Cette thèse porte sur le développement langagier d'un enfant de Vénétie (nord-ouest de l'Italie), Francesco, suivi entre 17 et 30 mois. Dans cette région se côtoient quotidiennement l'italien et des variétés dialectales. Nous examinons les patrons des choix langagiers de cet enfant et nous les mettons en relation avec ces mêmes patrons dans la parole qu'il perçoit directement et indirectement de ses interlocuteurs. Deux types de situations constituent ce corpus : des échanges dy-triadiques entre l'enfant et ses parents (15h07, soit 6.430 énoncés transcrits) et des interactions multipartites entre l'enfant et les membres de sa famille élargie (19h50, soit 12.084 énoncés transcrits). En prenant appui sur les approches basées sur l'usage (Tomasello, 2003) et le modèle de compétition de MacWhinney (2005), nous tentons d'élucider les processus acquisitionnels concernant les choix de langues dans un contexte où ils sont fortement variables. Trois aspects définissent la spécificité de ce travail : 1/ il a été conduit dans une situation de contact où les variétés des répertoires se répartissent au long d'un continuum et où l'enfant doit apprendre à effectuer des choix codiques appropriés au contexte interactionnel ; 2/ l'exploration des productions dans différents types d'interactions permet de repérer divers modes d'apprentissage (statistique et pragmatique) et, 3/ les résultats documentent les rôles de l'input indirect et des enjeux pragmatiques dans la transmission de variétés minoritaires. Une approche interdisciplinaire permettra d'examiner ces trois points sous un éclairage alliant dialectologie, psycholinguistique et sociolinguistique.

Cette thèse aborde la notion de style et de variation intra-locuteur, dans le cadre d'enquêtes sociolinguistiques menées auprès d'enfants âgés de 5 à 11 ans. Plusieurs approches méthodologiques, tant quantitatives que qualitatives, sont convoquées afin d'appréhender les représentations et les pratiques stylistiques d'enfants de l'école primaire. Plusieurs types de données ont été recueillis et analysés, notamment des discours sur la variation, des productions langagières au cours de jeux parodiques et des conversations ordinaires. L'influence conjointe du milieu social et des réseaux de socialisation scolaire est envisagée, dans une dynamique à la fois macro- et microsociale. Le processus de construction des représentations de la variation stylistique chez l'enfant est interrogé, ainsi que le phénomène de souplesse stylistique en tant que capacité, en partie consciente, à moduler son style au cours de l'interaction, à des fins à la fois adaptatives et proactives. Ces observations et réflexions sont mises en perspective avec des problématiques socio-éducatives liées à la mixité sociale des établissements scolaires et à la prise en compte de la variation en didactique du français.

In spoken French, the phonological processes of liaison and resyllabification can render word and syllable boundaries ambiguous. In the case of liaison, for example, the final /n/ of the masculine indefinite article un [œ̃] is latent in isolation or before word beginning with a consonant (un stylo [œ̃.sti.lo] 'a pen'); however, when followed by a vowel-initial word the /n/ surfaces and is resyllabified as the onset of that word (un ami [œ̃.na.mi] 'a pen'). Thus, the phrases un air 'a melody' and un nerf 'a nerve' are produced with identical phonemic content and syllable boundaries [œ̃.nɛʁ]. Some research has suggested that speakers of French give listeners acoustic cues to word boundaries by varying the duration of consonants that surface in liaison environments relative to consonant produced word-initially. Production studies (e.g. Wauquier-Gravelines 1996; Spinelli et al. 2003) have demonstrated that liaison consonants (e.g. /n/ in un air) are significantly shorter than the same consonant in initial position (e.g. /n/ in un nerf). Studies on the perception of spoken French have suggested that listeners exploit these durational differences in the segmentation of running speech (e.g. Gaskell et al. 2002; Spinelli et al. 2003), though no study to date has tested this hypothesis directly. The current study employs a direct test of the exploitation of duration as a segmentation cue by manipulating this single acoustic factor while holding all other factors in the signal constant. Thirty-six native speakers of French and 54 adult learners of French as a second language (L2) were tested on both an AX discrimination task and a forced-choice identification task which employed stimuli in which the durations of pivotal consonants (e.g. /n/ in [œ̃.nɛʁ]) were instrumentally shortened and lengthened. The results suggest that duration alone can indeed modulate the lexical interpretation of ambiguous sequences in spoken French. Shortened stimuli elicited a significantly larger proportion of vowel-initial (liaison) responses, while lengthened stimuli elicited a significantly larger proportion of consonant-initial responses, indicating that both native and (advanced) non-native speakers are indeed sensitive to this acoustic cue. These results add to a growing body of work demonstrating that listeners use extremely fined-grained acoustic detail to modulate lexical access (e.g. Salverda et al. 2003; Shatzman & McQueen 2006). In addition, the current results have manifest ramifications for study of the upper limits of L2 acquisition and the plasticity of the adult perceptual system in that several advanced learners of French showed evidence nativelike perceptual sensitivity to non-contrastive phonological variation.

