Andrea Beltrama
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 738073 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Andrea Beltrama |
| PRENOMES | Andrea |
| SOBRENOME | Beltrama |
| ASSINATURA | BELTRAMA A |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Konstanz |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0643-2424 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 16 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 42 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 16 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2015 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 3 |
(Im)precise personae
In this article, we address the following question: how do comprehenders reason about the persona embodied by the speaker to determine the referential meaning of numerical expressions such as ‘The price is $200’? Using a picture selection task, we show that descriptions uttered by speakers embodying a Nerdy persona, indexically associated with highly precise speech, are interpreted more precisely than those uttered by speakers embodying a Chill p…
Evaluation, thresholds, and practical commitments
Mildly positive adjectives (henceforth, MPAs)-e.g., decent, acceptable, adequate-are typically used to express a moderately favorable evaluation of an object. In this manuscript, I present an investigation of the semantics and pragmatics of this class of expressions. I outline a proposal of MPAs as predicates whose positive form relies on particular type of functional standard which I refer to as a necessity standard: a threshold corresponding to…
Social stereotypes affect imprecision resolution across different tasks
In two experiments, we investigate how social information about the speaker affects pragmatic reasoning in numeral interpretation. Results from a picture selection task show that comprehenders interpret numerals more precisely when uttered by Nerdy speakers — described as studious, introverted and uptight — as opposed to Chill ones — described as extroverted, sociable, and laid-back (Exp.1). Data from a Truth-Value Judgment task (Exp.2) confirm t…
Context, precision, and social perception
In two perception experiments we explore the social indexicality of numerical expressions, comparing the evaluation of three variants: precise (e.g. 'forty-nine minutes') vs. explicitly approximate (e.g. 'about fifty minutes') vs. underspecified (e.g. 'fifty minutes'). We ask two questions: (i) What constellations of social meanings are associated with each of these variants? (ii) How are such indexical associations modulated by the conversationa…
Just perfect, simply the best
Alternative questions
Polar Questions such as “is the light on?” (henceforth, PQs) and Negative Alternative Question such as “is the light on or not?” (henceforth, NAQ), despite being seemingly semantically equivalent, are known to differ pragmatically (Bolinger, 1978, van Rooy and Šafářová 2003, Biezma 2009). This paper explores the difference between these two question types and Complement Alternative Questions (henceforth, CAQ), a type of question that mentions two…
Social meaning in semantics and pragmatics
The termsocial meaningidentifies the constellation of traits that linguistic forms convey about the social identity of their users-for example, their demographics, personality and ideological orientation. A central topic of research in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, this category of meaning has traditionally escaped the scope of semantics and pragmatics; only in recent years have scholars begun to combine formal, experimental and c…
Conveying emphasis for intensity
Emphasis is a widely investigated notion in linguistics. In this article, we focus on emphasis for intensity, a general linguistic strategy whereby linguistic objects are given prominence by virtue of being selected from the upper range of a scale. We consider two linguistic domains where emphasis for intensity can be observed: the lexical domain, where it is conveyed via a variety of intensifiers, and the domain of syntax, where it can be convey…
Totally Between Subjectivity and Discourse. Exploring the Pragmatic Side of Intensification.
