How Relevant Is the Sentence Unit to Accessing Implicit Meaning

Bibliographic Data

ID5901355
AuthorsCéline Pozniak (0000-0002-9664-1659, Université Paris 8), Claire Beyssade (0000-0002-4886-4428, Université Paris 8), Laurent Roussarie (Université Paris 8), Béatrice Godart-Wendling (0000-0002-9289-9505, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume9
Issue2
Pages42
Publication date2024-01-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguages (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/languages9020042
OpenAlexW4391220984
LanguageEN
References cited18

This paper examines the relevance of the sentence concept to the understanding of three types of implicitness (presupposition, conversational implicatures, irony). Our experimental protocol involved 105 children (aged 6 to 11) and 82 adults who were asked to read short texts composed of a context about some characters and a target sentence conveying one of the three implicit contents. After reading, children and adults had to answer a comprehension yes-no question and indicate the segments from the text that helped them answer the question. Results showed a difference between the three types of implicitness, with presupposition being detected and understood at a subsentential level, whereas implicatures and irony come under extrasentential level requiring the context to be taken into account. Referring to sentence as a unit of meaning does not seem relevant as soon as understanding is not limited to the literal meaning of what is written, but also concerns what is meant by the text

Comprehension · Context (archaeology · Irony · Linguistics · Literal and figurative language · Meaning (existential · Presupposition · Reading (process · Relevance (law · Sentence · Computer Science · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · History · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy · Psychology · Reading and Literacy Development

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