Cross-linguistic scope ambiguity: An investigation of English, Spanish, and Mandarin

Yongjia Song,Gregory Scontras,Abimael Hernandez Jimenez

doi:10.3765/plsa.v6i1.4992

Abstract

Faced with a sentence like Every horse didn't jump over the fence as a description of a scenario in which one out of two horses jumped, adults readily endorse the utterance as a good description, while children overwhelmingly reject it. However, systematic changes to the task setup lead to marked increases in children's endorsement rates (Musolino & Lidz 2006; Viau et al. 2010). Savinelli et al.(2017) use a computational cognitive model of utterance endorsement in truth-value judgment tasks to analytically demonstrate that both children and adults' interpretation behavior is affected by pragmatic manipulations. We test a clear prediction of these models: manipulating the conversational goal (or Question Under Discussion) should lead to clear effects on utterance endorsement. In addition to investigating the predictions for English, we also investigate Spanish and Mandarin, where the status of the relevant ambiguity may be less clear.

Highlights

In English, sentences with the quantifier every and negation as in (1) can be interpreted in two ways, depending on the relative scope of the quantifier with respect to negation at logical form.(1) Every horse didn’t jump over the fence. a
In an attempt to explain differences between child and adult interpretation behavior, Gualmini and colleagues argue that children are sensitive to this requirement on pragmatic felicity (Gualmini et al 2008; Hulsey et al 2004). In support of this claim, Gualmini (2004) found that children’s endorsement of scopally-ambiguous utterances can vary as a factor of the QUD. In their computational cognitive model of utterance endorsement in the truth-value judgment task, Savinelli et al (2017) implement a concrete hypothesis regarding the role of QUDs in utterance endorsement behavior; we review the details of their model in Section 3 below
Visual inspection of the results suggests that Mandarin speakers provided lower endorsement overall compared to English and Spanish

Summary

Introduction

In English, sentences with the quantifier every and negation as in (1) can be interpreted in two ways, depending on the relative scope of the quantifier with respect to negation at logical form.(1) Every horse didn’t jump over the fence. a. (1) Every horse didn’t jump over the fence. A. Surface scope: ∀ ¬ None of the horses jumped over the fence. B. Inverse scope: ¬ ∀ Not all of the horses jumped over the fence. Studies have found that children and adults have diverging interpretation behavior for these every-not sentences: where adults allow for inverse interpretations, children exhibit behavior consistent with surface interpretations (Musolino 1998; Musolino & Lidz 2006). The child behavior becomes markedly more adult-like as the result of changes to the context in which the sentences are interpreted. To investigate and formalize the effect of context on utterance interpretation, Savinelli et al (2017, 2018) develop a computational cognitive model within the Rational Speech Act modeling framework (Frank & Goodman 2012; Scontras et al electronic); the model formally articulates a hypothesis regarding how various contextual factors impact interpretation behavior

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion