Person:

Chierchia, Gennaro

The interpretation of scalar terms (like, e.g., some vs. all; the numerals) has been at the center of much theoretical debate. Recently, this debate has focused on whether Scalar Implicature (SI) computation is grammatically or post grammatically driven (cf., e.g., Russell, 2006 vs. Chierchia, Fox and Spector, 2008 and references therein). In the present work, we address these issues through experimental means arguing, specifically, for two theses: Thesis 1: The interpretation of both numerals and determiners like some/all are systematically affected by the polarity (Downward monotone or DE vs. Upward monotone or UE) of the local context in which they are embedded. Thesis 2: Numerals and Determiners differ in how the ‘exact’ interpretation comes about: for numerals such interpretation is much faster. Thesis 1, if true, provides evidence against the thesis that scalar items are lexically ambiguous (for no lexical ambiguity is polarity sensitive in such a way) and in favor of the view that the ‘exact’ vs. the ‘at least’ interpretation of both types of scalar items is an implicature. Thesis 2, if true, shows that the way in which the ‘exact’ interpretation comes about for numerals vs. determiners is partly similar and partly different. This can be construed as an argument against the thesis that these elements are ‘underspecified’ in similar ways (cf., e.g., Musolino, 2003).

There has been much debate, in both the linguistics and the psycholinguistics literature, concerning numbers and the interpretation of number denoting determiners (‘numerals’). Such debate concerns, in particular, the nature and distribution of upper-bounded (‘exact’) interpretations vs. lower-bounded (‘at-least’) construals. In the present paper we show that the interpretation and processing of numerals are affected by the entailment properties of the context in which they occur. Experiment 1 established off-line preferences using a questionnaire. Experiment 2 investigated the processing issue through an eye tracking experiment using a silent reading task. Our results show that the upper-bounded interpretation of numerals occurs more often in an upward entailing context than in a downward entailing context. Reading times of the numeral itself were longer when it was embedded in an upward entailing context than when it was not, indicating that processing resources were required when the context triggered an upper-bounded interpretation. However, reading of a following context that required an upper-bounded interpretation triggered more regressions towards the numeral when it had occurred in a downward entailing context than in an upward entailing one. Such findings show that speakers’ interpretation and processing of numerals is systematically affected by the polarity of the sentence in which they occur, and support the hypothesis that the upper-bounded interpretation of numerals is due to a scalar implicature.

Noveck (2001) argued that children even as old as 11 do not reliably endorse a scalar interpretation of weak scalar terms (some, might, or) (cf. Braine & Rumain, 1981; Smith, 1980). More recent studies suggest, however, that children's apparent failures may depend on the experimental demands (Papafragou & Musolino, 2003). Although previous studies involved children of different ages as well as different tasks, and are thus not directly comparable, nevertheless a common finding is that children do not seem to derive scalar implicatures to the same extent as adults do. The present article describes a series of experiments that were conducted with Italian speaking subjects (children and adults), focusing mainly on the scalar term some. Our goal was to carefully examine the specific conditions that allow the computation of implicatures by children. In so doing, we demonstrate that children as young as 7 (the youngest age of the children who participated in the Noveck study) are able to compute implicatures in experimental conditions that properly satisfy certain contextual prerequisites for deriving such implicatures. We also present further results that have general consequences for the research methodology employed in this area of study. Our research indicates that certain tasks mask children's understanding of scalar terms, not only including the task used by Noveck, but also tasks that employ certain explicit instructions, such as the training task used by Papafragou & Musolino (2003). Our findings indicate further that, although explicit training apparently improves children's ability to draw implicatures, children nevertheless fail to achieve adult levels of performance for most scalar terms even in such tasks, and that the effects of instruction do not last beyond the training session itself for most children. Another relevant finding of the present study is that some of the manipulations of the experimental context have an effect on all subjects, whereas others produce effects on just a subset of children. Individual differences of this kind may have been concealed in previous research because performance by individual subjects was not reported. Our general conclusions are that even young children (7-year olds) have the prerequisites for deriving scalar implicatures, although these abilities are revealed only when the conversational background is natural.

As is well known, in conditionals and, more generally, in structures involving adverbs of quantification, indefinite NPs like a cat display a variable quantificational force. Within DRT this phenomenon is analyzed by assimilating indefinites to variables. Unlike other variable-like elements, however, indefinites cannot be anaphoric to something else. That is, one cannot say things like "a cat usually meows if a cat is hungry" meaning "a cat usually meows if it is hungry." This is generally explained in terms of a novelty condition: indefinites must introduce novel variables. Cheng and Huang (1996) discuss and analyze two types of Chinese conditionals in which wh- words display quantificational variability. In one type of conditional, their behavior is fully analogous to that of indefinites. In the other, they behave like indefinites in the antecedent, while in the consequent they must be interpreted as bound pronouns. Thus, in DR-theoretic terms, Chinese wh-words obey the novelty condition in the antecedent but not in the consequent of a conditional. This behavior is unexpected. The present paper addresses this issue. The main claim is that a certain version of Dynamic Semantics leads one to expect elements with exactly the properties of Chinese wh-words. In particular, Dynamic Semantics makes it possible to reverse, in a sense, the classic DR-theoretic strategy. One can view indefinites as existentially quantified terms: however, their existential force can be overridden by operators in their local environment that wipe out their existential force, as it were, and get them to act like variables. If one takes this line, the Novelty Condition becomes dispensable and the problem disappears. The behavior of Chinese wh-words is also compared to that of other elements analyzable as indefinite pronominals, such as si in Italian or one in English.

The mass/count distinction attracts a lot of attention among cognitive scientists, possibly because it involves in fundamental ways the relation between language (i.e. grammar), thought (i.e. extralinguistic conceptual systems) and reality (i.e. the physical world). In the present paper, I explore the view that the mass/count distinction is a matter of vagueness. While every noun/concept may in a sense be vague, mass nouns/concepts are vague in a way that systematically impairs their use in counting. This idea has never been systematically pursued, to the best of my knowledge. I make it precise relying on supervaluations (more specifically, ‘data semantics’) to model it. I identify a number of universals pertaining to how the mass/count contrast is encoded in the languages of the world, along with some of the major dimensions along which languages may vary on this score. I argue that the vagueness based model developed here provides a useful perspective on both. The outcome (besides shedding light on semantic variation) seems to suggest that vagueness is not just an interface phenomenon that arises in the interaction of Universal Grammar (UG) with the Conceptual/Intentional System (to adopt Chomsky’s terminology), but it is actually part of the architecture of UG.