scholarly journals Tattoos as a window onto cross-linguistic differences in scalar implicature

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 147
Author(s):  
Danielle Dionne ◽  
Elizabeth Coppock
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Production Data ◽  
Scalar Implicature ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Standard Cost ◽  
Mere Existence ◽  
Production Frequency ◽  
Production Probability ◽  
Do So

This paper addresses the question of how to predict which alternatives are active in scalar implicature calculation, and the nature of this activation. It has been observed that finger implicates 'not thumb', and a Manner-based explanation for this has been proposed, predicting that if English had the simplex Latin word pollex meaning 'thumb or big toe', then finger would cease to have the implicature 'not thumb' that it has. It has also been suggested that this hypothetical pollex would have to be sufficiently colloquial in order to figure in scalar implicature calculation. This paper makes this thought experiment into a real one by using a language that behaves in exactly this way: Spanish has pulgar 'thumb' (< pollex), a non-colloquial form. We first use a fill-in-the-blank production task with both English and Spanish speakers to guage the likelihood with which a speaker will produce a given form as a way of describing a given digit. Production frequency does not perfectly track complexity, so we can then ask whether comprehension follows production frequency or complexity. We do so using a forced choice comprehension task, which reveals cross-linguistic differences in comprehension tracking production probabilities. A comparison between two RSA models -- one in which the speaker perfectly replicates our production data and a standard one in which the speaker chooses based on a standard cost/accuracy trade-off -- illustrates the fact that comprehension is much more closely tied to production probability than to the mere existence of sufficiently simple alternatives.

scholarly journals Inference and exact numerical representation in early language development

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Barner ◽  
Asaf Bachrach
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Available P ◽  
Scalar Implicature ◽  
Numerical Representation ◽  
Early Language ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Early Language Development ◽  
Do So

How do children as young as 2 years of age know that numerals, like one,have exact interpretations, while quantifiers and words like a do not?Previous studies have argued that only numerals have exact lexicalmeanings. Children could not use scalar implicature to strengthen numeralmeanings, it is argued, since they fail to do so for quantifiers(Papafragou & Musolino, 2003). Against this view, we present evidence thatchildren’s early interpretation of numerals does rely on scalarimplicature, and argue that differences between numerals and quantifiersare due to differences in the availability of the respective scales ofwhich they are members. Evidence from previous studies establishes that (1)children can make scalar inferences when interpreting numerals, (2)children initially assign weak, non-exact interpretations to numerals whenfirst acquiring their meanings, and (3) children can strengthen quantifierinterpretations when scalar alternatives are made explicitly available.

scholarly journals Developmental perspectives on the expression of motion in speech and gesture

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Hickmann ◽  
Henriette Hendriks ◽  
Marianne Gullberg
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
First Language ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Complementary Information ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
French And English ◽  
Gesture Studies ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
Do So

Recent research shows that adult speakers of verb- vs. satellite-framed languages (Talmy, 2000) express motion events in language-specific ways in speech (Slobin 1996, 2004) and co-verbal gestures (Duncan 2005; Kita & Özyurek 2003; McNeill 1992). Although such findings suggest cross-linguistic differences in the expression of events, little is still known about their implications for first language acquisition. This paper examines how French and English adults and children (ages four and six) express Path and Manner in speech and gesture when describing voluntary motion presented in animated cartoons. The results show that English adults conflate Manner+Path in speech more often than French adults who frequently talk about Path only. Both groups gesture mainly about Path only, but English adults also conflate Manner+Path into single gestures, whereas French adults never do so. Children in both languages are predominantly adult-like in speech and gesture from age four on, but also display developmental progressions with increasing age. Finally, speech and gestures are predominantly co-expressive in both language groups and at all ages. When modalities differ, English adults typically provide less information in gesture (Path) than in speech (Manner+Path; ‘Manner modulation’ phenomenon), whereas French adults express complementary information in speech (Manner) and gesture (Path). The discussion highlights theoretical implications of such bi-modal analyses for acquisition and gesture studies

scholarly journals When “one” can be “two”: Cross-linguistic differences affect children’s interpretation of the numeral one

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-313
Author(s):  
Sarah Dolscheid ◽  
Franziska Schleussinger ◽  
Martina Penke
Keyword(s):  
Judgment Task ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Linguistic Difference ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

