Both in linguistics and in psycholinguistics there is some debate about how rich or thin lexico-semantic representations are. Traditionally, in formal semantics but also in philosophy of language as well as in cognitive pragmatics, lexical meanings have been thought to be simple stable denotations or functions. In this paper, we present and discuss a number of interpretational phenomena of which the analysis proposed in the literature makes crucial use of rich meanings. The phenomena in question are cases where the assignment of truth-conditional contents to utterances seems to follow rules that do not operate on simple stable denotations or any other kind of ‘thin’ meanings but where composition takes rich structured representations as input. We also discuss problems for such accounts, which are mostly based on the inability of extant rich meanings accounts to explain many other interpretational phenomena, and we discuss the solutions that have been proposed to solve them. Furthermore, we address the discussion whether the informationally rich meanings are part of semantics, and more specifically part of the lexicon, or whether this information should be ascribed to more general world knowledge.

Previous literature has examined the effect of using a formal or informal second-person pronoun on consumers’ appreciation of an advertisement and the advertised product and their purchase intention. This is the first study that additionally examines the effect of the use of either pronoun on product price estimation. In a between-subjects web experiment, Dutch participants evaluated product ads in which either an informal or formal pronoun of address was used, or no pronoun of address at all (the control condition). Dependent variables were attitude towards the ad and the product, purchase intention, and price estimation. The results show that the use of the formal pronoun leads to a higher estimate of the price of the advertised product, while a higher price estimate may increase the purchase intention.

Does it matter whether applicants are addressed with formal or informal pronouns in online job interviews? This study shows that it does indeed, at least for speakers of French and German. Both French (n = 171) and German (n = 198) participants were more positive about a recruiter who addressed them with formal pronouns. The use of informal pronouns led to negative ratings of that recruiter by French participants, and to lower ratings of the recruiter, the company, and lower salary expectations by German participants. German men were found to be more sensitive than women to the use of formal pronouns, which had positive effects on their attitudes towards the job, company, and their salary expectations. Despite a general trend towards more use of informal pronouns in German workplaces, our study shows that using them in an online job interview has negative outcomes for companies. French participants react even more negatively to the use of informal pronouns, but these mainly have negative effects on their judgment of the recruiter rather than the company for which the recruiter is acting.

In this paper, we investigate whether non-native speakers of Dutch use the interpersonal discourse particle eigenlijk differently than native speakers of Dutch. Particles such as eigenlijk are considered to be very difficult to learn for non-native speakers. Eigenlijk might be even more difficult to learn than other particles, because of its complex effect on the discourse. We tested whether non-native speakers of Dutch used eigenlijk differently than native speakers of Dutch by means of an online cloze test in which native speakers (control group, N = 109) and non-native speakers (N = 73) had to choose between eigenlijk and an adverb in a variety of contexts. Results indicated that non-native speakers used eigenlijk differently than native speakers, but non-native speakers did somewhat understand that eigenlijk marks a contrast with a contextually raised expectation. Moreover, more proficient native speakers were more similar to native speakers in their use of eigenlijk than less proficient native speakers.