Scalar Implicatures Research Articles

The interpretations of scalar implicatures, presuppositions, and implicated presupposition by Thai children with autism

Using the negated universal quantifiernot every, the study investigates the interpretations of scalar implicatures, lexical presuppositions, and implicated presuppositions by Thai children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs; n= 32), comparedto their typically-developing (TD) peers (n= 70) and adults (n= 40). The results provide further empirical evidence to the literature (Chevallier et al. 2010, Hochstein et al. 2017, Pijnacker et al. 2009) that not only do adolescents with ASD perform on par with TD adolescents,children with ASD are also age-appropriate in their performance on deriving scalar implicatures. Despite the children with ASD's ability to compute scalar implicature, they still tend to give more logical, literal responses, compared to their peers. Compared to adults, both children with ASD and TD children still have a higher tendency to rely on the logical meaning rather than pragmatically inferred meaning. They are also less likely than adults to derive scalar implicatures, but equally likely to derive lexical presuppositions. No additive effects of implicated presuppositions are found in any group of the participants.

Tattoos as a window onto cross-linguistic differences in scalar implicature

This paper addresses the question of how to predict which alternatives are active in scalar implicature calculation, and the nature of this activation. It has been observed that finger implicates 'not thumb', and a Manner-based explanation for this has been proposed, predicting that if English had the simplex Latin word pollex meaning 'thumb or big toe', then finger would cease to have the implicature 'not thumb' that it has. It has also been suggested that this hypothetical pollex would have to be sufficiently colloquial in order to figure in scalar implicature calculation. This paper makes this thought experiment into a real one by using a language that behaves in exactly this way: Spanish has pulgar 'thumb' (< pollex), a non-colloquial form. We first use a fill-in-the-blank production task with both English and Spanish speakers to guage the likelihood with which a speaker will produce a given form as a way of describing a given digit. Production frequency does not perfectly track complexity, so we can then ask whether comprehension follows production frequency or complexity. We do so using a forced choice comprehension task, which reveals cross-linguistic differences in comprehension tracking production probabilities. A comparison between two RSA models -- one in which the speaker perfectly replicates our production data and a standard one in which the speaker chooses based on a standard cost/accuracy trade-off -- illustrates the fact that comprehension is much more closely tied to production probability than to the mere existence of sufficiently simple alternatives.

Processing Conditional Perfection in Promises and Threats: The Role of Negation, Clause Order and Incentive.

The paper reports on two experiments that investigate whether polarity, clause order and incentive influence derivation of Conditional Perfection in two types of inducements (promises and threats). Both experiments are designed as inference tasks, additionally measuring reaction times to inferences. The paper shows that the derivation of Conditional Perfection is endorsed in both types of inducements. However, the negative consequent bias (i.e. higher rates of Conditional Perfection in conditionals with a negative consequent than in conditionals with an affirmative consequent) and the double negation effect (i.e. slowdown of reaction times to Conditional Perfection with a double negation in a consequent) hold for threats, but not for promises. The paper also reveals a parallel double negation effect (i.e. facilitation of Conditional Perfection in conditionals with negation in both clauses) in threats, but not in promises. Last but not least, the paper demonstrates that the effect of clause order and incentive on the derivation of Conditional Perfection is rather moderate. The paper supports the view that the derivation of Conditional Perfection is not effortful (Van Tiel and Schaeken in Cogn Sci 41:1119-1154, 2016) and has some indirect arguments for treating Conditional Perfection and scalar implicatures as separate phenomena.

The Cost of the Epistemic Step: Investigating Scalar Implicatures in Full and Partial Information Contexts.

We present the first ERP experiments that test the online processing of the scalar implicature some ⇝ not all in contexts where the speaker competence assumption is violated. Participants observe game scenarios with four open cards on the table and two closed cards outside of the table, while listening to statements made by a virtual player. In the full access context, the player makes a fully informed statement by referring only to the open cards, as cards on the table; in the partial access context, she makes a partially informed statement by referring to the whole set of cards, as cards in the game. If all of the open cards contain a given object X (Fullset condition), then some cards on the table contain Xs is inconsistent with the not all reading, whereas it is unknown whether some cards in the game contain X is consistent with this reading. If only a subset of the open cards contains X (Subset condition), then both utterances are known to be consistent with the not all implicature. Differential effects are observed depending on the quantifier reading adopted by the participant: For those participants who adopt the not all reading in the full access context, but not in the partial access context (weak pragmatic reading), a late posterior negativity effect is observed in the partial access context for the Fullset relative to the Subset condition. This effect is argued to reflect inference-driven context retrieval and monitoring processes related to epistemic reasoning involved in evaluating the competence assumption. By contrast, for participants who adopt the logical interpretation of some (some and possibly all), an N400 effect is observed in the partial access context, when comparing the Subset against the Fullset condition, which is argued to result from the competition between the two quantifying expressions some cards on the table and some cards in the game functioning in the experiment as scalar alternatives.

