Reference to Names

Overview & Synopsis

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.