Experiments in Linguistic Meaning

Articles

• Is there a superlative rabbit in the ordinal hat? A study of ordinals vs. degree modifiers in nested definites

  • Beaver, David;
  • Richardson, Emily

  This study probes how the semantics of ordinals relates to the semantics of comparatives and superlatives. We examine this question with the help of a picture task in which participants are asked to locate objects described by nested descriptions like the candle on the first/closer/closest table, with an ordinal, comparative or superlative modifier in the inner noun phrase. We show that ordinals systematically lack the 'relative readings' observed for unmodified nested descriptions like the rabbit in the hat, in which the inner definite is understood with enriched content, as in the rabbit in the hat with a rabbit in it, in contrast to superlatives. Our explanation for this relies on the idea that an ordinal expects an ordering that can be provided by context.

• Modeling the prompt in inference judgment tasks

  • Grove, Julian;
  • White, Aaron Steven

  We show that when analyzing data from inference judgment tasks, it can be important to incorporate into one's data analysis regime an explicit representation of the semantics of the natural language prompt used to guide participants on the task. To demonstrate this, we conduct two experiments within an existing experimental paradigm focused on measuring factive inferences, while manipulating the prompt participants receive in small but semantically potent ways. In statistical model comparisons couched within the framework of probabilistic dynamic semantics, we find that probabilistic models structured, in part, by the semantics of the prompt fit better to data collected using that prompt than models that ignore the semantics of the prompt.

• Pseudo-scoping out of tensed clauses: cumulation vs. buildups

  • Palucci, Jonathan

  Tensed complement clauses are often assumed to be scope islands for quan- tifier raising (QR) of universal quantifiers. However, as observed by Farkas & Gi- annakidou 1996, Barker 2022, Hoeks et al. 2022, a.o., there are apparent counterex- amples to this assumption, where a universal DP appears to scope out of a tensed complement clause to take scope over a singular indefinite in the matrix clause, hence- forth 'variation readings'. Hoeks et al. 2022 propose that QR out of tensed clauses is possible, but only in event structural configurations which involve buildup processes. In this paper, we report experimental results providing evidence that variation readings are not sensitive to buildups. We then offer an alternative analysis, capturing variation readings as a form of cumulation, and we present experimental results supporting this analysis. The empirical generalization suggests that tensed complement clauses are islands for QR after all, and apparent counterexamples are due to other mechanisms.

• Indirect discourse as mixed quotation? An experimental investigation

  • Walter, Sebastian

  The results of an experimental rating study are reported suggesting that self-pointing gestures aligned with a third-person pronoun are acceptable in German indirect discourse (ID) utterances. Following a proposal by Ebert & Hinterwimmer (2022) for self-pointing gestures in free indirect discourse (FID), self-pointing gestures in ID are interpreted as character viewpoint gestures (CVGs) quoted from the matrix subject. Crucially, it is argued that in ID, a perspective shift to the matrix subject can take place. It is proposed that ID is an instance of mixed quotation involving a demonstration (cf. Clark & Gerrig 1990, Davidson 2015) where self-pointing is quoted from the matrix subject's original utterance.

• The role of definiteness in ad hoc implicatures

  • Eliatamby, André;
  • Tieu, Lyn

  This study investigates how ad-hoc implicatures and the definiteness presupposition of the definite determiner 'the' interact. Using a Truth Value Judgment Task (Crain & Thornton 2000), we examine whether English-speaking adults interpret the definite and indefinite determiner differently in sentence pairs such as: 'Mary bought a striped sweater' and 'Mary bought the striped sweater', in contexts in which there are two possible referents, one which is best described with one adjective (e.g. 'striped') and the other which is best described with two adjectives (e.g. 'striped' and 'spotted'). We find more ad hoc implicature for 'the' than 'a'; that is, uses of the definite 'the' are rejected more frequently than uses of 'a' when the purchased item would best be described with two adjectives. We take this finding to suggest that the need to satisfy the uniqueness presupposition of 'the' acts as an additional trigger for implicature generation. This result raises questions for both Neo-Gricean and localist models of implicature generation, which we briefly outline.

