Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Sentences with plural definites like ‘the circles' are usually interpreted akin to universally quantified sentences (maximal reading). In some circumstances, however, they also allow for non-maximal readings, i.e imprecise readings that allow for exceptions. We report two mouse-tracking experiments that investigate the online derivation of these non-maximal in- terpretations of plural definites. Our results show that non- maximal readings are harder to process than maximal interpre- tations. This difficulty seems to be associated to hesitation in the decision-process rather than to a truly two-step derivation. Interestingly, we also find that experimental setup plays an im- portant role in the availability and difficulty linked to these readings.