Originally published as author's thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1974. / Bibliography: p. 206-211.

La cohésion d’un texte repose sur un ensemble de liens syntaxiques et pragmatico-sémantiques entre les unités de discours dont les reprises anaphoriques. Les reprises assurent la continuité référentielle et thématique de phrases successives mais ne suffisent pas à assurer la cohérence des enchaînements. Elles font l’objet d’inférences qui permettent au système cognitif de trouver la relation de cohérence exprimée par l’enchaînement. Dans les cas simples, le système cognitif résout une reprise pronominale en lui attribuant un antécédent contextuellement pertinent, sélectionné parmi les éléments saillants actifs en mémoire. Lorsque la reprise concerne des arguments pluriels, les opérations cognitives sont plus complexes. Rentrent alors en ligne de compte non seulement la saillance de ces référents mais aussi le mode de relation qu’ils entretiennent au sein du prédicat de leur phrase d’accueil. Un prédicat d’accueil collectif tendra à effacer les distinctions entre les référents et facilitera les reprises plurielles au contraire des prédicats distributifs qui faciliteront les reprises de singuliers. Les prédicats réciproques lexicaux, quant à eux, établissent des liens de symétrie entre les entités dont on fait l’hypothèse qu’ils nécessitent des traitements cognitifs spécifiques. Les liens établis entre les arguments de prédicats collectifs, distributifs et symétriques sont étudiés d’un point de vue théorique. L’influence de ces liens sur la résolution de reprises pronominales au pluriel d’arguments dispersés mais aussi au singulier d’un élément d’une pluralité, est examinée expérimentalement (tests psycholinguistiques en production et en compréhension). L’étude théorique permet de mettre en évidence des différences fondamentales entre prédicats réciproques et prédicats symétriques d’une part, et entre prédicats collectifs et prédicats symétriques d’autre part. Les résultats expérimentaux corroborent l’étude théorique et permettent de proposer un pattern argumental pour les verbes lexicalement réciproques. / The cohesion of a text is based on a set of syntactic and pragmatico-semantic links between discourse units, including anaphoric referring terms. These terms ensure referential and thematic continuity in successive sentences, but are not sufficient to ensure the coherence of the chains. They involve inferences that enable the cognitive system to find the relationship of coherence expressed by the chain. In simple cases, the cognitive system resolves a pronominal anaphor by allocating to it a contextually relevant antecedent, selected from the salient elements that are active in memory. When the co-reference concerns plural arguments, the cognitive operations are more complex. In this case, it is necessary to take into account include not only the salience of the referents but also the type of relationship they have within the predicate of their host sentence. A collective hosting predicate will tend to remove distinctions between referents and will facilitate plural co-reference, unlike distributive predicates that facilitate singular coreference. Lexically reciprocal predicates, meanwhile, establish links of symmetry between entities that, are predicted to require specific cognitive processing. The links established between collective, distributive and symmetrical predicates are studied from a theoretical viewpoint. The influence of these links on the resolution of pronominal anaphora whose antecedent forms part of a plurality, or whose antecedents are dispersed in a comitative construction, is examined experimentally (psycholinguistic tests of production and comprehension). The theoretical study points to fundamental differences between reciprocal predicates and symmetrical predicates on the one hand, and between collective predicates and symmetrical predicates on the other. The experimental results support the theoretical study and lead to the proposal of an argumental pattern for symmetrical verbs.