• Investigating fragment usage with a gamified utterance selection task

  • Lemke, Robin

  Nonsentential utterances, or fragments, like A coffee, please! can often be used to communicate a propositional meaning otherwise encoded by a complete sentence I'd like to order a coffee, please!). Previous research focused mostly on the syntax and licensing of fragments, but the questions of why speakers use fragments and how listeners interpret them are still underexplored. I propose a simple game-theoretic account of fragment usage, which predicts that (i) listeners assign fragments the most likely interpretation in context and (ii) that speakers are aware of this and trade-off production cost and the risk of being misunderstood when choosing their utterance. Using a corpus of production data, empirically founded and precise model predictions are generated. These predictions are evaluated with two experiments using a novel gamified utterance selection paradigm. The experiments suggest that, as predicted, speakers take into account both potential gain in efficiency and the risk of being misunderstood when choosing their utterance.

• Disagreements do not automatically raise the standard of precision

  • Wu, Yifan;
  • Aparicio, Helena

  Speakers often choose to utter imprecise sentences that, albeit felicitous, are, strictly speaking, false (e.g., using 'This bottle is empty' to describe a bottle with a bit of water in it). The acceptability of an imprecise utterance hinges on the standard of precision (SoP), a discourse parameter that governs how much imprecision is tolerated in a context. Previous theoretical accounts (e.g., Lewis 1979, Klecha 2018) have argued that metalinguistic denials that target the assertability of an imprecise utterance (e.g., 'No, this bottle is not empty!') more or less force accommodation to a higher SoP. The present study investigates the nature of this accommodation process. In particular, we ask whether metalinguistic disagreements result in an automatic update of the SoP. In two acceptability judgment experiments, we show that imprecise utterances are not deemed unacceptable when embedded in a disagreement dialogue. Our findings instead suggest that metalinguistic denials act as a request to raise the SoP and that any potential updates ought to be signaled overtly in subsequent conversational moves.

• Analyzing naturally-sourced Questions Under Discussion

  • Mulligan, Karl;
  • Rawlins, Kyle

  The Question Under Discussion (QUD) framework of discourse has been a highly influential theoretical device in many accounts of various pragmatic phenomena, yet there has been comparatively little work assessing the extent to which the QUD can be reliably inferred from naturalistic contexts. In this paper, we focus primarily on measuring the variability across individuals in QUD inference, while also verifying other related, commonly held assumptions about QUD theory. To this end, we collect QUDs from many theoretically naive subjects tasked with processing a radio interview utterance by utterance. We consider various analyses designed to address the problem of measuring question similarity. Overall, we find that there exists moderate variability among subjects, consistent with possibly the insufficiency of context in determining QUD, or possibly also the simultaneous coexistence of multiple valid QUDs. To more adequately tease apart these possibilities, we also propose additional analyses for addressing the issue of question identity.

• How to compute a focus: Evidence from incremental processing

  • Hoeks, Morwenna;
  • Toosarvandani, Maziar;
  • Rysling, Amanda

  The global interpretation of a focus marked sentence with a particle like only arises due to the interplay of several formal components: F-marking, the semantics of the particle, the nature of contrastive alternatives, and a dependence on context. In this paper, we argue that on-line reading measures can be used to probe which of these com- ponents are computed when. In order to isolate which components give rise to reading slowdowns typically observed on foci (Birch & Rayner 1997, Benatar & Clifton 2014, Lowder & Gordon 2015, Hoeks et al. 2023), a Maze reading study tested whether such slowdowns still arise on second-occurrence foci (SOF)—foci whose inferences have already been computed in prior discourse and are therefore entirely predictable—and on foci whose size and location can only be determined via a previously introduced contrast. Results indeed showed slowdowns on such foci, suggesting that these cannot solely be attributed to readers computing focal inferences anew, nor to comprehenders initiating their reasoning about the relevant alternatives.

• Experimental findings for a cross-modal account of dynamic binding in gesture-speech interaction

  • Erbach, Kurt;
  • Poppe, Magnus;
  • Ebert, Cornelia

  We report results of experiments on pronoun and presupposition binding across modalities. We show that ordinary pronouns (in the spoken/written domain) can be dynamically bound to gesturally introduced discourse referents and that presuppositions induced by spoken/written triggers (via e.g. 'again' or 'too') can be bound likewise. These experiments support research that has proposed the existence of cross-modal binding to motivate a formal framework that can account for interaction of various input of linguistic content from different dimensions and modalities.

• A conceptual analysis of verbs of pushing and pulling

  • Benz, Anton;
  • Solstad, Torgrim;
  • Bott, Oliver;
  • Kahnberg, Martin;
  • Schalley, Andrea C.

