Chapter 20. Non-literal language comprehension
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Virginie Dardier
and Maud Champagne-Lavau
Abstract
Nonliteral language includes any utterance that produces an apparent need to go beyond what is literally stated, in order to comprehend the speaker’s communicative intent and, consequently, to understand the meaning of these utterances in a given context. Impaired comprehension of indirect requests has been reported in adults with acquired brain lesions. There is little available knowledge on the development of pragmatic skills in children and adolescents with brain damage. Do children with brain damage differ from brain-damaged adults in request comprehension? To answer the question, this chapter adopts a developmental perspective, describing the results of studies with adults and children with acquired brain lesions.
Abstract
Nonliteral language includes any utterance that produces an apparent need to go beyond what is literally stated, in order to comprehend the speaker’s communicative intent and, consequently, to understand the meaning of these utterances in a given context. Impaired comprehension of indirect requests has been reported in adults with acquired brain lesions. There is little available knowledge on the development of pragmatic skills in children and adolescents with brain damage. Do children with brain damage differ from brain-damaged adults in request comprehension? To answer the question, this chapter adopts a developmental perspective, describing the results of studies with adults and children with acquired brain lesions.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of authors (alphabetical) vii
- Introduction. What can variation tell us about first language acquisition? 1
-
Part I. Universals and cross-linguistic variation in acquisition
- Chapter 1. Templates in child language 27
- Chapter 2. Phonological categories and their manifestation in child phonology 45
- Chapter 3. Bootstrapping lexical and syntactic acquisition 63
- Chapter 4. Retrieving meaning from noun and verb grammatical contexts 81
- Chapter 5. Language-specificity in motion expression 103
- Chapter 6. Cross-linguistic variation in children’s multimodal utterances 123
- Chapter 7. Gesture and speech in adults’ and children’s narratives 139
-
Part II. Variation in input and contexts during acquisition
- Chapter 8. Conversational partners and common ground 163
- Chapter 9. Invariance in variation 183
- Chapter 10. New perspectives on input-output dynamics 201
- Chapter 11. Referential features, speech genres and activity types 219
- Chapter 12. Development of discourse competence 243
- Chapter 13. Texting by 12-year-olds 265
-
Part III. Variation in types of acquisition and types of learners
- Chapter 14. A unified model of first and second language learning 287
- Chapter 15. Online sentence processing in simultaneous French/Swedish bilinguals 313
- Chapter 16. The blossoming of negation in gesture, sign and oral productions 339
- Chapter 17. Motion expression in children’s acquisition of French Sign Language 365
- Chapter 18. Early predictors of language development in Autism Spectrum Disorder 391
- Chapter 19. Spoken and written narratives from French- and English-speaking children with Language Impairment\ 409
- Chapter 20. Non-literal language comprehension 427
- Language index 439
- Subject index 440
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of authors (alphabetical) vii
- Introduction. What can variation tell us about first language acquisition? 1
-
Part I. Universals and cross-linguistic variation in acquisition
- Chapter 1. Templates in child language 27
- Chapter 2. Phonological categories and their manifestation in child phonology 45
- Chapter 3. Bootstrapping lexical and syntactic acquisition 63
- Chapter 4. Retrieving meaning from noun and verb grammatical contexts 81
- Chapter 5. Language-specificity in motion expression 103
- Chapter 6. Cross-linguistic variation in children’s multimodal utterances 123
- Chapter 7. Gesture and speech in adults’ and children’s narratives 139
-
Part II. Variation in input and contexts during acquisition
- Chapter 8. Conversational partners and common ground 163
- Chapter 9. Invariance in variation 183
- Chapter 10. New perspectives on input-output dynamics 201
- Chapter 11. Referential features, speech genres and activity types 219
- Chapter 12. Development of discourse competence 243
- Chapter 13. Texting by 12-year-olds 265
-
Part III. Variation in types of acquisition and types of learners
- Chapter 14. A unified model of first and second language learning 287
- Chapter 15. Online sentence processing in simultaneous French/Swedish bilinguals 313
- Chapter 16. The blossoming of negation in gesture, sign and oral productions 339
- Chapter 17. Motion expression in children’s acquisition of French Sign Language 365
- Chapter 18. Early predictors of language development in Autism Spectrum Disorder 391
- Chapter 19. Spoken and written narratives from French- and English-speaking children with Language Impairment\ 409
- Chapter 20. Non-literal language comprehension 427
- Language index 439
- Subject index 440