Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Understanding Some girls have bags is difficult for preschoolers, because they may not properly calculate scalar implica-ture. In this study, we examined whether preschoolers and adults guess scalar information without scale markers (some,all) using negative/positive Japanese sentences in picture selection task. This task consisted of three cards, e.g., SOMEcard illustrated two persons with a bag and four persons without a bag. The results were that the positive expression,Baggu wo motte-iru hito ga imasu (there are persons with a bag), was guessed as meaning of ALL (all persons have a bag)by children, while guessed as SOME by adults. Interestingly, the negative expression, Baggu wo motte-inai hito ga imasu(there are persons without a bag), was guessed as NONE by children, but guessed as SOME by adults. The results suggestchildren may not utilize the combination of existence and agents state information to guess scalar implicature.