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Abstract

Communication has an ostensive-inferential nature and is also geared to search for the maximal relevance, that is, to obtain the maximum cognitive effect in return for the smallest processing effort (Sperber & Wilson 2012: 88). If communication is considered a mainly inferential activity that is guided by the search for an optimal trade-off between minimal effort and maximal effects, then a language must have some linguistic means to constrain the inferential process.

Discourse particles are expressions with a mainly procedural meaning that guide the addressee towards the intended interpretation without expending a large amount of cognitive effort in processing. In this venue, the present research deals with the scalar focus operator "hasta" (En. even), the function of which in context with pragmatic scales has been experimentally investigated.

"Hasta" is a scalar FO of an absolute nature in the Spanish language. "Absolute" means that "hasta" encodes an endpoint-marking value, and it imposes an end-of-scale interpretation to its focus (Schwenter 2000, 2002; Schwenter & Vasishth 2001; Portolés 2007). In an utterance such as "Maria speaks Spanish, English and Chinese", the presence of the FO conventionally signals a scalar contrastive implicature. The implicature comprises the identification of the focus (Chinese) as the most informative element, the contrastive relation between the focus and the set of explicit alternatives (Spanish, English), the arrangement of all elements on a scale of likelihood, and the assignment of the focus at the final position of the evoked scale.

Even though the implicature triggered by the FO requires more inferential computations to be recovered than the conversational implicature in an analogous utterance like "Maria speaks Spanish, English and Chinese", the procedural meaning of the FO constrains the possible inferences and guides the addressee to the appropriate assumption minimizing the processing effort (Blakemore 1987, 1992; Sperber & Wilson 1995[1986]; Leonetti & Escandell 2004).

The dissertation describes the cognitive effect of the Spanish FO on the processing of pragmatic scales and examines how the presence of the FO determines the cognitive pattern adopted during the processing of the utterances in which it is inserted. To this end, a series of psycholinguistic experiments have been carried out: an eye-tracking reading experiment and a comprehension test.

Three independent variables (IV) were examined: a) focus marking, b) size of the alternative set, and c) degree of pragmatic plausibility. The IV-Focus marking examines the presence or absence of the FO in a given utterance. It allows corroborating whether the presence of the FO leads to differences in the processing path and the cognitive effort that the host utterance generates. The IV-Degree of pragmatic plausibility examines the processing path of the utterance when the procedural instruction of the FO conflicts with the contextual assumptions that the readers have. The IV-Size of the alternative evaluates the interaction of the procedural instruction with the semantic properties of the host utterance, and whether a greater or less amount of lexical meaning influences the processing path.

The interaction of these variables gives further insight into the role of the FO as an inferential guide during communication and the rigidity nature of its procedural meaning. The experimental findings of our study will provide, along with theoretical and descriptive studies, a three-dimensional image of this FO: the cognitive activity triggered by its processing, its idiomatic properties, and its specific behaviour in discourse.