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Interpreting pragmatic markers following proverbs.
Todd R Ferretti1, Deanna C Hall1, Fadi Mansour1
1Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience.
Interpreting "literally" after proverbs is harder than "figuratively." Brain responses show "literally" clashes more with familiar sayings, especially unfamiliar ones.
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Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Background:
- Pragmatic markers like 'literally' and 'figuratively' modify meaning.
- Understanding their interpretation after figurative language is key.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the cognitive processing of 'literally' and 'figuratively' following proverbs.
- To examine how familiarity of proverbs affects the interpretation of these markers.
Main Methods:
- Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) measured online comprehension costs.
- An offline sensibility rating task assessed interpretation coherence.
Main Results:
- N400 potentials indicated 'literally' had lower semantic congruence than 'figuratively'.
- Late positive potentials revealed greater difficulty resolving incongruent markers after unfamiliar proverbs.
- Offline ratings showed 'literally' was less sensible, and both markers were more sensible with familiar proverbs.
Conclusions:
- The interpretation of pragmatic markers is sensitive to context and proverb familiarity.
- Processing incongruent markers, especially with unfamiliar proverbs, incurs cognitive costs.