A Note on the Cardinalities of Sets of Scalar Alternatives

AbstractFormal theories of scalar implicature appeal crucially to a set of alternatives. These are the alternative statements that a speaker could have made but chose not to in pragmatic accounts, and the alternative statements that figure in the computation of exhaustivity operators in grammatical approaches. I show that the three sufficiently explicit theories of alternatives in the literature generate sets of alternatives that grow at least exponentially as a function of the input, and that these theories generate very large sets even for relatively small inputs. For pragmatic accounts of scalar implicature, I argue these results are hard or impossible to square with what we know independently about manipulating alternatives from the psychology of human reasoning. I propose that they pose a weaker but more general challenge for grammatical approaches, since alternatives as required by exhaustivity operators occur elsewhere in grammar, for example as part of the semantics of operators like “only” and “even.”

The Role of Alternatives in Language

In this review we provide a discussion of the concept of alternatives and its role in linguistic and psycholinguistic theorizing in the context of the contributions that have appeared in the Frontiers Research TopicThe Role of Alternatives in Language. We are discussing the linguistic phenomena for which alternatives have been argued to play a paramount role: negation, counterfactual sentences, scalar implicatures and exhaustivity, focus, contrastive topics, and sentences with bare plurals and with definite plurals. We review in how far alternatives are relevant for these phenomena and how this relevance has been captured by theoretical linguistic accounts. Regarding processing, we discuss the mental activation of alternatives: its mandatory vs. optional nature, its time course. We also address the methodological issue of how experimental studies operationalize alternatives. Finally, we explore the phenomenon of individual variation, which increasingly attracts attention in linguistics. In sum, this review gives an inclusive and broad discussion of alternatives by bringing together different research strands whose findings and theoretical proposals can advance our knowledge of alternatives in inspiring cross-fertilization.

Analysis of Conversational Implicatures in Camus' The Misunderstanding: A Pragmatic Exploration

Implicatures perform an important role in creating humour or imparting different shades of meaning to a message. Similarly, flouting has become one of the common features in our daily communication. The focus of this paper is to study the cooperative principles in Camus' French play, The Misunderstanding (1943). This is a qualitative research. For this purpose, the data has been collected through the purposive sampling technique. In this study, the framework of Grice (1975) has been adopted, in which he described four maxims that should be obeyed by a speaker while making a conversation. The present study explores that in what ways the Gricean maxims have been flouted by the characters of the play. Findings reveal that there are 24 implicatures found in 16 utterances. Out of these 24 implicatures, the maxim of quantity has been flouted more than the others as it appears with the ratio of 9/24. Then comes the maxim of manner with the ratio of 8/24. The maxim of a relation comes on the third rank with the ratio of 6/24 and in the last comes the maxim of quality with the lowest ratio of 1/24. This study can be further expanded to find out the scalar implicatures and speech acts in the selected play.

Conversational Implicature Of Women’s Language By Shin Tanokura In Drama Series Of Oshin

This study aims to describe the conversational implicature of women’s language by Shin Tanokura in the drama series of Oshin. Research-based on a theory of Azuma (2009) for implicature as women’s language and Yule (2006) for conversational implicature. It is a kind of qualitative research. The data collection technique used is the observing method. The method used in this research is the descriptive analysis with Connect and Compare Equation Technique and Connect and Distinguishing Technique. The result showed that the conversational implicature of women’s language by Shin Tanokura in the drama series of Oshin is generalized conversational implicature, particularized conversational implicature, and scalar implicature. These three implicatures present markers that confirm the utterances belong to the variety of women’s language. In conclusion, the use of the implicature with high intensity is a marker of the utterance that belongs to the variety of women’s language. The variety of women’s language with the use of implicature gives an impression and an image about the characteristic of women and the variety of women’s language.

