From the perspective of experimental pragmatics, our research examines how elements that shape information structure, such as focus operators, influence the flow of communication. Focus operators, which primarily have procedural meaning, direct the hearer’s attention to specific parts of the discourse and guide them toward the intended inferences. By doing so, they restrict access to certain contexts, ensuring the most relevant contextual effects are achieved.

These assumptions have been tested through a series of experiments across different languages, including Spanish, English, and German. The aim has been to identify correlations between specific information structures and their cognitive processing. The findings have led to the formulation of cognitive principles related to discourse marking, which predict how focus operators impact the processing of utterances (Loureda, Cruz, Recio & Rudka, 2021).

Current Researchers

• Prof. Dr. Óscar Loureda Lamas

• Dr. Adriana Cruz Rubio

• Martha Rudka, M.A.

Funded Projects

Proyecto REDES: Written Discourse and Cognition: Processing and comprehension of verbal and multimodal texts. Cooperation with the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. Funded by the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID) of Chile (2020-2022).

Discourse, cognition and linguistic markers: empirical studies on word processing using the eye-tracking method. Cooperation with the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. Funded by the Chilean funding institution CONICYT (Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica, PII 20150058; 2016-2019).

Information structure of the text in the Romance languages. An experimental and comparative study of the processing of the syntactic position of constituents and focus particles. Funded by the Innovation Fund FRONTIER of the Universität Heidelberg (2013-2015).