Abstract
In this paper we investigate the scopal reading of disjunctions in French negative sentences with pre-schoolers. We posit that the French disjunctor “ou” does not fit the traditional disjunction PPI/non-PPI dichotomy according to which a wide scope is taken by a PPI disjunction and a narrow scope when the disjunction is not a PPI. We hypothesized that focus could be a succesful scopal manipulator. Using Truth Value Judgment Tasks (TVJT), we tested French pre-schoolers' scopal reading of negated disjunctions in a neutral prosody condition and with prosodic focus on the disjunctor in a between subject design. We found that as predicted, prosodic focus often enduced participants to adopt a disjunction wide scope reading whereas a disjunction narrow scope reading was favored in the neutral prosody condition. This confirmed our hypothesis that focus can manipulate disjunction scope paramaters. It also shows that, when the disjunction is focalised, children have access to the disjunction wide scope reading earlier than previously thought. Finally, we can conclude that the distinction between PPI-disjunctor vs. non-PPI disjunctor languages needs to be more fine-grained.
Highlights
Disjunctions are logical expressions that introduce an alternative between at least two propositions
The disjunction creates a conjunctive entailment in negative sentences, namely both propositions must be true for the sentence to be true, see (6)
In order to explore whether the children’s perception of the test items with neutral prosody matched that of the adults, a mixed ANOVA was run on the proportion of disjunction narrow scope reading responses with a between subject factor of age group [adults (n = 14) vs. children (n = 21)6] and a within subject factor of story type (Red vs. Yellow)
Summary
Disjunctions are logical expressions that introduce an alternative between at least two propositions. A sentence like (1) is judged true by adult English speakers if and only if it is both apples and pears that the “I” does not like. The disjunction creates a conjunctive entailment in negative sentences, namely both propositions must be true for the sentence to be true, see (6). In (1) and (2), the negation scopes over the disjunction meaning that it encompasses the whole disjunction. Not all languages seem to allow the negation to scope over the disjunctor. The Japanese sentence (3) would not be interpreted by native Japanese speakers as “it is the carrot and the pepper that the pig did not eat” (Goro and Akiba, 2004). Information Structure and Scope Interactions (3) Butasan-wa ninjin ka piiman-wo tabe-nakat-ta pig-TOP carrot or pepper-ACC eat-neg-Past
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