Presupposed free choice and the theory of scalar implicatures

A disjunctive sentence like Olivia took Logic or Algebra conveys that Olivia didn’t take both classes (exclusivity) and that the speaker doesn’t know which of the two classes she took (ignorance). The corresponding sentence with a possibility modal, Olivia can take Logic or Algebra, conveys instead that she can take Logic and that she can take Algebra (free choice). These exclusivity, ignorance and free choice inferences are argued by many to be scalar implicatures. Recent work has looked at cases in which exclusivity and ignorance appear to be computed instead at the presupposition level, independently from the assertion. On the basis of those data, Spector and Sudo (Linguist Philos 40(5):473–517, 2017) have argued for a hybrid account relying on a pragmatic principle for deriving implicatures in the presupposition. In this paper, we observe that a sentence like Noah is unaware that Olivia can take Logic or Algebra has a reading on which free choice appears in the presupposition, but not in the assertion, and we show that deriving this reading is challenging on Spector and Sudo’s (2017) hybrid account. Following the dialectic in Fox (Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics, Palgrave, London, pp 71–120, 2007), we argue against a pragmatic approach to presupposition-based implicatures on the ground that it is not able to account for presupposed free choice. In addition, we raise a novel challenge for Spector and Sudo’s (2017) account coming from the conflicting presupposed ignorance triggered by sentences like #Noah is unaware that I have a son or a daughter, which is infelicitous even if it’s not common knowledge whether the speaker has a son or a daughter. More generally, our data reveals a systematic parallelism between the assertion and presupposition levels in terms of exclusivity, ignorance, and free choice. We argue that such parallels call for a unified analysis and we sketch how a grammatical theory of implicatures where meaning strengthening operates in a similar way at both levels (Gajewski and Sharvit in Nat Lang Semant 20(1):31–57, 2012; Magri in A theory of individual-level predicates based on blind mandatory scalar implicatures, MIT dissertation, 2009; Marty in Implicatures in the DP domain, MIT dissertation, 2017) can account for such parallels.

The Role of Working Memory in the Processing of Scalar Implicatures of Patients With Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders

A number of studies have demonstrated pragmatic language difficulties in people with Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders. However, research about how people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders understand scalar implicatures (SIs) is surprisingly rare, since SIs have generated much of the most recent literature. Scalar implicatures are pragmatic inferences, based on linguistic expressions like some, must, or, which are part of a scale of informativeness (e.g., some/many/all). Logically, the less informative expressions imply the more informative ones, but pragmatically people usually infer that the presence of a less informative term implies that the more informative term was not applicable. In one of the few existing studies with people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders, Wampers et al. (2018) observed that in general, people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders were less likely to derive SIs than controls. The current study has three main aims. First, we want to replicate the original finding with the scalar terms some-all. Second, we want to investigate how these patients deal with different scalar terms, that is, we want to investigate if scalar diversity is also observed in this clinical group. Third, we investigate the role of working memory, often seen as another important mechanism to enable inferring SIs. Twenty-one individuals with a psychotic disorder and 21 matched controls answered 54 under-informative statements, in which seven different pairs of scalar terms were used. In addition, working memory capacity was measured. Patients with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders did not make more logical interpretations when processing quantifiers, disconfirming Wampers et al. (2018). However, certain scalar scales elicited more pragmatic interpretations than others, which is in line with the scalar diversity hypothesis. Additionally, we observed only partial evidence for the role of working memory. Only for the scalar scale and-or, a significant effect of working memory was observed. The implications of these results for patients with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders are discussed, but also the role of working memory for pragmatic inferences, as well as the place of SIs in experimental pragmatics.

Does intonation automatically strengthen scalar implicatures?

Two mouse-tracking experiments tested predictions from two different models of scalar implicature as to whether exhaustive interpretations are computed prior to ignorance implicatures. We use different German intonational patterns to probe the availability of these interpretations (Experiments 1 and 2) and add a speaker competence manipulation in Experiment 2. Results from Experiment 1 found that deriving exhaustive interpretations with an L+H* was delayed to ignorance implicatures with an L*+H contour. Experiment 2 replicated this finding even with a strengthened competence assumption about the speaker. We interpret our processing data as providing constraints on the computational mechanisms underlying the interpretation of scalar implicatures. EARLY ACCESS

Scalar implicature is not a default process: An ERP study of the scalar implicature processing under the effect of focus factor

This study explored the processing mechanism of scalar implicatures under different focus conditions by the picture-sentence verification paradigm. Through the guidance of different types of incorrect sentences, scalar terms were controlled to adjust whether they were at the focus position and divided the focused and non-focused conditions. The behavioural results showed that when the content of the picture was “all squares have…”, more participants under the focused condition could judge that the underinformative sentence “some squares have…” was not appropriate. Moreover, according to whether participants could stably determine that the underinformative sentences were inappropriate, they were divided into pragmatic and semantic responders. The ERP results showed that pragmatic responders evoked a P200 effect, an N400 effect and a sustained negativity effect according to the scalar terms, and a P200 effect and a sustained positivity effect according to the sentence-final words. In contrast, semantic responders did not elicit any ERP effect. These results indicate that the generation of scalar implicatures is not completely determined by the scalar terms and that the focus factor plays an important role in the scalar implicatures inference.