In American English, the intensifier totally presents a pragmatic use, in which it strengthens the speaker’s commitment towards the utterance (e.g. ‘The Bulls will totally make the playoffs’). This use has received considerably less attention than the canonical lexical contribution of the adverb (e.g. ‘the glass is totally full’). First, I rely on three acceptability studies to show that pragmatic totally is used only in discourse moves that allo…
Precision and speaker qualities. The social meaning of pragmatic detail
The present article focuses on two questions: (i) How do listeners infer the social identity of a speaker based on how they choose to describe the world? (ii) Are these inferences informed by similar principles to those motivating the social significance of linguistic phenomena in other domains of the grammar? We address this issue by exploring the social meaning of imprecision (Lasersohn 1999): speakers’ well-attested tendency to apply varying d…
Decomposing cornering effects
Alternative Questions with “or not” (NAQ) convey a cornering effect, which is notfound with they polar counterparts (PQ). This effect has been claimed to consist of two parts(Biezma 2009): NAQs (i) cannot be used discourse-initially and (ii) they do not license followupquestions/subquestions. In this paper, we ask the following: Are both parts of corneringlinked to the same property of NAQs? Or do they reflect distinct linguistic phenomena? Weexp…
Subjective assertions are weak
Sentences containing subjective predicates – e.g., “The movie was awesome” – areintuitively anchored to a particular perspective; this makes them different from sentences describingobjective facts – e.g., “The movie was set in 1995”. While authors have long debatedon whether this intuition tracks a lexical distinction between subjective and factual predicates,much remains to be explored on whether, and how, the difference between these two assert…
Marking imprecision, conveying surprise
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Forthcoming articles
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Totally tall sounds totally younger
In two social perception experiments, we explore the relationship between the social meaning and the semantic/pragmatic properties of the intensifier totally in American English. In Experiment 1, we show that totally is perceived as a more salient index of social identity categories - measured in terms of Age, Solidarity and Status attributes - when it targets a scalar dimension grounded in the speaker's attitude, as opposed to when it occurs in …
Intensification without degrees cross-linguistically
Totally tall sounds totally younger
In two social perception experiments, we explore the relationship between the social meaning and the semantic/pragmatic properties of the intensifier totally in American English. In Experiment 1, we show that totally is perceived as a more salient index of social identity categories - measured in terms of Age, Solidarity and Status attributes - when it targets a scalar dimension grounded in the speaker's attitude, as opposed to when it occurs in …
Social meaning in semantics and pragmatics
The termsocial meaningidentifies the constellation of traits that linguistic forms convey about the social identity of their users-for example, their demographics, personality and ideological orientation. A central topic of research in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, this category of meaning has traditionally escaped the scope of semantics and pragmatics; only in recent years have scholars begun to combine formal, experimental and c…
Intensification without degrees cross-linguistically
Context, precision, and social perception
In two perception experiments we explore the social indexicality of numerical expressions, comparing the evaluation of three variants: precise (e.g. 'forty-nine minutes') vs. explicitly approximate (e.g. 'about fifty minutes') vs. underspecified (e.g. 'fifty minutes'). We ask two questions: (i) What constellations of social meanings are associated with each of these variants? (ii) How are such indexical associations modulated by the conversationa…
Conveying emphasis for intensity
Emphasis is a widely investigated notion in linguistics. In this article, we focus on emphasis for intensity, a general linguistic strategy whereby linguistic objects are given prominence by virtue of being selected from the upper range of a scale. We consider two linguistic domains where emphasis for intensity can be observed: the lexical domain, where it is conveyed via a variety of intensifiers, and the domain of syntax, where it can be convey…
Intensification without degrees cross-linguistically
Totally tall sounds totally younger
In two social perception experiments, we explore the relationship between the social meaning and the semantic/pragmatic properties of the intensifier totally in American English. In Experiment 1, we show that totally is perceived as a more salient index of social identity categories - measured in terms of Age, Solidarity and Status attributes - when it targets a scalar dimension grounded in the speaker's attitude, as opposed to when it occurs in …
Totally Between Subjectivity and Discourse. Exploring the Pragmatic Side of Intensification.
In American English, the intensifier totally presents a pragmatic use, in which it strengthens the speaker’s commitment towards the utterance (e.g. ‘The Bulls will totally make the playoffs’). This use has received considerably less attention than the canonical lexical contribution of the adverb (e.g. ‘the glass is totally full’). First, I rely on three acceptability studies to show that pragmatic totally is used only in discourse moves that allo…
Precision and speaker qualities. The social meaning of pragmatic detail
The present article focuses on two questions: (i) How do listeners infer the social identity of a speaker based on how they choose to describe the world? (ii) Are these inferences informed by similar principles to those motivating the social significance of linguistic phenomena in other domains of the grammar? We address this issue by exploring the social meaning of imprecision (Lasersohn 1999): speakers’ well-attested tendency to apply varying d…
Decomposing cornering effects
Alternative Questions with “or not” (NAQ) convey a cornering effect, which is notfound with they polar counterparts (PQ). This effect has been claimed to consist of two parts(Biezma 2009): NAQs (i) cannot be used discourse-initially and (ii) they do not license followupquestions/subquestions. In this paper, we ask the following: Are both parts of corneringlinked to the same property of NAQs? Or do they reflect distinct linguistic phenomena? Weexp…
Subjective assertions are weak
Sentences containing subjective predicates – e.g., “The movie was awesome” – areintuitively anchored to a particular perspective; this makes them different from sentences describingobjective facts – e.g., “The movie was set in 1995”. While authors have long debatedon whether this intuition tracks a lexical distinction between subjective and factual predicates,much remains to be explored on whether, and how, the difference between these two assert…
Marking imprecision, conveying surprise
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the 'Save PDF' action button
Forthcoming articles
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Conveying emphasis for intensity
Emphasis is a widely investigated notion in linguistics. In this article, we focus on emphasis for intensity, a general linguistic strategy whereby linguistic objects are given prominence by virtue of being selected from the upper range of a scale. We consider two linguistic domains where emphasis for intensity can be observed: the lexical domain, where it is conveyed via a variety of intensifiers, and the domain of syntax, where it can be convey…
Alternative questions
Polar Questions such as “is the light on?” (henceforth, PQs) and Negative Alternative Question such as “is the light on or not?” (henceforth, NAQ), despite being seemingly semantically equivalent, are known to differ pragmatically (Bolinger, 1978, van Rooy and Šafářová 2003, Biezma 2009). This paper explores the difference between these two question types and Complement Alternative Questions (henceforth, CAQ), a type of question that mentions two…
Social meaning in semantics and pragmatics
The termsocial meaningidentifies the constellation of traits that linguistic forms convey about the social identity of their users-for example, their demographics, personality and ideological orientation. A central topic of research in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, this category of meaning has traditionally escaped the scope of semantics and pragmatics; only in recent years have scholars begun to combine formal, experimental and c…
Just perfect, simply the best
Context, precision, and social perception
In two perception experiments we explore the social indexicality of numerical expressions, comparing the evaluation of three variants: precise (e.g. 'forty-nine minutes') vs. explicitly approximate (e.g. 'about fifty minutes') vs. underspecified (e.g. 'fifty minutes'). We ask two questions: (i) What constellations of social meanings are associated with each of these variants? (ii) How are such indexical associations modulated by the conversationa…
Social stereotypes affect imprecision resolution across different tasks
In two experiments, we investigate how social information about the speaker affects pragmatic reasoning in numeral interpretation. Results from a picture selection task show that comprehenders interpret numerals more precisely when uttered by Nerdy speakers — described as studious, introverted and uptight — as opposed to Chill ones — described as extroverted, sociable, and laid-back (Exp.1). Data from a Truth-Value Judgment task (Exp.2) confirm t…
(Im)precise personae
In this article, we address the following question: how do comprehenders reason about the persona embodied by the speaker to determine the referential meaning of numerical expressions such as ‘The price is $200’? Using a picture selection task, we show that descriptions uttered by speakers embodying a Nerdy persona, indexically associated with highly precise speech, are interpreted more precisely than those uttered by speakers embodying a Chill p…
Evaluation, thresholds, and practical commitments
Mildly positive adjectives (henceforth, MPAs)-e.g., decent, acceptable, adequate-are typically used to express a moderately favorable evaluation of an object. In this manuscript, I present an investigation of the semantics and pragmatics of this class of expressions. I outline a proposal of MPAs as predicates whose positive form relies on particular type of functional standard which I refer to as a necessity standard: a threshold corresponding to…
Linguistics (15 obras) · Computer Science (13 obras) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (11 obras) · Philosophy (11 obras) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (11 obras) · Epistemology (8 obras) · Psychology (8 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (6 obras) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (6 obras) · Mathematics (5 obras)