scholarly journals Information Structure and Scope Interactions: Disjunction Wide Scope Induced by Focus

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cécile Larralde ◽  
Alina Konradt ◽  
Kriszta Eszter Szendrői
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Wide Scope ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
Subject Design ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
Scope Interactions ◽  
Scope Reading ◽  
Prosodic Focus

In this paper we investigate the scopal reading of disjunctions in French negative sentences with pre-schoolers. We posit that the French disjunctor “ou” does not fit the traditional disjunction PPI/non-PPI dichotomy according to which a wide scope is taken by a PPI disjunction and a narrow scope when the disjunction is not a PPI. We hypothesized that focus could be a succesful scopal manipulator. Using Truth Value Judgment Tasks (TVJT), we tested French pre-schoolers' scopal reading of negated disjunctions in a neutral prosody condition and with prosodic focus on the disjunctor in a between subject design. We found that as predicted, prosodic focus often enduced participants to adopt a disjunction wide scope reading whereas a disjunction narrow scope reading was favored in the neutral prosody condition. This confirmed our hypothesis that focus can manipulate disjunction scope paramaters. It also shows that, when the disjunction is focalised, children have access to the disjunction wide scope reading earlier than previously thought. Finally, we can conclude that the distinction between PPI-disjunctor vs. non-PPI disjunctor languages needs to be more fine-grained.

scholarly journals empirical view on raising to subject

2010 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 83-109
Author(s):  
Scott Grimm
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Wide Scope ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
Subject Analysis ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Subject Raising

This paper employs empirical methods to examine verbs such as seem, for which the traditional raising to subject analysis relates pairs of sentences which differ by taking an infinitival or sentential complement. A corpus-driven investigation of the verbs seem and appear demonstrates that information structure and evidentiality both play a determinate role in the choice between infinitival or sentential complementation. The second half of the paper builds upon the corpus results and examines the implications for the standard claims concerning these constructions. First, pairs of sentences related by the subject-to-subject raising analysis of verbs are often viewed as equivalent. New evidence from indefinite generic subjects shows that whether an indefinite generic subject occurs in the infinitival or sentential complement construction leads to truth-conditional differences. Further implications are explored for the claim that subjects of the infinitival variant may take narrow-scope: once various confounds are controlled for, the subject of the infinitival construction is shown to most naturally take wide-scope.  

Pragmatics for Latin

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Devine ◽  
Laurence D. Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Informational Content ◽  
Compositional Process ◽  
Association With Focus ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
Order Language ◽  
Free Word

Latin is often described as a free word order language, but in general each word order encodes a particular information structure: in that sense, each word order has a different meaning. This book provides a descriptive analysis of Latin information structure based on detailed philological evidence and elaborates a syntax-pragmatics interface that formalizes the informational content of the various different word orders. The book covers a wide ranges of issues including broad scope focus, narrow scope focus, double focus, topicalization, tails, focus alternates, association with focus, scrambling, informational structure inside the noun phrase and hyperbaton (discontinuous constituency). Using a slightly adjusted version of the structured meanings theory, the book shows how the pragmatic meanings matching the different word orders arise naturally and spontaneously out of the compositional process as an integral part of a single semantic derivation covering denotational and informational meaning at one and the same time.

The Myth of Structural Rationality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Kiesewetter
Keyword(s):  
Wide Scope ◽  
Structural Requirements ◽  
Rational Requirements ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
Scope Interpretation

While Chapters 4 and 5 suggest that structural requirements of rationality cannot be normative, Chapter 6 argues for the stronger conclusion that there are no such requirements to begin with. The argument is that both narrow- and wide-scope interpretations of structural requirements face problems independently of whether these requirements are understood as being normative. Starting with the narrow-scope interpretation, the chapter discusses the problem that it licenses bootstrapping of rational requirements (6.1), that it entails inconsistent requirements (6.2), and that it entails requirements that undermine each other in a counterintuitive way (6.3). Turning to the wide-scope interpretation, the chapter discusses the charge that wide-scope requirements cannot capture an important asymmetry involved in structural irrationality (6.4–6.5), and that they are incapable of guiding our responses (6.6). It is argued that all of these objections pose serious problems for the respective accounts. This supports the conclusion that there are no structural requirements of rationality (6.7).

