The Trouble With Quantifiers: Exploring Children's Deficits in Scalar Implicature.

Alexandra C Horowitz,Rose M Schneider,Michael C Frank

doi:10.1111/cdev.13014

Alexandra C Horowitz, Rose M Schneider + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13014

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Abstract

Adults routinely use the context of utterances to infer a meaning beyond the literal semantics of their words (e.g., inferring from "She ate some of the cookies" that she ate some, but not all). Contrasting children's (N=209) comprehension of scalar implicatures using quantifiers with contextually derived ad hoc implicatures revealed that 4- to 5-year-olds reliably computed ad hoc, but not scalar, implicatures (Experiment 1). Unexpectedly, performance with "some" and "none" was correlated (Experiments 1 and 2). An individual differences study revealed a correlation between quantifier knowledge and implicature success (Experiment 3); a control study ruled out other factors (Experiment 4). These findings suggest that some failures with scalar implicatures may be rooted in a lack of semantic knowledge rather than general pragmatic or processing demands.

Highlights

Human language users have a remarkable ability: We can infer a speaker’s intended meaning even when it is not explicitly conveyed by the literal meanings of the words in the utterance
The finding that even elementary-aged children struggled with certain types of pragmatic judgments suggested a surprising disconnect between pragmatics and other aspects of language development
We found no significant difference between age groups in an independent sample t-test on scalar implicature trials (t(46) = 1.37, p = .18), and no such interaction was found in Experiments 2 and 3

Summary

Introduction

Human language users have a remarkable ability: We can infer a speaker’s intended meaning even when it is not explicitly conveyed by the literal meanings of the words in the utterance. We turned to whether children’s lower and correlated performance on “some” and “none” trials was due to poor inhibitory control (i.e., making a response based solely on the target noun, regardless of quantifier used.) Overall, we found an age-related increase in DCCS performance.

Results

Conclusion