Esther Pascual

Shanghai International Studies University · Department of Linguistics

Prediction appears to be an important characteristic of the human mind. It has also been suggested that prediction is a core difference of autistic children. Past research exploring language-mediated anticipatory eye movements in autistic children, however, has been somewhat contradictory, with some studies finding normal anticipatory processing in...

Using a nonce-word inflection task, we examine the morphosyntactic productivity of adult native speakers of Spanish who are either beginning to learn to read and write (semi-literates) or have acquired literacy in late adulthood (late-literates), as well as age-matched controls (high-literates). High-literates consistently provided the appropriate...

Spanish verb-complement (VC) compounds, one of the most common compound types in Spanish, raise interesting questions, because they are inflected, prototypically containing a verb in the third-person singular of the present indicative. This complexity seems paradoxical, given the strong restrictions of Romance languages on word compounding. Based o...

Echolalia, the echoing of prior speech, is a typical characteristic of autism. Long considered meaningless repetition to be avoided, echolalia may in fact be used functionally in autism. This paper explores the functions of echolalia by children with autism. Based on two prior studies, we designed an elicitation task involving images of 12 professi...

This paper deals with rhetorically intended questions in the Zhuangzi, a foundational text of Daoism (fourth century BC). Such questions are generally meant to evoke silent answers in the addressee’s mind, thereby involving a fictive type of interaction (Pascual 2006, 2014). We analyse rhetorical questions as constructions of intersubjectivity (see...

While there is a considerable body of research indicating that the acquisition of literacy has profound effects on many aspects of language and cognition, to our knowledge, very little is known about its effects on morpho-syntax. In this paper, we explore the effects of literacy on the comprehension of Spanish object relative clauses, a structure w...

We discuss the use of the question-answer pattern for relativization across signed languages, with special attention for Catalan Sign Language. These are cases in which grammatical features of the interrogative construction used for genuine information-seeking questions also appear as the most unmarked, frequent, or only linguistic means of express...

Does life-long literacy experience modulate syntactic priming in spoken language processing? Such a postulated influence is compatible with usage-based theories of language processing that propose that all linguistic skills are a function of accumulated experience with language across life. Here we investigated the effect of literacy experience on...

What makes The Daily Show with Jon Stewart so successful as social and political satire? Rhetorical theorists and critics have identified several mechanisms for satisfying the show's satiric and parodic aim, which include parodic polyglossia, contextual clash, and satirical specificity (Waisanen, 2009). We present a unified account of meaning const...

This paper explores the use of non-quotational direct speech – a construction displaying deictic perspective persistence – in the Hebrew Bible, an ancient text of great cultural significance. We focus on the use of non-quotational direct speech to introduce intentions, hopes, motives, or states of affairs. Special emphasis is laid on the complement...

As a means of expression, the unequivocally physical experience of dance is typically construed and spoken about in communicative terms, as a ‘conversation between body and soul,’ a ‘dialogue between dancers’ or a means to ‘tell a story’ to an audience (Brandt 2015; Pascual and Brandt 2015). This chapter analyses this metaphor through a case study...

Letitia R. Naigles (Ed.), Innovative Investigations of Language in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association / Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017. Pp. 253. ISBN 978-311-040-978-9 (Hb), 311-040-978-X (E-Book) - Volume 10 Issue 4 - FAN XIE, ESTHER PASCUAL

This article explores direct speech involving fictive interaction, that is not functioning as an ordinary quote (e.g. “a look of ‘I told you so’”; Pascual, 2006, 2014). We specifically deal with its use as a literary strategy, in which different fictive speech constructions may serve to: (i) give access to characters’ mental worlds; (ii) show the r...

Autism is characterized by repetitive behavior and difficulties in adopting the viewpoint of others. We examine a communicative phenomenon resulting from these symptoms: non-prototypical direct speech for non-reports involving an actual utterance from previously produced discourse (e.g. quoting somebody’s words to refer to them, Pascual 2014 ). We...

This chapter deals with strategically motivated discourse to show the fundamental role of the conversation frame in language for specific purposes. We focus on imagined speech acts in which advertised products and/or the ‘problems’ they tackle are fictively addressed through non-genuine yes-no responses (e.g. “Say no to wrinkles, say yes to this cr...

We deal with the notion of fictive interaction, namely the use of the conversation frame in order to structure cognition, discourse, and grammar (Pas-cual 2002, 2006b, 2014). We discuss how thought and the conceptualization of experience are partly modeled by the pattern of conversation, and present the kinds of fictive interaction on different lev...

We explore how fictive interaction (Pascual 2002, 2014), manifested as echolalia (i.e. verbatim or pseudo-verbatim reported speech), is successfully used by autistic children as compensatory strategy in conversation. We video recorded four Brazilian autistic children between the ages of 4 and 12 in interactions with adults in weekly therapy session...

This edited volume brings together the latest research on fictive interaction, that is the use of the frame of ordinary conversation as a means to structure cognition (talking to oneself), discourse (monologues organized as dialogues), and grammar (“why me? attitude”). This follows prior work on the subject by Esther Pascual and other authors, most...

This study deals with the use of expository questions as discourse strategy in Zhuangzi (4 th c. B.C.), a foundational text of Daoism. We treat this particular type of non-information-seeking questions (e.g. “ Why? Because…”) as a manifestation of conversational monologues, which are themselves fictive kinds of interactions between the original wri...

In its initial phases, cognitive-linguistic theories of embodiment conceived of the human body as a solitary, organic entity confined to self-reliant practices of metabolizing nourishment and moving around in its physical environment. By contrast, our theoretical foundation for philosophical and semantic analysis integrates into the concept of a hu...