La difficulté de lecture de Una meditación a été soulignée tant par la critique que par Juan Benet lui-même. Ce travail essaie de caractériser cette difficulté et, par ce biais, la spécificité de l’expérience de lecture du roman de Benet. Notre étude s’appuie sur la psycholinguistique de la compréhension des textes, qui nous permet de définir la norme de lisibilité implicite par rapport à laquelle Una meditación est jugé « difficile ». Nous étudions les deux aspects qui, par rapport à cette norme, constituent les principales sources de difficulté du texte bénétien : la disposition de la matière romanesque (au niveau du récit et de la phrase) et le système de référenciation des personnages. Sur le plan de la disposition, le récit et – à son échelle – la phrase se caractérisent par une forte discontinuité pourtant dissimulée, par un développement temporel de forme spirale, et par le brouillage des relations hiérarchiques entre les événements. Sur le plan de la référenciation, la notion de nom du personnage perd son sens traditionnel, car les noms sont peu employés, ambigus, multiples, ou inexistants ; mais c’est surtout l’omniprésence de la référenciation pronominale qui déroute le lecteur en lui exigeant implicitement de ne pas oublier un seul détail du texte. Nous analysons aussi la figure du narrateur et nuançons une lecture courante selon laquelle le texte serait le produit d’une remémoration. Nous concluons que la « difficulté » de Una meditación semble être au service d’une écriture qui, à travers l’indifférenciation des personnages et des histoires, dépasse la fiction et vise un portait générique de la nature humaine. / The difficult nature of Una meditación has been highlighted by both scholars and Juan Benet himself. This dissertation characterizes such a text complexity and thereby the singularity of the reading experience of Benet’s novel. Our work relies on the psycholinguistics of reading comprehension. This framework allows us to achieve a definition of standard readability to which Una meditación is implicitly compared when judged as “difficult”. We study the two features that revealed to be the main sources of reading difficulty in Benet’s text: the narrative and sentence structures, and the particular system of reference to the characters. At the level of the text structure, the narration and—at its own scale—the sentence are characterized by a strong discontinuity, however concealed; by a spiral temporal development; and by the scrambling of the hierarchy of the fictional events. At the level of character reference, the notion of name of the character loses its traditional meaning. Names are barely used or these are ambiguous, multiple, or inexistent. However it is above all the omnipresence of the pronominal reference that disconcerts the reader, implicitly imposing memorizing every detail of the text. We also analyze the figure of the narrator, and criticize a common reading of Benet’s novel in which the text is the produce of a recollection. We conclude that the “difficulty” of Una meditación is the result of a writing that, by means of the indiscernibility of the characters and their stories, goes beyond literary fiction and aims at a generic portrait of human nature.

Language is one of the main means of acquiring information about the world. An important debate in social psychology, linguistics and philosophy is how we come to believe information contained in statements we hear and read. Are we capable of assessing it and filtering it out, in case it is erroneous? Or do we rather tend to believe it? The experimental studies described in this thesis suggest that we strongly tend to believe statements we hear and read, even if we are aware of their falsity. Truth bias, as this tendency has been called, was detected both at the level of people’s memory and at the level of their judgments. Specifically, in a fake judicial context participants who read or listened to statements explicitly designated as true or false about a perpetrator tended to misremember false statements as true. Additionally, they were influenced by the false statements’ content in judgments they made about the perpetrators. Chapter 1 encompasses 5 Studies, all pointing to a strong truth bias, that, contrary to what is often assumed, may operate even in the absence of increased cognitive load (Studies 1–2). Studies 3–5 in Chapter 1 were methodologically-oriented, primarily aimed at testing the validity of the generalized truth bias established in Studies 1–2. Chapter 2 examines potential vigilance triggers that may reduce the truth bias. Manipulating the source of the false information (by informing participants that the speaker is either a defense attorney or prosecutor; Study 1), rendering participants accountable for their judgments (Study 2) or asking real judges to accomplish our experimental task (Study 3) did not reduce the truth bias. Nevertheless, offering participants financial incentives for providing an accurate judgment, eliminated both the memory-based and the judgment-based truth bias (Study 4). Based on the present experimental findings, I develop a model predicting that the truth bias is an intrinsic element of linguistic communication and hard to override. / Doctorat en Sciences psychologiques et de l'éducation / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This dissertation investigates the comprehension of indirect requests (IRs). Focusing on English and French, it proposes that IRs such as Can you + verbal phrase (for short, Can you VP?) achieve an optimal communicative efficiency because, while they entail extra processing costs, they match the expected level of politeness in many contexts. The approach taken combines Talmy’s force dynamic semantics with a traditional perspective in philosophy of language drawing on speech act theory. First, I sketch a theoretically viable and empirically plausible definition of directive speech acts, and provide a naturalistic explanation of why directives result in obligations for addressees. According to this definition, a directive speech act consists in a force exerted by a speaker towards an addressee’s performance of some action, with a prima facie obligation created for the addressee as a result. Consistently with this definition, I propose that imperative sentences are a convenient means to perform directives insofar as they encode a force dynamic pattern that is compatible with, but distinct from, the force exertion pattern that characterizes directives. I develop a similar analysis for You should/must VP declarative sentences. By contrast, I argue that, if interrogative sentences can be used in the performance of directives such as questioning, they do so by virtue of their incompleteness.To satisfactorily account for the variety of utterances that can be used as directives, I propose a typology based on the formal criterion of (in)directness and on the processing criterion of primariness/secondariness. Three factors are furthermore predicted to influence the processing of IRs: conventionality of means, degree of standardization, and degree of illocutionary force salience. This typology underpins an exhaustive review of experimental work on the comprehension of directives, in which I conclude that further investigation into the processing of IRs is necessary. In particular, the influence of these three factors on the processing, and, in particular, on the primariness/secondariness of IRs is left unexplored.In three eye-tracking experiments with native speakers of French, I put to the test four hypotheses. First, I hypothesize that the more an expression is standardized for the performance of IRs, the more likely it will be understood as an IR, and the more likely the IR will be primary rather than secondary. Second, because expressions such as Can you VP? used as IRs also have a direct interpretation, they should entail extra processing costs relative to their imperative and interrogative direct counterparts. Third, assuming they are direct, You must VP requests should be understood like imperatives requests, and they should not activate the assertive force. Fourth, the high degree of directive illocutionary force salience contributed by the adverb please should increase the likelihood of an IR interpretation and the likelihood that the IR will be primary. In Experiment 1, I show that IR interpretations tend to be more frequent for highly standardized IRs relative to their less standardized counterparts. I also demonstrate that interpreting the highly standardized Can you VP? and the less standardized Is it possible to VP? as IRs does not activate their “ability question” illocutionary meaning. The same finding holds, in Experiment 2, for the declaratives You can VP and It is possible to VP. The data of Experiment 2 indicate that, like imperative sentences, You must VP does not activate the assertive illocutionary force. Another finding of Experiment 1 is that Can you VP? and Is it possible to VP? can be understood as primary IRs, but these expressions nonetheless impose extra processing costs when they are interpreted as direct questions. In Experiment 3, I find that the high degree of directive force salience contributed by please increases the likelihood of an IR interpretation regardless of the degree of standardization of the expression. However, the presence of please has no significant influence on the processing of IRs.Turning to the production of directives, I address the issue of why speakers use IRs despite the extra processing costs entailed by these expressions. In a production task experiment where addressee status is manipulated, I test the hypothesis that Can you VP? IRs are used to trigger extra politeness effects absent in imperatives. A second hypothesis is that speakers should avoid imperatives and obligation declaratives such as You should/must VP because these request forms are directly compatible with force exertion at the pragmatic level. Rather, they should prefer indirect request forms such as ability interrogatives. Third, Can you VP? it should be more frequent than Is it possible to VP? in the data. A first important finding is that higher addressee status does not increase the frequency of Can you VP? interrogatives relative to other request forms. Instead of using Can you VP? more often when they address higher status people, speakers use specific politeness markers, which disconfirms the hypothesis that Can you VP? is used to convey extra politeness effects. The second hypothesis is confirmed, insofar as the data collected with this production task contain a vast majority of ability interrogatives, and imperatives and obligation declaratives are absent. Third, in line with the standardization hypothesis, Can you VP? occur much more often in the data than Is it possible to VP?. / Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Doctorat en sciences psychologiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

