How do people talk about words? This work investigates naming constructions like This formation is called a "coral reef" that introduce lexicalized concepts like coral reef through metalinguistic reference. Based on theoretical considerations from the philosophy of language, semantics, and pragmatics in combination with experimental evidence from psycholinguistic data - including self-paced reading and eye-tracking - it reveals how people use quotational constructions to talk about language, and how readers interpret and process naming constructions with and without quotation marks.

How do people talk about words? This work explores naming constructions such as This formation is called a "coral reef" that are used to introduce lexicalized concepts like coral reef through metalinguistic reference. Drawing on the theoretical foundations in philosophy of language as well as recent work in semantics and pragmatics, experimental evidence from corpus analyses and psycholinguistic experiments-including self-paced reading and eye-tracking data-uncover the linguistic and cognitive processes behind these naming constructions. Special attention is given to the use and processing of quotational constructions during reading. Bridging (psycho)linguistics and philosophy of language, this interdisciplinary work offers new insights into how people use quotational constructions to talk about language, and how readers interpret and process naming constructions with and without quotation marks.

Theoretical studies of quotation at the semantics-pragmatics interface Empirical data on cognitive processes while reading Interdisciplinary research

Autorentext
Dr. Natascha Raue ist PostDoc an der an der Universität Osnabrück und arbeitet in der Germanistischen Sprachwissenschaft.

Inhalt
Acknowledgements Abbreviations Note of the author Data availability statement 1 Introduction 2 Approaches to defining quotation 3 Theoretical background 4 Quotation and reference to names 5 Characteristics of metalinguistic predicates 6 Empirical investigation I: Corpus-based construction analysis 7 Experimental investigation I: The interpretation of NMCs 8 Experimental investigation II: Evidence from eye-tracking 9 Conclusion References Appendix List of Figures List of Tables