ERIC Number: EJ1089142
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-Jan
Pages: 30
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0364-0213
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Availability of Alternatives and the Processing of Scalar Implicatures: A Visual World Eye-tracking Study
Degen, Judith; Tanenhaus, Michael K.
Cognitive Science, v40 n1 p172-201 Jan 2016
Two visual world experiments investigated the processing of the implicature associated with "some" using a "gumball paradigm." On each trial, participants saw an image of a gumball machine with an upper chamber with orange and blue gumballs and an empty lower chamber. Gumballs dropped to the lower chamber, creating a contrast between a partitioned set of gumballs of one color and an unpartitioned set of the other. Participants then evaluated spoken statements, such as "You got some of the blue gumballs." Experiment 1 investigated the time course of the pragmatic enrichment from "some" to "not all" when the only utterance alternatives available to refer to the different sets were "some" and "all." In Experiment 2, the number terms "two," "three," "four," and "five" were also included in the set of alternatives. Scalar implicatures were delayed relative to the interpretation of literal statements with all only when number terms were available. The results are interpreted as evidence for a constraint-based account of scalar implicature processing.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Institutes of Health (DHHS)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: HD27206
Author Affiliations: N/A