  Although verbal expressions of caused motion, such as push and pull, have been extensively studied within linguistics, semantic dimensions beyond path and manner of motion have received less attention. This pilot study aims to identify such dimensions involved in the expression of caused motion in German, focusing on observable properties of pushing and pulling events that determine the selection of verbs to describe events of caused motion. Using 3D graphical modeling, participants were presented with video clips of a computer-animated agent moving a barrel, thereby allowing for a systematic manipulation of properties and hence dimensions. We investigated four dimensions to assess their impact on verb selection: (i) angle of contact, (ii) movement of the agent relative to the barrel, (iii) the agent's orientation/facing, and (iv) the force employed. Cluster and principal component analyses were conducted on the collected linguistic data. Verbs were represented by five-dimensional vectors capturing correlations with the cosine and sine of the angle, and marginal probabilities in conditions of instantaneous movement, forward facing, and heavy force. Our findings indicate that conceptually distinguishable verb clusters are primarily defined by the movement feature – that is, whether the agent moves together with the barrel or not – and the cosine of the angle. Contrary to theoretical predictions, little evidence was found supporting the categorization of verbs based on the force applied to the barrel. These results suggest that the movement and position of the agent relative to the moved object are key determinants in the production of verbal descriptions of caused motion events.

• Using the lower bound set by the universal modal to investigate the status of partial objects and count nouns

  • Patel, Premvanti;
  • Syrett, Kristen;
  • Aravind, Athulya

  Prior research has demonstrated that when given objects (e.g., forks) broken into pieces, children deviate from adults by counting each discrete object-piece as on par with a whole. A recent proposal ties this behavior to the vagueness and context-sensitivity inherent to count noun semantics. The present study leverages the universal modal have to in order to investigate how a linguistic context, one which sets lower bounds on numerals in its scope, regulates nominal application. Our results show that for children, who prefer the 'exact' reading of numerals, the partial object not only serves to meet the lower bound, but also exceeds a numerical upper bound. Adults, on the other hand, do not consider the partial object as meeting the lower bound induced by the modal. Because we cannot determine the explanation for this finding with our current design, we plan to adapt it to use the existential modal allowed to.

• A nonce investigation of a possible conjunctive default for disjunction

  • Bleotu, Adina Camelia;
  • Nicolae, Andreea;
  • Panaitescu, Mara;
  • Bîlbîie, Gabriela;
  • Benz, Anton;
  • Tieu, Lyn

  Our study explores whether there is a conjunctive default in the interpretation of disjunction, focusing on Romanian children's and adults' understanding of nonce functional words. We investigate how participants interpret novel connectors such as mo and mo...mo, which could theoretically correspond to '(both) A and B', '(either) A or B', or 'A not B' / 'neither A nor B'. Our results reveal that both adults and children overwhelmingly assign a conjunctive meaning to these nonce words. This suggests the existence of a conjunctive default in interpreting unknown operators linking two elements, which could explain why children have sometimes been found to interpret disjunctions as conjunctions in previous studies (Singh et al. 2016, Tieu et al. 2017, Bleotu et al. 2023). In particular, we discuss how this conjunctive default may influence Romanian children's interpretation of complex disjunctions such as fie...fie, potentially explaining why they treat these constructions conjunctively. Importantly,our findings also raise broader questions about why certain logical interpretations are favored over others, and whether frequency or cognitive simplicity can drive such biases.

• Less-comparatives must be less ambiguous than exactly-differentials, experimental data shows

  • Schlotterbeck, Fabian;
  • Berezovskaya, Polina

  Scope mobility of comparative operators has been claimed to surface in a narrow class of specific cases where intensional verbs are combined with less-comparatives or exactly-differentials. Though not uncontroversial and dependent on subtle judgments, this type of ambiguity influenced subsequent compositional semantic analyses of comparatives and was also used as a diagnostics for scope mobility of the comparative operator in cross-linguistic studies. We use judgment data from three acceptability rating experiments to empirically test the (un)availablity of this ambiguity in German and English. We discover an empirical difference between exactly-differentials and less-comparatives which is unexpected under the standard approach to the semantics of comparatives. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings and highlight recent proposals that can account for our data.

