The scalar meaning prediction in the processing of Spanish focus operators hasta and nada más

ABSTRACT

Connectives have been shown to confirm or reverse the prediction of upcoming discourse content. Whether the non-conceptual meaning of other types of discourse markers can further constraint the upcoming discourse remains mostly unexplored. This study evaluates the predicting effect of two scalar focus operators, Spanish hasta (even) and nada más (only). In a visual-world paradigm experiment, participants heard sentences that included either one of the scalar focus operators that guided the prediction of one of four simultaneously displayed images. Results showed that the utterance of the focus operators triggered anticipation of the corresponding visual element according to a higher or lower position of the scale. Also, looking times suggest different processing demands for each of the focus operators. These results shed light on the way non-conceptual meaning contributes to building expectations about upcoming discourse, and provide evidence of the scalar organisation of elements in the shared discourse knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• Focus operator
• prediction
• discourse markers processing
• scalar meaning
• linguistic preactivation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología under Grant 317016 Ciencia de Frontera.