Dear All,

The typo is corrected!

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science invites you to the following talk by:

Nausicaa Pouscoulous, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, UCL

Date: Wednesday, March 1, 2023

Time: 4 pm (to 5:30 pm) CET

Venue: D001-Tiered* (QS Vienna)

Zoom https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/98297897442?pwd=OWg1SXZPeXdUUi9ERjRSOHZ1SnRwUT09
Meeting ID: 982 9789 7442, Passcode: 063901

Chair: Christophe Heintz

What develops in children’s pragmatics?

Research is divided on how good young children’s pragmatic abilities really are. On the one hand, much evidence suggests pragmatics play a grounding role in the development of communication and language acquisition. On the other hand, linguistic pragmatic inferences such as implicatures, metaphor or irony seem to develop later than other linguistic abilities. To bridge the gap between the impressive pragmatic inferential skills found in toddlers and the difficulties observed in preschoolers I will argue that several factors – independent from children’s pragmatic abilities per se – may explain children’s apparent struggle with pragmatic phenomena such as metaphor or implicatures. There is an exception, nonetheless: irony comprehension is consistently found only during school age. To explain this discrepancy, I will present a novel account of irony understanding (Mazzarella & Pouscoulous), in which epistemic vigilance is central. 

*Anyone not affiliated with CEU wishing to attend in-person in Vienna must RSVP here to get access to the lecture hall.

Let me know if you would like to schedule a meeting with the speaker.

Best,

Reka