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ISCApad Archive » 2015 » ISCApad #199 » Events » Other Events » (2015-02-13) Insights into Metarepresentation: Evidence from English and French, Paris |
ISCApad #199 |
Sunday, January 18, 2015 by Chris Wellekens |
Title: Insights into Metarepresentation: Evidence from English and French
Date: 13th of February 2015
Place : room B (-1) FMSH, 190 Avenue de France, 75013
The massively distributed nature of human cognition constitutes one of the central challenges of contemporary science, with linguistic communication as a foundational case. Communication crucially rests on the hearer's ability to infer the speaker's intended meaning based on the interaction of particular stimuli and context (Grice 1989, Levinson 2000, Sperber & Wilson 1995 i.a.). The inferential nature of communication draws on the ability to attribute underlying beliefs, intentions and desires to others, known as metarepresentation (Recanati 2000, Sperber 2000). Metarepresentation epitomises the humans' ability to engage in deep cognitive coordination with others by which convergence is brought to the variety of stimuli involved in linguistic interpretation.
The issue of metarepresentation allows a deeper understanding of grammatical dimensions such as interrogatives, point-of-view adverbs, focus, conditional clauses, negation, imperfective aspect, across languages and through linguistic change. Two types of question arise however with metarepresentation whether related to an enunciative source or not:
1. What is the actual psychological reality of metarepresentations, and how are they constrained by the mind/brain substrate?
2. What are the concrete linguistic and communicative cues to identifying metarepresentational readings?
While much has been said about the potential indicators of jocularity, irony and reported speech, relatively little is known about their actual presence in real usage, and their interaction with precise prosodic and gestural dimensions. Furthermore, it is difficult to determine to what extent these indicators are stable across languages. The answer to these questions will contribute to a better understanding of the relation between meta-cognitive and meta-communicative abilities involved in the comprehension process, as well as of the relation between descriptive use and metarepresentation in various contexts.
The whole community is invited to attend the seminar dedicated to metarepresentation. Each presentation will be followed by a significant discussion session where everyone is invited to raise constructive interventions. The seminar's condition of satisfaction is to bring greater consensus about definitions, criteria, and psychological reality of metarepresentation. The seminar will be bilingual. Questions can be asked in English and in French.
Organisers
Elena Albu (elena_albu84@yahoo.com) and Pierre Larrivée (Pierre.Larrivee@Unicaen.fr)
Programme
10h-11h ? A. Reboul (L2C2, CNRS Lyon): Pouvons-nous nous passer de la metareprésentation dans la communication linguistique?
11h-12h ? J. Moeschler (University of Geneva): Qu?y a-t-il de métareprésentationnel dans la négation métalinguistique?
12h-14h - lunch break
14h-15h ? Ph. Schlenker (Institut Jean-Nicod, CNRS; New York University): Logic with Iconicity in Sign Language
15h-16h ? A. Morgenstern (Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle): Linguistic and Non-linguistic Signs in Adult-child Daily Interaction
16h-16h30 ? coffee break
16h30-17h ? round table discussion |
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