Zufferey Sandrine. Lexical Pragmatics and Theory of Mind

John Benjamins, 2010. — ix, 192 pages. — (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series). — ISBN: 978-90-272-8757-1.The concept of theory of mind (ToM), a hot topic in cognitive psychology for the past twenty-five years, has gained increasing importance in the fields of linguistics and pragmatics. However, even though the relationship between ToM and verbal communication is now recognized, the extent, causality and full implications of this connection remain mostly to be explored. This book presents a comprehensive discussion of the interface between language, communication, and theory of mind, and puts forward an innovative proposal regarding the role of discourse connectives for this interface. The proposed analysis of connectives is tested from the perspective of their acquisition, using empirical methods such as corpus analysis and controlled experiments, thus placing the study of connectives within the emerging framework of experimental pragmatics.The concept of theory of mind in pragmatics
Defiing theory of mind
Theory of mind and theories of verbal communicationThe co-acquisition of language and theory of mind
The main stages of language acquisition
The development of theory of mind abilities
Interdependence of language and theory of mindInsights from autism on language and theory of mind
Autism: A defiition
Language and communication impairments in autism
The mindblindness hypothesis
The weak central coherence hypothesis
Other pathologies associated with a defiit in theory of mindLanguage as a window into children’s developing theory of mind
Theory of mind in language
Acquiring the language of theory of mindDiscourse connectives and theory of mind
Th notion of domains of use
A cognitive analysis of domains of use
Hypotheses regarding the acquisition of domains of use
The domains of use of French causal connectives
The procedural meaning of puisqueEmpirical study on the acquisition of the French connective parce que
The acquisition of domains of use
The acquisition of the French connective parce que: A corpus study
Discussion of results
The use of parce que by autistic childrenEmpirical study on the acquisition of the French connective puisque
Corpus data for the acquisition of puisque
The acquisition of irony
Th development of second-order theory of mind abilities
Design of an experiment on the acquisition of puisque
Results
Discussion