scholarly journals Difficulties in Comprehending Affirmative and Negative Sentences: Evidence From Chinese Children With Reading Difficulties

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shenai Hu ◽  
Maria Vender ◽  
Gaetano Fiorin ◽  
Denis Delfitto
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Reading Difficulties ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Chinese Children ◽  
Behavioral Data ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
General Validity ◽  
Truth Value

Recent experimental results suggest that negation is particularly challenging for children with reading difficulties. This study looks at how young poor readers, speakers of Mandarin Chinese, comprehend affirmative and negative sentences as compared with a group of age-matched typical readers. Forty-four Chinese children were tested with a truth value judgment task. The results reveal that negative sentences were harder to process than affirmative ones, irrespective of the distinction between poor and typical readers. Moreover, poor readers performed worse than typical readers in comprehending sentences, regardless of whether they were affirmative or negative sentences. We interpret the results as (a) confirming the two-step simulation hypothesis, based on the result that the difficulty in processing negation has a general validity (persisting in pragmatically felicitous contexts), and (b) disconfirming that negation, as far as behavioral data are concerned, can be used as a reliable linguistic predictor of reading difficulties.

Linguistic cues facilitate children’s understanding of belief-reporting sentences

2021 ◽  
pp. 014272372110486
Author(s):  
Xiaowen Zhang ◽  
Peng Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Gold Medal ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Linguistic Cues ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
Mental Verbs

It has been well-documented that although children around 4 years start to attribute false beliefs to others in classic false-belief tasks, they are still less able to evaluate the truth-value of propositional belief-reporting sentences, especially when belief conflicts with reality. This article investigates whether linguistic cues, verb factivity in particular, can facilitate children’s understanding of belief-reporting sentences. Two experiments were implemented, one testing children’s knowledge of verb factivity using a gold medal task, and one investigating children’s interpretation of belief-reporting sentences using a truth-value-judgment task. Both experiments took advantage of the contrast between neutral non-factive mental verbs and strong negatively biased mental verbs. What sets the two apart is that the complement clause following a strong negatively biased mental verb is definitely false, whereas the one following a neutral non-factive mental verb remains indeterminate in the absence of additional information. The findings were that, first, 4-year-old children were able to tell the difference between the two types of mental verbs in factivity, and second, children’s performance was significantly improved when a strong negatively biased mental verb than when a neutral non-factive mental verb was used as the main verb of the belief-reporting sentences. The findings suggest that the use of strong negatively biased mental verbs facilitates children’s understanding of belief-reporting sentences. Implications of the findings are discussed in relation to the underlying mechanisms connecting verb factivity and false-belief understanding.

scholarly journals Conditionals on crutches: Expanding the modal horizon

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dario Paape ◽  
Malte Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Computational Modeling ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Value Judgments ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Counterfactual Conditionals ◽  
Modeling Techniques ◽  
On Line ◽  
Truth Value

Using truth-value judgment tasks, we investigated the on-line processing of counterfactual conditionals such as "If kangaroos had no tails, they would topple over". Face-value plausibility of the counterfactual as well as the complexity of the antecedent were manipulated. Results show that readers' judgments deviate from face-value plausibility more often when the antecedent is complex, and when the counterfactual is plausible rather than implausible. We interpret our results based on the modal horizon assumption of von Fintel (2001) and argue that they are compatible with a variably strict semantics for counterfactuals (Lewis, 1973). We make use of computational modeling techniques to account for reaction times and truth-value judgments simultaneously, showing that implementing detailed process models deepens our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms triggered by linguistic stimuli.

scholarly journals Do All Eagles Fly High? The Generic Overgeneralization Effect: The Impact of Fillers in Truth Value Judgment Tasks

