Research Interests: Psychology, Epistemology, Narrative, Deixis, Linguistics, and 3 moreTIME, Time, and Representation Politics
Research Interests: Psychology and Cognition
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... Louis de SAUSSURE Université de Neuchâtel ... par exemple Schelling 1982 et 1983, Gerecht 1987, Mosegaard Hansen 1995 et 1998, Molendijk & de Swart 1996, Reyle 1998, Bacha 2005, Bras, Le Draoulec & Vieu 2001, ainsi que... more
... Louis de SAUSSURE Université de Neuchâtel ... par exemple Schelling 1982 et 1983, Gerecht 1987, Mosegaard Hansen 1995 et 1998, Molendijk & de Swart 1996, Reyle 1998, Bacha 2005, Bras, Le Draoulec & Vieu 2001, ainsi que Rabatel 2001 qui parle quant à lui de valeur ...
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Research Interests: Psychology, Philosophy, Epistemology, Pragmatics, Deixis, and 5 moreLinguistics, Subjectivity, Irony, Semiotica, and Intension
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ABSTRACT This paper extends the notion of presupposition to inferences providing grounds for relevance or meaningfulness; it is claimed that such presuppositions get accommodated quite in the same way as presuppositions proper, and that... more
ABSTRACT This paper extends the notion of presupposition to inferences providing grounds for relevance or meaningfulness; it is claimed that such presuppositions get accommodated quite in the same way as presuppositions proper, and that they have a particular efficiency in persuasive situations. It is argued that they bypass controls of relevance and that they relate to a wider set of cognitive processes which concern various kinds of old or given knowledge. Their link with other cognitive biases is studied. It is suggested that their persuasive power is tied to the fact that given and allegedly given information tend to be processed the same way.
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Dans cet article, nous proposons de reflechir aux formes que prennent les emotions et aux modalites de leur expression dans la litterature dans le contexte de l’interet des sciences humaines et sociales pour les emotions, qui s’est... more
Dans cet article, nous proposons de reflechir aux formes que prennent les emotions et aux modalites de leur expression dans la litterature dans le contexte de l’interet des sciences humaines et sociales pour les emotions, qui s’est recemment traduit par un emotional turn ou un affective turn. Partant d’une definition recente des emotions comme attitude ressentie, l’article evalue les modalites discursives et narratives de l’expression des emotions, en mobilisant tant la linguistique pragmatique que la perspective historique et philosophique. Il explore ainsi des pistes methodologiques et interpretatives de l’œuvre litteraire qui s’ouvrent dans le champ de recherche naissant sur litterature et emotions.
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Research Interests: Philosophy and Humanities
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... atic double-bind. I come later to this problem of double-bind and pseudo-Page 147. Manipulation and cognitive pragmatics 127 resolution of the double-binding, which, I suggest, lie at the core of the manip-ulative process. ...
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EnglishThis paper addresses the compositionality of the French modal verb devoir (‘must’) in past conditional sentences, focusing on the intriguing fact that such sentences tend to trigger counterfactual interpretations. This is puzzling... more
EnglishThis paper addresses the compositionality of the French modal verb devoir (‘must’) in past conditional sentences, focusing on the intriguing fact that such sentences tend to trigger counterfactual interpretations. This is puzzling in particular because neither the verb nor the tense would achieve this interpretation alone. We suggest that this is due to a conflict between evidential, modal and temporal features, from which a meaning of wrong past expectations, hence counterfactuality, emerges pragmatically. francaisDans cet article, nous nous interrogeons sur les raisons pour lesquelles le verbe devoir au conditionnel passe suscite une lecture contrefactuelle, alors que ni devoir ni le conditionnel, passe ou non, n’y conduisent a eux seuls. Notre tentative de solution sera pragmatique et s’attache a la concurrence que se livrent ces deux expressions au niveau de l’evidentialite, devoir selectionnant alors une interpretation prospective, correspondant a d’autres de ses emplois de valeur future.