Archive Electronique - Institut Jean Nicod
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1997 research outputs found
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Derogatory Terms in Free Indirect Discourse
No full textInternational audienceFree indirect discourse (FID) is a style of reporting speech and thought that combines third-personal narration with direct, first-personal discourse. Expressive terms, such as "idiot" or "asshole", are known to occur in FID. When so used, the pejorative content reflects the protagonist's rather than the narrator's point of view. This chapter broadens the discussion of derogatory terms in FID by investigating occurrences of slurring terms, such as the N-word. The two main approaches to FID, namely, the two-context approach and the mixed-quotation approach, are discussed in light of these novel findings. The chapter shows that both are able to account for the data; however, the choice between them imposes constraints on the underlying theory of derogatory terms
Focus and Intensification in the Semantics of Brow Raise
No full textInternational audienceWe argue that in American Sign Language (ASL), Brow Raise has two sorts of functions that can be distinguished by timing: it may serve well-known information-theoretic functions that can, among others, realize focus; but it may also intensify gradable constructions – a far less well-known observation. While Brow Raise on an expression can fulfill both functions, Brow Raise right before an expression preferentially has an information-theoretic function. The main findings are replicated on some examples from LSF (French Sign Language). Strikingly, these two functions mirror those found for 'stress' (= emphasis) by Bergen 2016, who argued for a unified analysis of information-theoretic effects and of intensificational effects. We sketch a unified analysis within Alternative Semantics, and discuss a further possibility within a simplified version of Bergen's own theory of 'noise-reduction' (Bergen 2016). An extension of our ASL data shows that related generalizations hold when Brow Raise is applied to a highly iconic construction (here involving a helicopter path): depending on timing, Brow Raise may serve to evoke alternatives or to intensify part of the construction
“If This account is True, It is Most Enormously Wonderful”: Interestingness-If-True and the Sharing of True and False News
No full textInternational audienceWhy would people share news they think might not be accurate? We identify a factor that, alongside accuracy, drives the sharing of true and fake news: the 'interestingness-if-true' of a piece of news. In three pre-registered experiments (N = 904), participants were presented with a series of true and fake news, and asked to rate the accuracy of the news, how interesting the news would be if it were true, and how likely they would be to share it. Participants were more willing to share news they found more interesting-if-true, as well as news they deemed more accurate. They deemed fake news less accurate but more interesting-if-true than true news, and were more likely to share true news than fake news. As expected, interestingnessif-true differed from interestingness and accuracy, and had good face validity. Higher trust in mass media was associated with a greater ability to discern true from fake news, and participants rated as more accurate news that they had already been exposed to (especially for true news). We argue that people may not share news of questionable accuracy by mistake, but instead because the news has qualities that compensate for its potential inaccuracy, such as being interesting-if-true
Being easy to communicate might make verdicts based on confessions more legitimate
No full textInternational audienceIn many judicial systems, confessions are a requirement for criminal conviction. Even if confessions are intrinsically convincing, this might not entirely explain why they play such a paramount role. In addition, it has been suggested that confessions owe their importance to their legitimizing role, explaining why they could be required even when other evidence has convinced a judge. But why would confessions be particularly suited to justify verdicts? One possibility is that they can be more easily transmitted from one individual to the next, and thus spread in the population without losing their convincingness. 360 English-speaking participants were asked to evaluate the convincingness of one of three justifications for a verdict, grounded either in a confession, eyewitnesses, or circumstantial evidence, and to pass on that justification to another participant, who performed the same task. Then, 240 English-speaking participants evaluated the convincingness of some of the justifications produced by the first group of participants. Compared to the other justifications, justifications based on confessions lost less of their convincingness in the transmission process (small to medium effect sizes). Modeling pointed to the most common forms the justifications would take as they are transmitted, and results showed that the most common variant of the justification based on a confession was more convincing (small to medium effect sizes)
Explaining gaps in the logical lexicon of natural languages: A decision-theoretic perspective on the square of Aristotle
No full textInternational audienceAcross languages, certain logically natural concepts are not lexicalized, even though they can be expressed by complex expressions. This is for instance the case for the quantifier not all. In this paper, we propose an explanation for this fact based on the following idea: the logical lexicon of languages is partly shaped by a tradeoff between informativity and cost, and the inventory of logical expressions tends to maximize average informativity and minimize average cost. The account we propose is based on a decision-theoretic model of how speakers choose their messages in various situations (a version of the Rational Speech Act model)
The shortlist effect: nestedness contributions as a tool to explain cultural success
No full textInternational audienceAbstract Detecting the forces behind the success or failure of cultural products, such as books or films, remains a challenge. Three such forces are drift, context-biased selection and selection based on content – when things succeed because of their intrinsic appeal. We propose a tool to study content-biased selection in sets of cultural collections – e.g. libraries or movie collections – based on the ‘shortlist effect’: the fact that smaller collections are more selective and more likely to favour highly appealing items over others. We use a model to show that, when the shortlist effect is at work, content-biased cultural selection is associated with greater nestedness in sets of collections. Having established empirically the existence of the shortlist effect, and of content-biased selection, in 28 sets of movie collections, we show that nestedness contributions can be used to estimate to what extent specific movies owe their success to their intrinsic properties. This method can be used in a wide range of datasets to detect the items that owe their success to their intrinsic appeal, as opposed to ‘hidden gems’ or ‘accidental hits’
L'origine des fictions : L'hypothèse des fonctions évolutionnaires sociales
No full textInternational audienceNous présentons l’hypothèse des fonctions évolutionnaires sociales de la fiction. Après avoir présenté le cadre théorique dans lequel nous nous inscrivons, et la littérature existante sur cette question, nous décrivons les activités de produire et de consommer des fictions comme des activités intrinsèquement sociales. Les fictions exploitent très finement nos mécanismes cognitifs et les préférences sélectionnées au cours de l’évolution de notre esprit. Les fictions étant très attractives, produire et consommer des fictions sont deux activités qui génèrent des opportunités sociales évolutionnairement pertinentes, des opportunités que l’esprit humain, grâce à sa flexibilité, détecte et saisit, avec de véritables bénéfices sociaux au niveau ultime
Mixtures and Mass Terms
No full textInternational audienceIn this article, I show that the semantics one adopts for mass terms constrains the metaphysical claims one can make about mixtures. I first expose why mixtures challenge a singularist approach based on mereological sums. After discussing an alternative, non-singularist approach, I take chemistry into account and explain how it changes our perspective on these issues