Abstract
This article reports the results of an experimental study that examines the influence of bilingualism on the acquisition and use of the Maximize Presupposition principle in the context of speakers’ choices among propositional attitude predicates (equivalent to) know and think. We compared the performance of monolingual Slovenian- and Italian-speaking school children to that of age-matched early bilingual children speaking both languages. Our findings suggest that while all children demonstrate adherence to Maximize Presupposition in an adult-like manner, bilingualism may enhance performance in pragmatic tasks that bear on this principle, and therefore constitutes a potential advantage in the relevant area.
Highlights
Some recent work (Heim 1991; Sauerland 2008; Schlenker 2012; Lauer 2016; among others) scrutinizes presuppositions and other kinds of inferences from the perspective of pragmatics. In line with this more recent approach, the present study provides an experimental perspective on the acquisition and use of a less studied pragmatic principle Maximize Presupposition (MP)
In estimating main effects and interactions, we report χ2 and p-values based on the likelihood-ratio test, whereby a model containing the fixed effect of interest is compared to a model that is identical in all respects except the fixed effect in question
We find that the actual success rate on condition lexical presupposition of factivity (LP) within the Slovenian monolingual group of children is on a par with that within the Italian monolingual group (88%) but is lower than in the Slovenian adult controls (99%), the difference being significant (Estimate = 3.191, SE = 0.88, z = 3.637, p = 0.003)
Summary
The rationale underlying our interest in the bilingual performance was to investigate the extent to which the commonly hypothesized enhanced ability of bilinguals pertaining to evaluating of (linguistic) alternatives and inhibition of irrelevant ones (cf Bialystok 2010 among others), can be deployed for the purpose of manipulating semantically equivalent alternatives in the context of MP This question is important both in the theoretical sense, strengthening the recently emerging consensus that the concept of competition plays an important role in the domain of pragmatic knowledge, as well as for a better understanding of respective psychological mechanisms, especially those concerning executive functions that may be operative when that knowledge is put to use
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