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edyta Wajda ◽  
Daniel Karczewski
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Neutral Condition ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Negative Condition ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
Acceptance Rates ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe generic overgeneralization effect is an attested tendency to accept false universal generalizations such as “all eagles fly” or “all snakes lay eggs” as true. In this paper, we discuss the generic overgeneralization effect demonstrated by Polish adult speakers. We asked 313 native speakers of Polish to evaluate universal quantified generalizations such as “all eagles fly” or “all snakes lay eggs” as true or false. The control group of 107 respondents provided data on the acceptance rates of the corresponding generic generalizations such as “eagles fly” or “snakes lay eggs”. By determining the impact of test fillers on the participants’ acceptance rates, the study aimed to identify the scope of the generic overgeneralization effect. We manipulated four conditions: the universal negative, positive, neutral, and generic control conditions. The results showed significant differences between the first two conditions, but neither the negative nor the positive condition differed from the neutral one. The overall acceptance rates of universal statements were 63% for the negative condition, 49% for the positive condition, 55% for the neutral condition, and 90% for the control group. Overall, the participants accepted universal quantified statements at high rates even when they were prompted to reject them. The results may be interpreted as another piece of evidence in support of the generic overgeneralization effect.

Requirements of Structural Rationality

2021 ◽  
pp. 165-195
Author(s):  
Alex Worsnip
Keyword(s):  
Wide Scope ◽  
Rational Requirements ◽  
Narrow Scope

This chapter turns to the nature and form of requirements of structural rationality. It presents a recipe for generating requirements of structural rationality from verdicts about which states are incoherent (by the account defended in the previous chapter). On the resulting view, requirements of structural rationality are prohibitions on (incoherent) combinations of states. The chapter compares this with the closely related view that the requirements of rationality are “wide-scope” before reframing the debate over the scope of rational requirements and arguing for a view that is wide-scope, rather than narrow-scope, in spirit. It also argues that requirements of structural rationality are synchronic rather than diachronic. Finally, it defends the view that the demands of structural rationality are best thought of as requirements at all against a recent challenge.

Prosodic disambiguation of scopally ambiguous quantificational sentences in a discourse context

2014 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 453-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
KRISTEN SYRETT ◽  
GEORGIA SIMON ◽  
KIRSTEN NISULA
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Wide Scope ◽  
Correct Interpretation ◽  
Subsequent Work ◽  
Auditory Cues ◽  
Discourse Context ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
One To One

Researchers have long sought to determine the strength of the relation between prosody and the interpretation of scopally ambiguous sentences in English involving quantification and negation (e.g. All the men didn't go). While Jackendoff (1972) proposed a one-to-one mapping between sentence-final contour and the scope of negation (falling contour: narrow scope, fall-rise contour: wide scope), in subsequent work, researchers (e.g. Ladd 1980; Ward & Hirschberg 1985; Kadmon & Roberts 1986) disentangled the link between prosody and scope. Even though these pragmatic accounts predict variability in production, they still allow for some correlation between scope and prosody. To date, we lack systematic evidence to bear on this discussion. Here, we present findings from two perception experiments aimed at investigating whether prosodic information – including, but not limited to, sentence-final contour – can successfully disambiguate such sentences. We show that when speakers provide consistent auditory cues to sentential interpretation, hearers can successfully recruit these cues to arrive at the correct interpretation as intended by the speaker. In light of these results, we argue that psycholinguistic studies (including language acquisition studies) investigating participants’ ability to access multiple interpretations of scopally ambiguous sentences – quantificational and otherwise – should carefully control for prosody.

Anatomy of a Counterexample: Extraction from Relative Clauses

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivy Sichel
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
Structural Ambiguity ◽  
Fine Grained Structure ◽  
Lebanese Arabic

Relative clauses (RCs) are considered islands for extraction, yet acceptable cases of overt extraction from RCs have been attested over the years in a variety of languages: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Japanese, Hebrew, English, Italian, Spanish, French, and also in Lebanese Arabic and Mandarin Chinese, where covert extraction from an RC is observed. The possibility for extraction has often been presented as evidence against a syntactic theory of locality, and in favor of constraints defined in terms of information structure, or processing limitations and constraints on working memory. Another possibility, still hardly explored, is that locality is determined syntactically, combined with a more fine-grained structure for RCs and a theory of how extraction from this structure interacts with the theory of locality. I argue in favor of the latter approach. I assume the structural ambiguity of RCs and argue that while externally headed RCs do block extraction, extraction is possible, under certain conditions, from a raising RC, and is formally similar to extraction from an embedded interrogative.

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