• Devoir, ou pouvoir, that is the question

  • Dieuleveut, Anouk;
  • Noveck, Ira

  In languages like French and English, modals express either possibility (e.g., "you can") or necessity (e.g., "you must"). Previous acquisition research has shown that English-speaking children have particular difficulty with necessity modals: comprehension experiments show that they tend to accept must or have-to in possibility scenarios (Noveck 2001, Özturk & Papafragou 2015, a.o.); production studies show that they use them less frequently than possibility modals, and when they do, their usage is not always adult-like (Dieuleveut et al. 2022). But the cause of this "Necessity Gap" remains debated. One challenge is that past studies have focused primarily on English, where necessity modals are much rarer than possibility modals in parental speech, which could suggest that the delay is simply due to less exposure. In this study, we demonstrate through a corpus analysis of French young children's modal use and their linguistic input, as well as experiments based on this data (following the methods of Dieuleveut et al. 2022), that the delay cannot be attributed solely to limited exposure: despite more exposure, French-speaking children experience the same difficulties with necessity modals. Furthermore, we show that these difficulties persist until children are five years old.

• Mechanistic Support Language in Colombian Spanish-speakers

  • Barbosa, Jennifer;
  • Pinzón-Henao, Paola;
  • Pasquella, Angelina;
  • Muentener, Paul;
  • Lakusta, Laura

  Beyond basic spatial relations (e.g., teddy on table), we know little about how children learn to talk about Mechanical Support events (e.g., objects attached/hung from a surface via tape) and map them onto linguistic structures. Moreso, the majority of the research that has been done focuses on children learning English - a language that has several verbs that lexicalize support via a specific mechanism (Levin, 1993; e.g., glue, tape, clip, etc.). The current study seeks to deepen our understanding of spatial language acquisition by diversifying the populations that have been studied. Specifically, 4- to 6-year-old monolingual Spanish-speaking children and adults in Colombia viewed Mechanical Support events (e.g., girl puts paper on door via tape) and were then asked, 'Can you tell me what my sister did with my toy?'. Both children and adults used Non-Mechanism (e.g., poner = 'put', colgar = 'hang') and Mechanism Verbs (e.g., pegar = 'stick'); the use of Mechanism Verbs increased from 4- to 6- years of age. In addition, whether the mechanism was visible in the event influenced how it was mapped to language; when the mechanism was visible (vs. when it was hidden), children and adults were more likely to encode the mechanism in a prepositional phrase (e.g., lo colgoÃÅ con un gancho = 'she hung it with a clip'). These findings shed light on the development of Mechanical Support language in Spanish- speaking children, the influence of context - specifically, visibility of mechanism - on language, as well as the lexicalization patterns for encoding physical support in Spanish more generally.

• Coloring disjunction in child Romanian

  • Bleotu, Adina Camelia;
  • Panaitescu, Mara;
  • Benz, Anton;
  • Nicolae, Andreea;
  • Bîlbîie, Gabriela;
  • Tieu, Lyn

  Romanian children have been shown to rarely interpret the complex disjunction sau...sau 'either...or' (as in sau trenul sau barca 'either the train or the boat') exclusively (that is, as 'only one, not both') in Truth Value Judgment Tasks. Instead, children often favor an inclusive interpretation ('one or both'), or a conjunctive interpretation ('both, not just one') (Bleotu et al. 2023, 2024a). Such findings contrast with those from Romanian adults, who consistently interpret this disjunction exclusively. In this study, we investigate whether children interpret sau...sau more exclusively in a Coloring Book Task (CBT), given previous evidence that children's performance is more adult-like in tasks involving coloring rather than in truth value judgment tasks. In line with this expectation, we observed an increase in the number of exclusive-responding children compared to previous findings for Romanian. However, it is important to highlight that most children still did not interpret the disjunction exclusively, indicating ongoing challenges with the interpretation of disjunction around the age of five years.

• Cause, Make, and Force as Graded Causatives

  • Cao, Angela;
  • White, Aaron;
  • Lassiter, Daniel

  We investigate the semantics of the causal verbs cause, make, and force as used in the construction X {caused/made/forced} Y (to) Z. The predominant approach to analyzing verbs of causing has been to argue that they convey some version of SUFFICIENCY, but it has also been suggested that INTENTION or possible ALTERNATIVES may also factor into the semantics of the verbs. Using sequences of tic-tac-toe states as experimental stimuli, we measure the three possible contributing factors in each stimuli and ask participants whether each verb is appropriate for describing the sequence. We find experimental support for a differentiating semantics of these verbs, in which no single predictor is the sole factor in when each verb is appropriate.

