Children's Interpretation of Sentences Containing Multiple Scalar Terms (original) (raw)

Accessing the unsaid: The role of scalar alternatives in children’s pragmatic inference

Cognition, 2011

When faced with a sentence like, ''Some of the toys are on the table", adults, but not preschoolers, compute a scalar implicature, taking the sentence to imply that not all the toys are on the table. This paper explores the hypothesis that children fail to compute scalar implicatures because they lack knowledge of relevant scalar alternatives to words like ''some". Four-year-olds were shown pictures in which three out of three objects fit a description (e.g., three animals reading), and were asked to evaluate statements that relied on context-independent alternatives (e.g., knowing that all is an alternative to some for the utterance ''Some of the animals are reading") or contextual alternatives (e.g., knowing that the set of all three visible animals is an alternative to a set of two for the utterance ''Only the cat and the dog are reading"). Children failed to reject the false statements containing context-independent scales even when the word only was used (e.g., only some), but correctly rejected equivalent statements containing contextual alternatives (e.g., only the cat and dog). These results support the hypothesis that children's difficulties with scalar implicature are due to a failure to generate relevant alternatives for specific scales. Consequences for number word learning are also discussed.

Implicit alternatives insufficient for children ’ s implicatures with some *

2015

Human communication often expresses more than what is explicitly said. To convey and retrieve additional information beyond what is literally encoded, speakers and hearers exploit certain inferential principles, often called implicatures. This paper is concerned with one well-known such case of pragmatic inference, namely scalar implicatures (SIs) with the quantifier some. Take (1) as an illustration. Though the literal meaning of the sentence in (1a) is equivalent to (1b), (1a) communicates (1c):

(2006) Shortcuts to quantifier interpretation in children and adults

Language Acquisition, 13(3), 2006

Errors involving universal quantification are common in contexts depicting sets of individuals in partial, one-to-one correspondence. In this article, we explore whether quantifier-spreading errors are more common with distributive quantifiers each and every than with all. In Experiments 1 and 2, 96 children (5-to 9-year-olds) viewed pairs of pictures and selected one corresponding to a sentence containing a universal quantifier (e.g., Every alligator is in a bathtub). Both pictures showed extra objects (e.g., alligators or bathtubs) not in correspondence, with correct sentence interpretation requiring their attention. Children younger than 9 years made numerous errors, with poorer performance in distributive contexts than collective ones. In Experiment 3, 21 native, English-speaking adults, given a similar task with the distributive quantifier every, also made childlike errors. The persistence of quantifier-spreading errors in adults undermines accounts positing immature syntactic structures as the error source. Rather, the errors seemingly reflect inaccurate syntax to semantics mapping, with adults and children alike resorting to processing shortcuts.

Children's ambiguous understanding of weak and strong quantifiers

Nordlyd, 2008

Despite suggestions in the literature that the semantics of many might be the key for understanding children's non-adult-like interpretations of quantified sentences (cf. Drozd 2001, Geurts 2003), experimental data on the acquisition of weak quantifiers like many is rare. This ...

Shortcuts to quantifier interpretation in children and adults

2006

Errors involving universal quantification are common in contexts depicting sets of individuals in partial, one-to-one correspondence. In this article, we explore whether quantifier-spreading errors are more common with distributive quantifiers each and every than with all. In Experiments 1 and 2, 96 children (5-to 9-year-olds) viewed pairs of pictures and selected one corresponding to a sentence containing a universal quantifier (eg, Every alligator is in a bathtub).

Preschool logic: truth and felicity in the acquisition of quantification

2002

In this article we present two sets of experiments designed to investigate the acquisition of scalar implicatures. Scalar implicatures arise in examples like Some professors are famous where the speaker's use of some typically indicates that s/he had reasons not to use a more informative term, e.g. all. Some professors are famous therefore gives rise to the implicature that not all professors are famous. Recent studies on the development of pragmatics suggest that preschool children are often insensitive to such implicatures when they interpret scalar terms (

Quantity implicature and access to scalar alternatives in language acquisition

Proceedings of SALT, 2011

When faced with a sentence like Some of the toys are on the table, adults, but not preschoolers, compute a scalar implicature, taking the sentence to imply that not all the toys are on the table. This paper explores the hypothesis that children fail to compute scalar implicatures because they lack knowledge of the relevant scalar alternatives to words like some. Four-year-olds were shown pictures in which three out of three objects fit a description (eg, three animals reading), and were asked to evaluate statements that relied ...