Referential and general calls in primate semantics

In recent years, the methods of formal semantics and pragmatics have been fruitfully applied to the analysis of primate communication systems. Most analyses therein appeal to a division of labor between semantics and pragmatics which has the following three features: (F1) calls are given referential meanings (they provide information about the world rather than just about an action to be taken), (F2) some calls have a general meaning, and (F3) the meanings of calls in context are enriched by competition with more informative calls, along the lines of scalar implicatures. In this paper, we develop highly simplified models to independently assess the conditions under which such features would emerge. After identifying a sufficient condition for (F1), we find a range of conditions under which (F2) and (F3) are not evolutionarily stable, and discuss the consequences for both modeling and empirical work.

The Development of Quantity Implicatures in Mandarin-Speaking Children

ABSTRACT The present study reports a large, cross-sectional study of Mandarin-speaking children’s ability to compute quantity implicatures. To chart the developmental trajectory of this pragmatic ability, we tested 225 Mandarin-speaking children aged 4–8 years on their interpretations of scalar and non-scalar implicatures, as well as numerals. Scalar implicatures were difficult and we did not observe consistent success until age 6. In contrast, by 4 years of age this group was already able to compute non-scalar implicatures and the exact readings of numerals at adult-like rates. The implications of the current findings are discussed in relation to children’s development of pragmatic inference, highlighting the relevance of cross-linguistic data in understanding pragmatic development.

The computation and suspension of presuppositions by L1-Mandarin Chinese L2-English speakers

The Interface Hypothesis proposes that second language (L2) learners, even at highly proficient levels, often fail to integrate information at the external interfaces where grammar interacts with other cognitive systems. While much early L2 work has focused on the syntax–discourse interface or scalar implicatures at the semantics–pragmatics interface, the present article adds to this line of research by exploring another understudied phenomenon at the semantics–pragmatics interface, namely, presuppositions. Furthermore, this study explores both inference computation and suspension via a covered-box picture-selection task. Specifically, this study investigates the interpretation of the presupposition trigger stop and stop under negation. The results from 38 native English speakers and 41 first language (L1) Mandarin Chinese learners of English indicated similar response patterns between native and L2 groups in computing presuppositions but not in suspending presuppositions. That is, L2 learners were less likely to suspend presuppositions than native speakers. This study contributes to a more precise understanding of L2 acquisition at the external interface level, as well as computation and suspension of pragmatic inferences.

Ad-hoc and scalar implicatures in children with autism spectrum disorder

BackgroundPrevious studies found that people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) perform well on pragmatic inference tests that require the use of the linguistic scale <some, all>. The present study extends previous research by testing two types of implicature: scalar implicatures, based on lexical scales, and ad-hoc implicatures, based on contextual scales. MethodsWe tested 26 children with ASD aged 4–10 years (mean age 7.1) and 26 typically developing (TD) children – matched on chronological age and with a similar performance in non-verbal IQ and vocabulary – by means of a picture selection task for scalar and ad-hoc implicatures. We also investigated the effect of children’s scores in standardized tests measuring non-verbal intelligence, lexical, and morphosyntactic abilities and Theory-of-Mind skills on their performance in the implicature tasks. ResultsAlthough more than half of the children with ASD performed above chance on both kinds of implicatures, their performance as a group was significantly lower than the performance of their TD peers. General cognitive abilities were found to affect the performance of children with ASD on both kinds of implicatures, and Theory-of-Mind reasoning skills were found to be linked to their performance on scalar, but not ad-hoc implicatures. ConclusionsWe show that children with ASD have difficulty with both kinds of implicatures. These findings may have implications for explanatory theories of pragmatics as well as for clinical work with children with ASD.