• Studying the interplay of context and semantic content in the interpretation of adversative conjunctions with eye-tracking

  • Cantin-Savoie, Ghyslain;
  • Winterstein, Grègoire;
  • Foucambert, Denis

  The French adversative connective mais, much like its English counterpart but, takes two conjuncts and indicates that they stand in some kind of opposition. The nature of this opposition is often discussed in the existing literature of adversatives. Using an eyetracking experiment, we look at where and when this opposition appears to be manifested in a sentence reading task, using superiority comparatives sentences that appear degraded without a supportive context, as well as inferiority comparatives that do not seem to require such specific contextual information. We presented participants (n = 28) with four types of sentences, differing in the form of comparative, and in the information provided by the context. Some contexts contained a pivot property to help readers access the opposition of the two conjuncts, while others were neutral in that regard. Eye movements were recorded with a 250Hz Tobii Pro Fusion eyetracker, and mixed effect models were used to analyze the following eyetracking metrics : total fixation time and regression probability for the whole sentences, as well as first-fixation duration, first-gaze duration, regression-path duration, regressions-out and regressions-in for each individual words. Even if the helping context is shown to lower negative acceptability judgment on sentences with mais plus (Winterstein et al. 2014), we found no context effect in online reading processing, finding instead a persisting effect of the less/more dichotomy in all chosen measures, sometimes before fixation of those words, pointing towards a parafoveal effect of the aforementioned dichotomy, which merits closer look in future work.

• "Liz can buy a croissant or donut. That's both together, right?" Distinguishing target Free Choice from non-target Modal Conjunction in Child French

  • Cochard, Antoine;
  • van Hout, Angeliek;
  • Demirdache, Hamida

  Several acquisition studies have reported that children draw free choice inferences at adult-like rates from modal disjunctive statements. This study explores an alternative explanation for children's seemingly adult-like behavior: modal conjunction, which shares verifying and falsifying conditions with free choice. However, existing experimental setups were not able to distinguish the two. With our novel design, we were able to set apart modal conjunctive interpreters from genuine free choice interpreters, using a new type of condition: a mutually exclusive context. The results revealed that free choice inferences are not so early acquired as previously thought. In contrast to the earlier studies, only half of the children between 4 and 6 were genuine adult-like free choice interpreters. The other children either show the basic inclusive interpretation of disjunction, or, as hypothesized, a modal conjunctive interpretation.

• Linguistic and Social Meaning Match: An experiment on modal concord in English

  • Liu, Mingya;
  • Rotter, Stephanie

  Modal concord (MC) refers to the phenomenon where two modal elements of the same flavor and force in a sentence yield an interpretation of single modality (SM). In this paper, we report on an experimental study on MC in English, addressing their linguistic and social meaning. Our results show a strengthening effect by necessity MC and a weakening effect of possibility MC in that significantly higher speaker commitment ratings were received for necessity MC vs. SM constructions (i.e., must certainly vs. must) with the reverse pattern for possibility modal constructions (i.e., may possibly vs. may). Furthermore, MC and SM were shown to differ in social meanings, suggesting a correlation between the meaning strength of a linguistic expression and the social perception of the speaker.

• Experientiality markers in memory reports: A semantics-pragmatics puzzle

  • Rosina, Emil Eva;
  • Liefke, Kristina

  Some recent work in semantics and the philosophy of language suggests that the way we report events reflects whether we have personally experienced or witnessed these events (i.e. through linguistic elements dubbed 'experientiality markers'). This paper provides experimental support for one such marker: German non-manner uses of wie ['how']. We argue that when they are embedded under the memory predicates noch wissen ['still know'] and sich erinnern ['REFL-remind'], free relative wie-complements mark the remembering of a personally experienced event. We support this claim through a series of online studies based on scale judgements. The results of our main study raise questions about the semantics-pragmatics interface of the experientiality marking property of wie, and about the robustness of experientiality markers in general. A series of complementary studies address these questions.

• Does 'a couple' pattern with scalars or numbers - Insights from inference and 'so' tasks

  • Qin, Erying;
  • Sun, Chao;
  • Breheny, Richard

  Previous research establishes that paucal quantifiers like 'a couple' are ambiguous between the literal meaning of 'at least two' and the enriched meaning understood as conveying a restriction on quantity, the latter of which can be explained by a pragmatic phenomenon, i.e. scalar inference (SI). To address whether this ambiguity patterns with that of scalars or numbers, our Experiment 1 explored the behaviours of 'a couple' and scalars with two types of probe questions in inference tasks, and Experiment 2 continued this theme by testing the naturalness rating for 'a couple' and scalars in an 'X so not Y' construction. The results of our experiments indicate two natures of 'a couple': a non-monotonic /cardinal (approximately two) and proportional (a small proportion of).