In English, a lexical distinction is drawn between the indefinite determiner “a” and the numeral “one”. English-speaking children also interpret the two terms differently, with an exact, upper bounded interpretation of the numeral “one”, but no upper bounded interpretation of the indefinite determiner “a”. Unlike English, however, German does not draw a distinction between the indefinite determiner and the numeral one but instead uses the same term “ein/e” to express both functions. To find out whether this cross-linguistic difference affects children’s upper bounded interpretation of “ein/e”, we tested German-speaking children and adults in a truth-value-judgment task and compared their performance to English-speaking children. Our results revealed that German-speaking children differed from both English children and German adults. Whereas the majority of German adults interpreted “ein/e” in an upper bounded way (i.e. as exactly one, not two), the majority of German-speaking children favored a non-upper bounded interpretation (thus accepting two as a valid response to “ein/e”). German-speaking children’s proportion of upper bounded responses to “ein/e” was also significantly lower than English children’s upper bounded responses to “one”. However, German children’s rate of upper bounded responses increased once a number-biasing context was provided. These findings suggest that German-speaking children can interpret “ein/e” in an upper bounded way but that they need additional cues in order to do so. When no such cues are present, German-speaking children differ from both German-speaking adults and from their English-speaking peers, demonstrating that cross-linguistic differences can affect the way speakers interpret numbers.

scholarly journals Failed gender agreement in L1 English L2 Spanish: Syntactic or lexical problem?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alena Kirova ◽  
José Camacho
Keyword(s):  
Critical Period ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Gender Assignment ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
L2 Spanish ◽  
And Control ◽  
L1 English ◽  
Do So

According to representational accounts (Hawkins & Franceschina, 2004), the inability to acquire abstract syntactic features after a critical period explains L2 difficulties with gender, while according to lexical accounts (Grüter et al. 2012; Hopp 2012), gender assignment issues – the inability to assigned to a target-like class accounts for these difficulties. We explore three potential agreement cues: 1) semantic gender relating to sex (e.g. ‘girl’ vs. ‘boy’) 2) morphophonological transparency cues, and 3) syntactic agreement cues. Semantic and morphophonological cues may facilitate gender agreement only for a subset of nouns, whereas agreement cues can do so for all nouns, including opaque gender nouns that do not have semantic gender. Seventeen low proficiency and sixteen high proficiency L1 English L2 Spanish speakers and seventeen native Spanish controls judged the grammaticality of 60 experimental sentences. We compared participants’ gender agreement accuracy and reaction times (RTs) on experimental items with and without semantic gender, and with and without transparent gender morphemes. Semantic gender did not serve as a cue for gender assignment/agreement; instead, it slowed down RTs in high proficiency and control participants. Morphophonological cues significantly increased accuracy and decreased RTs in all groups. Finally, agreement cues did not seem to help low proficiency learners, since their accuracy on opaque nouns was barely above chance. This suggests that they did not effectively use agreement cues to assign gender. By contrast, high proficiency learners exhibited native-like accuracy on opaque nouns. These findings support the lexical accounts of gender agreement difficulties, against the representational accounts.

scholarly journals On Translating Artistic Form of Ironical Style in Lu Xun’s Fiction

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 66
Author(s):  
Yikuan Yang
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Lu Xun ◽  
Chinese People ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Artistic Value ◽  
The Future ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Chinese And English ◽  
Do So

In response to an age of turmoil and oppression, Lu Xun&rsquo;s fiction features irony and it is manifested in artistic form which should be retained in English translation to achieve equivalence. Failure to do so would weaken or lose the ironical effect intended by Lu Xun and result in Western readers&rsquo; inclination to neglect historical and social contexts of his time and to miss the thematic significance of his works. In view of inadequate research in this, the thesis explores the artistic form of ironical style in Lu Xun&rsquo;s fiction, the preservation of form and ironical effect in William A. Lyell&rsquo;s, the YANGs&rsquo; and Julia Lovell&rsquo;s English translations and their strategies of compensation for inevitable loss due to cultural and linguistic differences between Chinese and English. However, over-compensation is to be avoided, for it would spoil the delicacy of irony, and so is under-compensation which would reduce the artistic value of the form of irony and cut the ironical effect. Sometimes even if compensation is applied, the ironical effect could hardly be kept intact. Behind Lu Xun&rsquo;s ironical style is his concern for the future of China and the Chinese people, his indignation against oppression, his disappointment at some people&rsquo;s numbness and stupidity and his sorrow toward the failure of the Xinhai Revolution. Translators should bear this in mind when rendering his ironical style from Chinese into English, otherwise they will miss the thematic significance of Lu Xun&rsquo;s fiction.

scholarly journals From Angels to Humans: Law, Coercion, and the Society of Angels Thought Experiment

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas Miotto
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
The Past ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Do So

AbstractWhether legal systems are necessarily coercive raises normative concerns. Coercion carries a presumption of illegitimacy and a special justificatory burden. If legal systems are necessarily coercive, coerciveness necessarily taints our legal institutions. Traditionally, legal systems have been regarded as contingently coercive. This view is mainly supported by the society of angels thought experiment. For the past few years, however, this traditional view has been under attack. Critics have challenged the reliability of the thought experiment and have urged us to centre the discussion on typical legal systems: legal systems made by humans to address human needs. Once we do so – they claim – we would inevitably reject the traditional view. This paper argues that the critics are wrong. After discussing key features of the society of angels thought experiment and responding to objections, it is argued that even typical legal systems are contingently coercive. Coerciveness is a feature that our legal systems can and should strive to get rid of.