Oddness, modularity, and exhaustification

According to the ‘grammatical account’, scalar implicatures are triggered by a covert exhaustification operator present in logical form. This account covers considerable empirical ground, but there is a peculiar pattern that resists treatment given its usual implementation. The pattern centers on odd assertions like #Most lions are mammals and #Some Italians come from a beautiful country, which seem to trigger implicatures in contexts where the enriched readings conflict with information in the common ground. Magri (Nat Language Semant 17(3):245–297. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-009-9042-x, 2009; Semant Pragmat 4(6):1–51. https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.4.6, 2011) argues that, to account for these cases, the basic grammatical approach has to be supplemented with the stipulations that exhaustification is obligatory and is based on formal computations which are blind to information in the common ground. In this paper, I argue that accounts of oddness should allow for the possibility of felicitous assertions that call for revision of the common ground, including explicit assertions of unusual beliefs such as Most but not all lions are mammals and Some but not all Italians come from Italy. To adequately cover these and similar cases, I propose that Magri’s version of the Grammatical account should be refined with the novel hypothesis that exhaustification triggers a bifurcation between presupposed (the negated relevant alternatives) and at-issue (the prejacent) content. The explanation of the full oddness pattern, including cases of felicitous proposals to revise the common ground, follows from the interaction between presupposed and at-issue content with an independently motivated constraint on accommodation. Finally, I argue that treating the exhaustification operator as a presupposition trigger helps solve various independent puzzles faced by extant grammatical accounts, and motivates a substantial revision of standard accounts of the overt exhaustifier only.

On Derived Change of State Verbs in Southern Aymara

There are two main approaches to change of state verbs. One adopts an approach in terms of a total change (becomeP, for base predicate P), i.e., a change from not being in the extension of the base predicate to being in it. The other adopts an approach in terms of a relative change (becomemore P, for base predicate P), i.e., a change for a theme in which it increases in the extent to which it holds the property denoted by the base predicate. Different languages have been analyzed using one or the other approach. I argue that both proposals are actually appropriate for analyzing related but not (completely) overlapping phenomena in the domain of derived change of state verbs in the very same language. This proposal is based on the discussion of change of state verbs in Southern Aymara that are derived with the suffixes -pta and -ra. I show that verbs with -pta convey the meaning of total change and that verbs with -ra convey the meaning of relative change. I further discuss how expressions with -pta and -ra interact: expressions with -ra implicate that the theme does not change from not being in the extension of the base to being in it. I propose an account in terms of scalar implicatures in which -pta and -ra are lexical alternatives, thus extending the domain of linguistic phenomena for which the computation of scalar implicatures is relevant.

The Role of Executive Function and Theory of Mind in Pragmatic Computations.

In sentences such as "Some dogs are mammals," the literal semantic meaning ("Some and possibly all dogs are mammals") conflicts with the pragmatic meaning ("Not all dogs are mammals," known as a scalar implicature). Prior work has shown that adults vary widely in the extent to which they adopt the semantic or pragmatic meaning of such utterances, yet the underlying reason for this variation is unknown. Drawing on theoretical models of scalar implicature derivation, we explore the hypothesis that the cognitive abilities of executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) contribute to this observed variation. In Experiment 1, we show that individuals with better ToM are more likely to compute a scalar implicature and adopt the pragmatic meaning of an utterance; however, EF makes no unique contribution to scalar implicature comprehension after accounting for ToM. In Experiment 2, we replicate this finding and assess whether it generalizes to the comprehension of other pragmatic phenomena such as indirect requests (e.g., "It's hot in here" uttered to ask for something to be done) and metaphor (e.g., "to harvest courage"). This is the first evidence that differences in ToM are associated with pragmatic competence in neurotypical adults across distinct pragmatic phenomena.

Effect of theory of the mind on the pragmatic reasoning of scalar implicatures

Antecedentes: Diferentes autores discuten que para que el razonamiento pragmático pueda ocurrir, es necesaria la activación de un módulo mental que permite razonar acerca de los estados mentales propios y de los demás, esto se conoce como teoría de la mente. Sin embargo, la evidencia empírica no es concluyente. Objetivo: Determinar el efecto de la teoría de la mente en el razonamiento pragmático de implicaturas escalares. Metodología: Mediante un diseño experimental intrasujeto 2x2 se evaluaron 111 individuos entre 20 y 45 años edad. Se les presentaron estímulos mentalistas y no mentalistas y se midieron los tiempos de respuesta y la precisión de esta según la tarea de verificación de oraciones. Resultados: se encontraron diferencias significativas en el tiempo de respuesta de oraciones pragmáticas de acuerdo con la presentación de estímulos mentalistas vs no mentalistas. Conclusiones: Esto nos permitió inferir que la teoría de la mente cumple un rol significativo en el razonamiento pragmático, apoyando así el enfoque postgriceano.