This paper provides a description of the linguistic realization of evidential functions in Catalan Sign Language (henceforth ‘LSC’), a topic that has barely received any attention in the literature. The focus is on evidential values expressed by an interactional structure, namely a direct discourse constituent. This is a frequently occurring means...

Language is intimately related to interaction. The question arises: Is the structure of interaction somehow mirrored in language structure and use? This book suggests a positive answer to this question by examining the ubiquitous phenomenon of fictive interaction, in which non-genuine conversational turns appear in discourse, even within clauses, p...

This paper examines English nominal compounds whose modifier could serve as a self-sufficient discourse unit (e.g. "Hi honey, I'm home happiness," " 'not happy, money back' guarantee"). The scant literature on the construction treats such modifiers as embedded sentences, clauses, or phrases. Drawing on a collection of over 7,000 different examples...

El presente capítulo se centra en la construcción dinámica y espontánea del significado. Más concretamente, se introduce la teoría de los Espacios Mentales de Fauconnier ([1985] 1994), que sentó la base para la teoría de la Integración Conceptual o amalgama (‘blending’ en el original en inglés) de Fauconnier y Turner (1994, 1998, 2002). La teoría...

La interacción ficticia (Pascual 2002, 2006) es un fenómeno cognoscitivo que refleja la estructura básica de la conversación y se manifiesta en el léxico, la sintaxis y el discurso. Este tipo de interacción no es genuina, sino fictícia en el sentido de Talmy (1996), puesto que está construida en la imaginación. Al nivel gramatical, la interacción f...

This paper compares a writer's and a prosecutor's description of a murder, both involving the integration of the discourse content with the communicative context. I suggest that this content-context blend is essential to the meaning and communicative effect of these discourses. This blend also seems fundamental to intersubjectivity skills such as e...

This paper deals with a prosecutor's closing argument in a murder trial I did fieldwork on in California in 2000. This discourse is analyzed through the conceptual blend of the deceased victim 'testifying' through legal evidence. The emergence and argumentative power of this blend is examined vis à vis the participants' knowledge of the embedding d...

U n c o r r e c t e d p r o o f s - J o h n B e n j a m i n s P u b l i s h i n g C o m p a n y This chapter deals with 'fictive interaction blends' (Pascual 2002), namely simplex blends structured by the frame of the ordinary face-to-face conversation. Fictive interaction is presented as the unifying pattern underlying blends previously an-alyzed...

In our everyday life, we primarily make use of language in face-to-face interactions with others. Trivial as this statement may seem, the precise ways in which this affects our conceptualization of experience as well as the language system and the way it is used are far from clear. This book examines the issue, and concentrates on the intersection...

Attested instances of persuasive discourse were examined from the perspective of conceptual blending theory to reveal that serious argumentative points are often made via the construction of unrealistic blended cognitive models. The unrealistic character of these models is often related to compression , a process by which complex relationships are...

This paper examines the intersection of language, interaction and cognition. Specifically, a communicative type of fictivity is discussed, which I call fictive verbal interaction or simply fictive interaction (Pascual 2002). This constitutes a self-sufficient discourse unit conceptualized within a non-factive communicative occurrence, which functio...

In the adversarial legal system, talk-in-interaction is extremely fixed and regulated. Such rigidity motivates the emergence of what may be termed 'fictive interaction' (Pascual 2002). This constitutes a conceptual channel of communication underlying the observable interaction between participants. Regardless of its overt interactional structure (m...

Since the 1970s, the use of the Dutch preposition van in the (semi-)quotative function has been noted by several linguists and language users as rapidly increasing in informal speech. In this sense, it can be compared to the English quotative marker like, which is also used to introduce direct speech. Dutch van, however, can also occur before indir...

Spoor en weg worden samengevoegd tot spoorweg, en voet en bal tot voetbal. Onze woordenschat bestaat voor een groot deel uit samenstellingen: aaneensmedingen van losse woorden. Maar hoe langer hoe meer zie je ook combinaties van een zín en een woord: blijf-van-mijn-lijfhuis, reken-je-rijkfilosofie, doe-het-zelfmakelaar. In welke behoefte voorzien z...

This paper examines Dutch nominal compounds in which the first element is a sentence or a combination of sentences (e.g., weet-je-nog-verhalen, "Niet tevreden? Geld terug!"-garan-tie). The sentential first element of such compounds is claimed to be based on the interac-tional structure of conversation and thus to constitute a case of fictive intera...

The Western trial can be understood as a sum of pre-established and highly regulated interactional events. This dissertation suggests that such fixed interactional patterns motivate the emergence of what I call fictive interaction, i.e. an invisible channel of communication underlying the factual, observable interaction between participants. More g...

In our everyday life we primarily make use of language in face-to-face interactions with others. Trivial as this statement may seem, the precise ways in which this affects our conceptualization of experience as well as the language system and the way it is used are far from clear. This book examines the issue, and concentrates on the intersection o...

This paper deals with the use of imaginary or fictive questions as argumentative devices that can structure on-line discourse and reasoning in legal settings. The theoretical perspective used is the theory of conceptual integration networks or conceptual blending (Fauconnier & Turner 1996, 1998, 2002).

∗ Abstract - This paper examines the use of verbal demonstration (Clark and Gerrig 1990), as in the quotative and non-quotative use of direct speech, in a spontaneous conversation with a patient with Broca's aphasia. Our claim is that our aphasic patient functionally adapts his speech to his damaged cognitive capacities through a vast use of demons...