Abstract
In English and many other languages, the interpretation of the plural is associated with an ‘exclusive’ reading in positive sentences and an ‘inclusive’ reading in negative ones. For example, the plural noun tulips in a sentence such as Chicken planted tulips suggests that Chicken planted more than one tulip (i.e., a reading which ‘excludes’ atomic individual tulips). At the same time, however, the corresponding negative sentence Chicken didn’t plant tulips doesn’t merely convey that he didn’t plant more than one tulip, but rather that he didn’t plant any tulip (i.e., ‘including’ atomic individual tulips). Different approaches to the meaning contribution of the English plural vary in how they account for this alternation across the polarities, but converge on assuming that (at least one of) the denotation(s) of the plural should include atomic individuals. Turkish, on the other hand, is cited as one of the few known languages in which the plural only receives an exclusive interpretation (e.g., Bale et al. Cross-linguistic representations of numerals and number marking. in: Li, Lutz (eds) Semantics and linguistic theory (SALT) 20, CLC Publications, Ithaca, pp 582–598, 2010). More recent proposals have, however, argued that the Turkish plural should in fact be analysed more like the English plural (e.g., Sağ, The semantics of number marking: reference to kinds, counting, and optional classifiers, PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, 2019). We report two experiments investigating Turkish-speaking adults’ and preschool-aged children’s interpretation of positive and negative sentences containing plural nouns. The results provide clear evidence for inclusive interpretations of the plural in Turkish, supporting accounts that treat the Turkish and English plurals alike. We briefly discuss how an inclusive meaning of the Turkish plural can be integrated within a theory of the Turkish number system which captures some idiosyncratic properties of the singular and the agreement between number and number numerals.
Highlights
As is well known, the plural in English is associated with more than one possible interpretation
We group the non-maximal 1- and 2-strawberry responses together, in contrast to the 3-strawberry responses, mapping the reward types to different readings of the target sentences in the following way: for the Positive Plural targets, 1- and 2-strawberry responses are interpreted as a measure of the exclusive reading, while 3-strawberry responses correspond to an inclusive reading
For the Scalar Implicature targets, 1- and 2-strawberry responses are interpreted as a measure of the target inference having been computed, whereas 3-strawberry rewards correspond to a non-implicature reading
Summary
The plural in English (and many other languages) is associated with more than one possible interpretation. Recent accounts have argued against this claim and have proposed instead that the plural in Turkish be analysed more like the plural in English, giving rise to the same alternation of readings (Kan 2010; Sag 2018, 2019) It is controversial whether the plural in Turkish should be assigned an exclusive denotation or whether an inclusive denotation is possible. A sentence like (3) in English suggests that Chicken planted multiple tulips, giving rise to the so-called exclusive interpretation of the plural; this is not an interpretation that is associated with the corresponding singular sentence in (4). This exclusive reading generally disappears when the plural noun appears in a downward-entailing context, as in (5). (6) Every chicken who planted tulips will be rewarded. [ Every chicken who planted one or more tulips will be rewarded (7) Did Chicken plant tulips? [ Did Chicken plant one or more tulips?
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