• Social meaning and pragmatic reasoning: The case of (im)precision

  • Solt, Stephanie;
  • Mühlenbernd, Roland;
  • Burbelko, Mariya

  On the basis of a speaker's choice between linguistic alternatives, a hearer can draw inferences not only about facts of the world, but also about the social properties of the speaker. The goal of this work is to investigate how such social meanings arise, particularly in the case where the alternatives in question differ in their core logical or semantic meaning. Taking variation in numerical precision level as a case study, we seek to test the broad general hypothesis that social inferences may be derived via pragmatic reasoning about the needs of the situation, the epistemic state of the speaker, and the reasons for their choice of form. We report on two matched guise studies which demonstrate that the social meaning of (im)precision is sensitive to context and (to some extent) speaker knowledge state, and are correlated with inferred reasons for expression choice, findings which support the predictions of the pragmatic view.

• Contrafactives, learnability, and production

  • Strohmaier, David;
  • Wimmer, Simon

  No natural language has contrafactive attitude verbs. Because factives are universal across natural languages, this means that there is a major asymmetry between contrafactives and factives. We previously hypothesised that this asymmetry arises partly because the meaning of contrafactives is significantly harder to learn than that of factives. Here we test this hypothesis by using a production-oriented computational experiment that overcomes two limitations of our previous experiments. We find that our results do not support our previous hypothesis.

• Fake reefs are sometimes reefs and sometimes not, but are always compositional

  • Ross, Hayley;
  • Kim, Najoung;
  • Davidson, Kathryn

  The semantics of adjective modification often begins with set intersection,such that [[yellow flower]] = [[yellow]] ‚à© [[flower]]. Thus a yellow flower is a flower. Such an account, however, runs into problems for adjectives like fake or counterfeit, which display a privative inference: a fake gun is not a gun and a counterfeit dollar is not a dollar. Moreover, recent work shows privativity cannot easily be encoded as a property of specific adjectives like counterfeit, since e.g. counterfeit watch robustly licenses the subsective inference of being a watch (Martin 2022). We gather judgments on nearly 800 adjective-noun bigrams (of which 180 are novel, i.e. zero corpus frequency), andshow that privativity depends on the adjective, noun and context, and can be manipulated for the very same adjective-noun bigram by presenting it in different contexts. This poses a challenge for theories which fix privativity as a property of the adjective and always use the same method of composition (Partee 2010, del Pinal 2015). Moreover, we find no difference in participant behavior between novel adjective-noun bigrams and high frequency ones, suggesting that the process is nonetheless compositional and not the result of convention or memorized idiosyncrasy. Our results support compositional accounts like Martin (2022) (which modifies del Pinal 2015) and Guerrini (2024), which treat privativity as context-dependent.

• Constructing focus alternatives from context and the limits of semantic priming

  • Muxica, Christian;
  • Harris, Jesse

  Interpreting focus requires a comprehender to identify the set of alternatives intended by the speaker. Previous psycholinguistic research has characterized this process in terms of a two-stage model that initially forms an alternative set via the context-insensitive mechanism of semantic priming (Gotzner et al. 2016, Husband & Ferreira 2016). We have instead advanced a one-stage immediate-access model, in which alternatives are immediately constructed from the discourse context (Muxica & Harris to appear). In two cross-modal probe recognition task experiments, we further test our prediction that the discourse context strongly influences response speed at early moments of focus interpretation. The results are interpreted as uniquely supporting the immediate-access model.

• Disambiguating quantity judgements: mass/count and extra-grammatical cues

  • Smeman, Sven;
  • Smit, Maaike;
  • Hampton, James A.;
  • Winter, Yoad

  Comparative quantity judgements are a useful probe into the semantics of the mass/count distinction, where count nouns usually trigger cardinal comparisons (more dogs), and mass nouns trigger non-cardinal measurement (more rice). However, exceptions like 'object' mass nouns (furniture) and 'mixed' comparatives (more gold than diamonds) complicate this pattern. In such cases there is often a mismatch between the mass/count status of the noun and the criterion for comparison, which challenges our understanding of the mass/count distinction and how it affects quantity judgements. We propose that these mismatches reflect a systematic ambiguity, where the mass/count distinction is one of the factors influencing disambiguation. Using a new experimental method focused on ambiguity judgements instead of truth-value judgements, the results support the traditional semantic encoding of the mass/count distinction, with operations of 'packaging' and 'grinding' triggered by extra-grammatical factors.

