TY  - GEN
A1  - Gotzner, Nicole
A1  - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1  - Spalek, Katharina
T1  - The impact of focus particles on the recognition and rejection of contrastive alternatives
T2  - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - The semantics of focus particles like only requires a set of alternatives (Rooth, 1992). In two experiments, we investigated the impact of such particles on the retrieval of alternatives that are mentioned in the prior context or unmentioned. The first experiment used a probe recognition task and showed that focus particles interfere with the recognition of mentioned alternatives and the rejection of unmentioned alternatives relative to a condition without a particle. A second lexical decision experiment demonstrated priming effects for mentioned and unmentioned alternatives (compared with an unrelated condition) while focus particles caused additional interference effects. Overall, our results indicate that focus particles trigger an active search for alternatives and lead to a competition between mentioned alternatives, unmentioned alternatives, and the focused element.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 517 
KW  - focus particles
KW  - alternative-set semantics
KW  - probe recognition task
KW  - lexical decision task
KW  - competitive inhibition
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-413420
SN  - 1866-8364
IS  - 517
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Gotzner, Nicole
A1  - Mazzarella, Diana
T1  - Face Management and Negative Strengthening: The Role of Power Relations, Social Distance, and Gender
T2  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - Negated gradable adjectives often convey an interpretation that is stronger than their literal meaning, which is referred to as ‘negative strengthening.’ For example, a sentence like ‘John is not kind’ may give rise to the inference that John is rather mean. Crucially, negation is more likely to be pragmatically strengthened in the case of positive adjectives (‘not kind’ to mean rather mean) than negative adjectives (‘not mean’ to mean rather kind). A classical explanation of this polarity asymmetry is based on politeness, specifically on the potential face threat of bare negative adjectives (Horn, 1989; Brown and Levinson, 1987). This paper presents the results of two experiments investigating the role of face management in negative strengthening. We show that negative strengthening of positive and negative adjectives interacts differently with the social variables of power, social distance, and gender.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 750 
KW  - conversational implicature
KW  - negation
KW  - politeness
KW  - social meaning
KW  - antonymy
KW  - adjectives
Y1  - 2022
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-543907
SN  - 1866-8364
SP  - 1
EP  - 13
PB  - Universitätsverlag Potsdam
CY  - Potsdam
ER  -