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The present study investigates the processing of presupposition accommodation. In particular, it concerns the processing costs and the time-course of accommodation as compared to presupposition satisfaction. Data collected in a self-paced word-by-word reading times experiment support three results. First, independently on the presupposition trigger in use, accommodation is costlier than satisfaction. Second, presupposition accommodation takes places immediately just as the trigger becomes available and proceeds incrementally during the sentence processing. Third, accommodated information is harder to be recalled. The results offer evidence for the on-line processing of presuppositions and, consistently with the traditional semantic framework, support the idea that, presuppositions are semantic properties encoded in the lexical meaning of the presupposition triggers.

Recent proposals in pragmatics identified two types of pragmatics: linguistic-pragmatics and social-pragmatics, as comprehension seems to rely on linguistic and Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities to different extents depending on the phenomenon. In this respect, a clear picture of indirect requests (IRs) processing is lacking. Experimental works suggest non-conventionalized IRs are processed by means of a conversational implicature based on metarepresentation of the whole utterance, therefore belonging to social-pragmatics. However, it is unclear whether this applies to conventionalized IRs, which are globally processed faster than non-conventionalized IRs. Conventionalized IRs are either conversational implicatures requiring ToM, though "short-circuited" (but still derived globally); or a linguistic-pragmatics phenomenon whose processing is triggered locally. Our study investigates to what extent mentalizing is involved in their comprehension. Ninety-one Italian adults (mean age = 35.85(9.85)) performed a self-paced region-by-region reading task where Can you...? forms were presented in a directive, non-directive, and sarcastic condition. Reading times were calculated per sentence and per sentence-region. ToM abilities were also tested. Results suggest that conventionalized IRs processing starts locally, triggered by the Can you. Individual ToM differences had an impact, but mainly on the Can you sentence-region. These findings seem to support a view of conventionalized IRs as a linguistic-pragmatics phenomenon. • Conventionalized Indirect Requests seem to belong to linguistic pragmatics. • Conventionalized Indirect Requests processing starts locally. • Processing seems to hinge on lexical cues such as the Can you in the Can you...? form. • Theory of Mind skills facilitate conventionalized IRs processing on a local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Common Ground account proposed by Stalnaker (2002, 2009), speakers involved in a verbal interaction have different propositional attitudes towards presuppositions. In this paper we propose an experimental study aimed at estimating the psychological plausibility of the Stalnakerian model. In particular, the goal of our experiment is to evaluate variations in accepting as appropriate a sentence that triggers a presupposition, where different attitudes are taken towards the presupposition required. The study conducted suggests that if a speaker has the attitude of belief towards the content of a presupposition, she may evaluate an utterance as more appropriate in a shorter time than in cases where she holds an attitude of presumption or of assumption. Therefore, data collected support the psychological soundness of what might be considered the main, but also most debated, theory of presupposition on the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper I propose a normative account of pragmatic presupposition as a criticism and enrichment of Gauker''s theory. By an appeal to epistemic contextualism, my aim is to integrate Gauker''s normative account with an explanation of the different ways in which speakers ought to share presuppositions. In particular, I focus my analysis on some stereotypical situations to show that the epistemic goal of a conversation determines the level of justification of a presupposition. Finally, I claim that coherence with the level of justification is a condition for appropriateness of assertions: in order to appropriately assert a sentence p that requires a presupposition q, speakers should recognize how they ought to be able to justify q in a specific communicative context. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Language impairment in Parkinson's disease (PD) has been investigated at different levels of linguistic skills. Only a few studies dealt with pragmatic abilities in PD, and these suggest an impairment of pragmatic skills, which might affect quality of life. However, previous studies enrolled patients with heterogeneous symptom severity. The goal of this study is twofold: first, to investigate whether pragmatic skills are compromised at the early stage of PD; second, to explore whether an early pragmatic impairment is explained by a decay of a specific cognitive function. We assessed pragmatic abilities (discourse production, comprehension of narratives, humour, and figurative language), and a cluster of cognitive functions (memory, verbal fluency, inhibition, shifting, and ToM) in a sample of early PD patients and a group of age-matched healthy controls. Early PD patients showed impaired general pragmatic skills (the ability to perform different pragmatic tasks in language production and comprehension), as well as a deficit in the production and comprehension individual scores. Our results suggest that good general cognitive skills (a good overall cognitive level) and high education support patients' pragmatic competence. Inhibitory processes have been found to predict patients' ability to understand figurative language, such as metaphors, and this might be related to frontal lobe dysfunctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]