• Experimental Paradigms on Scalar Implicature Estimation

  • Qiu, Zhuang;
  • Felton, Casey;
  • Houghton, Zachary;
  • Jasbi, Masoud

  Experimental research on the processing of Scalar Implicatures (SIs) relies on behavioral tasks that purport to measure the rate at which scalar implicatures are computed within an experimental paradigm. Two paradigms, the Truth Value Judgment Task (TVJT) (Gordon, 1998; Crain & Thornton, 2000) and the Picture Selection Task (PST) (Gerken & Shady, 1998) have dominated the experimental pragmatics literature; yet the effects of task choice on implicature rate have remained underexplored. Here we report the results of three studies testing participants in the TVJT and the PST using three different linguistic scales in English: "ad-hoc", "or-and", and "some-all". In the first experiment, the task variation was manipulated within subjects while in the second experiment, it was manipulated between subjects. The third experiment examined a variant of the PST called the Hidden Card Task (HCT) which is increasingly used in the context of priming research (Bott & Chemla, 2016). We found that the estimated rate of scalar implicature computation varied noticeably between different tasks. This suggests that the experimental paradigm itself has a significant impact on our estimates of the implicature rate for a given linguistic scale, and thus, researchers studying scalar implicatures need to carefully consider the effect of experimental paradigms in experimental design and the interpretation of their results.

• Non-Implicature Sources of Exclusivity in Linguistic Disjunction

  • Felton, Casey;
  • Jasbi, Masoud

  Disjunction in natural language alternates between an inclusive reading (A or B or Both) and an exclusive reading (A or B but not Both). Traditional accounts of this ambiguity focus on scalar implicature as the source of disjunction exclusivity, a process whereby Gricean reasoning over Horn scales strengthens the baseline inclusive reading to an implied exclusive reading (Grice, 1978; Horn, 1972; Gazdar, 1980). Despite nearly all theories acknowledging that other factors likely play a role in the generation of exclusivity implications, non-implicature factors have received comparatively little attention. Across four experiments we tested two such non implicature factors, prior compatibility and syntactic category, finding that both play a role in speaker interpretations of disjunctive sentences. Additionally, by drawing our stimuli in the first two experiments from the prior literature, we found evidence that previous research on disjunction, while accurately identifying the key role of scalar implicatures, may be overestimating the effect size thereof due to a failure to control for non-implicature factors.

• 'Negation-blind' N400 effect disappears when lexical priming is controlled

  • Asami, Daiki;
  • Han, Chao;
  • Burger, Jacob;
  • Dunlop, Deanna;
  • Lu, Yue;
  • Yahya M Morad, Effah;
  • Zhao, Chenyue;
  • Hestvik, Arild

  Previous ERP studies showed that false affirmative sentences elicited a larger N400 than their true versions, but they found the reverse pattern when the sentences were of negative form as if N400 was blind to negation. This negation-blind N400 pattern arguably constituted evidence for two-step accounts of negation processing: When processing negative sentences, a comprehender first computes an internal proposition and then considers the negation. However, the prior studies were confounded by a lexical priming relation between subject and object. Therefore, it was an open question whether or not the observed ERP pattern really reflected the two-step process. To tackle this question, we conducted an ERP experiment, using size-comparison statements where subjects and objects are semantically unrelated. This design allowed us to remove the priming confound. We predicted that if the previous negation-blind N400 pattern is unrelated to lexical priming, it would be replicated; if not, it would disappear. The result was consistent with the second prediction. This suggests that the previously observed negation-blind N400 pattern does not necessarily constitute evidence for two-step accounts of negation processing.

• Are second language speakers more pragmatically tolerant? Explaining the differences in scalar implicature generation between L2 and L1

  • Mognon, Irene;
  • Marree, Amber L.;
  • Hendriks, Petra

  Children's difficulties with Scalar Implicature (SI) generation have been argued to stem from their tolerance towards pragmatic violations rather than from issues with the inferential process per se (Katsos & Bishop 2011). Ternary judgment tasks have been used to support this view. In these tasks, when presented with underinformative sentences, children, as well as adults, choose an intermediate option between acceptance and rejection, thus demonstrating sensitivity to underinformativeness. Some recent studies show that adult second language (L2) speakers also generate SIs at lower rates. In this work, we investigated whether pragmatic tolerance, possibly emerging because of limited language exposure, could explain the difference between (adult) L2 and L1 speakers. Contrary to our expectations, neither our L1 control group nor our L2 groups (L2 High and L2 Low Proficiency) consistently selected the intermediate option when judging underinformative sentences. However, the L2 Low Proficiency group showed a significantly higher tendency to accept underinformative sentences compared to the L1 group. Hence, our results do not support the hypothesis that L2 speakers are more pragmatically tolerant than L1 speakers. However, our findings show that, despite the adoption of a ternary judgment task, low-proficient L2 speakers display a strong tendency to interpret underinformative sentences literally. We argue that this tendency in the L2 can be attributed to the increased cognitive effort involved in SI generation.

