Abstract
In sentences with internal negation, Free Choice Inferences (FCIs) are canceled (Chierchia, 2013). The present study investigated the possibility that FCIs are negated, not canceled, by external negation. In previous research, both Mandarin-speaking children and adults were found to license FCIs in affirmative sentences with a modal verb and the disjunction word huozhe ‘or’ (Zhou et al., 2013). The present study contrasted internal versus external negation in sentences that contained all the ingredients needed to license FCIs. Four experiments were conducted using the Truth Value Judgment Task (Crain and Thornton, 1998). Experiment 1 tested Mandarin-speaking children and adults using sentences with internal negation, a modal verb and disjunction. As expected, children did not license FCIs; rather, they assigned a ‘neither’ interpretation to disjunction. Also as expected, adults analyzed disjunction as taking scope over internal negation, yielding a ‘not both’ interpretation (Jing et al., 2005). Experiment 1 provided the benchmarks for sentences with external negation in Experiments 2-4. Experiment 2 confirmed that English-speaking adults distinguish between internal and external negation in sentences with disjunction. In Experiment 3, external negation was conveyed by the focus adverb zhiyou ‘only’. External negation eliminated the between-group differences observed in Experiment 1. Both children and adults analyzed external negation as taking scope over disjunction. Experiment 4 tested the effect of external negation on the computation of FCIs. The test sentences only differed from Experiment 1 by using external negation, rather than internal negation. Again, children and adults interpreted the test sentences in the same way. Most importantly, in contrast to Experiment 1 (with internal negation), both groups analyzed external negation as negating, rather than canceling, FCIs. The findings support the distinction between internal and external negation.
Highlights
The present study investigates the empirical consequences of two kinds of negation
The adult participants assigned a ‘not both’ interpretation to the target sentences 70% of the time. This reflects the fact that disjunction is analyzed as a Positive Polarity Items (PPIs) by the adults
The findings indicate that the children and adults interpreted disjunction in situ in sentences with covert external negation, resulting in a ‘neither’ interpretation
Summary
The present study investigates the empirical consequences of two kinds of negation. In the theoretical literature, these two negations are often referred to as predicate negation and propositional negation (see, e.g., Karttunen and Peters, 1979; Ladusaw, 1980; Bochvar and Bergmann, 1981; Horn, 1985, 2001; Schwarz and Bhatt, 2006; Bar-Asher Siegal, 2015). Expressions that are analyzed by adult speakers as PPIs differ across languages These crosslinguistic differences are revealed in sentences with internal negation, but not in sentences with external negation. External negation cancels the polarity sensitivity of disjunction words. This contrasts with internal negation, which cancels Free Choice Inferences (Chierchia, 2013) To document these contributions made to sentence meaning by external negation, we report the findings of four experiments. Like English-speaking children and adults, internal negation cancels Free Choice Inferences for Mandarin-speaking children. Experiment 1 documents two facts about internal negation: First, it interacts with polarity sensitive expressions and, second, it cancels Free Choice Inferences for speakers who interpret disjunction in situ
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