Saying No and Saying Yes

2019 ◽  
pp. 141-170
Author(s):  
Wendy Beth Hyman
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Faerie Queene ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Faerie Queene ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Erotic

“Saying No and Saying Yes” turns at last from the speaker of the erotic invitation to its imagined auditor: the figure being invited to “seize the day.” Persuasion poets, of course, never expect acquiescence—the motif would hardly exist if ladies were easily seduced. However, Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and Milton’s A Maske are among those longer works that make room for very demonstrable acts of refusal, and both do so within an explicitly moral, Protestant context: Spenser via his knight Guyon (hearing Acrasia’s song in the Bower of Bliss), and Milton through his virginal and unnamed Lady responding to the libertine Comus. Despite some obvious similarities between these encounters, the two poets imagine remarkably different responses to the voluptuous invitations they feature. Spenser’s Guyon responds not with his putative virtue, Temperance, but vehement rage to Acrasia’s invitation in the Bower—becoming an agent of the very materialist forces he repudiates. Milton, on the other hand, imagines a place for chastity that is not built upon a sequestration of the self, but a willingness to seek, and find, trial. He thereby provides a model for perhaps the most “impossible” thought experiment of all, one in which a woman participates as an intellectual and rhetorical equal, and in whom eloquence, chastity, and desire can coexist. Milton thereby utilizes the trope to turn it on its head, constructing within it a forum for a proto-feminist articulation of agency and voice.

Naming Patterns and Inductive Inference: The Case of Birds

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 189-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Tarlowski
Keyword(s):  
Inductive Inference ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Feature Weighting ◽  
Stable Category ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Language And Thought ◽  
Taxonomic Class ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractAlthough past research demonstrated that online presentation of labels plays a role in inductive inference few studies have shown that naming practices affect stable category representations that enter into inductive judgments. In this study we provide evidence for a relationship between naming and inductive inference by examining Polish and Spanish speakers’ inferences within the taxonomic class Aves. Birds in Polish are named with one label, ptak, while Spanish uses two labels, ave and pájaro. Size is the feature that determines whether Spanish speakers label a bird as ave or pájaro. As a result, compared to Polish speakers, Spanish speakers attach higher weight to bird size. This is evidenced by the fact that Spanish speakers’ perception of strength of inferences from birds decreases more strongly as a function of size dissimilarity between premise and conclusion. The hypothesis that feature weighting mediates in the influence of naming on induction is supported by the cross-linguistic differences in perceptions of animal similarity. The set of findings reported here contributes to the understanding of inductive inference and the relationship between language and thought.

scholarly journals Common origins and the ethics of planetary seeding

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 301-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Milligan
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Ethical Reason ◽  
Microbial Life ◽  
Historical Justice ◽  
Do So

AbstractFaced with a choice between attempting to seed another world with terrestrially-sourced microbes (with which we would have a shared origin) and microbes sourced from elsewhere within the solar system (whose origins might therefore differ), would we have any non-instrumental ethical reason to favour the terrestrial microbes? What follows will argue that in relation to the goals of promoting life similar to our own, or even simply microbial life, we might conceivably make such an appeal and do so in a defensible manner. However, in no case would such a consideration operate as a silencer for rival considerations (such as likelihood of success, enhancing diversity or historical justice). The thought experiment serves to highlight the diversity of considerations which are in play in ethical deliberation about matters of astrobiology and the role of practical wisdom rather than trumping considerations.

scholarly journals The Necessary Existence of Inference-Claims

2021 ◽  
pp. 41-72
Author(s):  
David Botting
Keyword(s):  
Infinite Regress ◽  
Unpublished Work ◽  
Mere Existence ◽  
Necessary Existence ◽  
Do So

In (2018) Gilbert Plumer argues against the existence of inference-claims on the grounds that they lead to the kind of vicious infinite regress illustrated in Carroll’s famous Achilles and the Tortoise paper (Carroll 1895). In Plumer’s view, it is not simply that neither arguments nor arguers do make inference-claims, but that they can’t do so, on pain of this regress. In further unpublished work Plumer has generalized from this result: it is a mistake to include reference to standards of argument assessment within the content of the argument. Inference-claims (i.e., sufficiency-claims) do not exist, and neither do relevance-claims or acceptability-claims, and all for much the same reason. I will argue that his arguments fail to show that inference-claims do not exist, because the regresses they lead to either are not vicious, not infinite, or can be avoided. Then I hope to show, on the grounds of what I call the ‘completeness’ of the argument, that inference-claims not only do exist but that they must exist. This is not to say that inference-claims are necessarily asserted in an act of arguing, but asserting them would not lead to the kind of harmful consequences Plumer supposes, any more than their mere existence would.

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