• Insensitivity to truth-value in negated sentences: does linear distance matter?

  • Lago, Sol;
  • Schulz, Petra;
  • Rinke, Esther;
  • Oltrogge, Elise;
  • Dudschig, Carolin;
  • Kaup, Barbara

  Affirmative sentences are comprehended more quickly when they are true vs. false but this facilitation is often reduced or absent in negative sentences, yielding a so-called negation-by-truth-value interaction. The reduced sensitivity to truth-value has been attributed to processing difficulties triggered by negation. We investigated whether difficulties such as these were eased when comprehenders were given more time to process the negator. Specifically, we compared negated sentences in which the negator immediately preceded an adjectival predicate vs. occurred earlier in the sentence, separated by several words from the predicate. The results of two sentence-picture matching tasks replicated previous findings of increased processing difficulties in negative vs. affirmative sentences, as well as the negation-by-truth-value interaction. However, we did not find evidence that sensitivity to truth-value was modulated by the distance between the negator and the predicate. Our findings suggest that, when sentences are presented in isolation, having more time to process a negator does not confer a measurable comprehension advantage.

• Only the (informationally) stronger survive: A probe recognition study with scale-mates and antonyms

  • Lacina, Radim;
  • Gotzner, Nicole

  Speakers often use scalar words such as warm in a pragmatically strengthened way that results in the conveyed meaning being warm but not hot. In these inferences, known as scalar implicatures, meaning alternatives have been postulated to play a crucial role. Upon encountering warm, the informationally stronger alternative hot has been shown to be active in online sentence processing. Antonyms (cool) have also been shown to be activated in the same way even though they are standardly assumed to not be involved in scalar implicature derivation. In the current study, we focus on the question of whether both strong scalar alternatives and antonyms are represented in the final mental model of the discourse following scalar implicature derivation. We ran two probe recognition experiments, testing strong scalars and antonyms. We found an interference effect for strong scalars, indicating their representation, but not one for antonyms. Thus, we provide evidence that only the strong scalars survive in the eventual representation of the pragmatic meaning of a sentence.

• Relating Scalar Inference and Alternative Activation: A View from the Rise-Fall-Rise Tune in American English

  • Sostarics, Thomas;
  • Ronai, Eszter;
  • Cole, Jennifer

  The rise-fall-rise (RFR) tune in American English has received numerous theoretical accounts to describe its meaning contribution, with a consistent theme being the relationship between RFR and "higher alternatives." However, Autosegmental-Metrical theory predicts three RFR-shaped tunes which differ in the rising pitch accent used (H*, L+H*, L*+H), raising the question of whether different RFR-shaped tunes in fact behave differently. We investigate this question under the lens of scalar inference (SI). We find that RFR-shaped tunes with different pitch accents behave similarly in offline interpretation, increasing the rate of SI calculation relative to falling tunes. In online processing using cross-modal priming with lexical decision, we find an asymmetry in the processing profile of two RFR-shaped tunes: H*L-H% leads to additional facilitation of the higher alternative, while L*+HL-H% leads to less facilitation. We describe these results in relation to differences in pitch range and discuss how they relate to ongoing debates about RFR.

• An experimental investigation of perspective alignment in gesture and speech

  • Walter, Sebastian;
  • Hinterwimmer, Stefan

  Hinterwimmer et al. (2021) experimentally investigated the hypothesis that perspective in gesture and speech is by default aligned, i.e., when a character's or protagonist's perspective is conveyed in the speech signal, this utterance is preferably aligned with a character viewpoint gesture. If an utterance expresses an observer's perspective, by contrast, it is more likely accompanied by an observer viewpoint gesture. Their results, however, showed an overall preference for character viewpoint gestures. They argued that there were pragmatic factors (e.g., informativity) at play blocking the hypothesized perspective alignment. The study reported here further investigates Hinterwimmer et al.'s (2021) hypothesis by comparing two different character viewpoint gestures paired with a verbal utterance in a rating study. The results suggest that, contrary to Hinterwimmer et al.'s (2021) hypothesis, multiple, potentially non-aligned perspectives can be simultaneously expressed in gesture and speech.