La recherche d'invariants phonétiques ou phonologiques dans un corpus tel que les nursery rhymes nous a amené à les collecter, à les contraster et à les analyser. La collecte finale se fit grâce au dictionnaire des nursery rhymes, compilé par les folkloristes anglais, Peter et Iona Opie, une anthologie étymologique de référence. Ils passèrent de nombreuses années à répertorier toutes sortes de nursery rhymes, anciennes et récentes, populaires et inconnues. Le but de la collecte de ce corpus était de la faire de façon globale et neutre sans apport initial d'enfants. La deuxième étape fut une réflexion sur leur identité et leur forme ce qui aboutit au constat qu'une comptine n'en était une que si elle continuait à exister. Faisant partie de la tradition orale, la nursery rhyme doit être récitée, scandée régulièrement par un public précis pour qu'elle se transmette et continue son parcours intergénérationnel . Un sondage fut mis en place auprès d'une centaine d'enfants anglophones qui contrastèrent le corpus global en deux entités. Le résultat fit apparaître un corpus de comptine toujours connues et récitables par les sondés et un autre corpus de comptines oubliées. A partir de ces deux nouveaux corpus, une analyse phonétique fut entreprise pour dégager un ou des invariants inhérents à la condition de nursery rhyme. En couplant le premier et le dernier son-consonne accentué de chaque vers de chaque comptine et en prenant la place de l'articulation comme mesure de référence, il se dégage deux mouvements majoritaires dans leur énonciation, un mouvement d'arrière en avant pour les comptines populaires et un mouvement d'avant en arrière pour celles qui sont oubliées. / The search for phonetic or phonological invariants in nursery rhymes made us collect them globally, contrast them through a survey and analyse them. The Opies, British folklorists, published an Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes which became our primary source of material as their precious collection of rhymes had the advantage of being global and objective. Once the corpus established, it became obvious that these nursery rhymes had different statuses as to their popularity among children. The need to contrast them was necessary. A survey was set up and presented to more than a hundred English-speaking children. It resulted in 2 sub-corpuses, popular nursery rhymes (PNR) and forgotten ones (FNR). The question was what made them belong to one or the other? A phonetic analysis was ploughed through the corpuses. By pairing the first and the last stressed consonant-sound of every verse of every nursery rhyme and taking the place of articulation as reference, 2 major opposite enunciative movements arose, a back-to-front movement (B2F) for popular nursery rhymes and a front-to-back movement (F2B) for the forgotten ones.