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Abstract: Implicatures like ‘Some politicians are smart’ (interpreted as ‘Some but not all politicians are smart’) are defined scalar implicatures. A heated linguistic debate has focused on how we derive those implicatures: some authors consider the computational process as linguistic in nature (Levinson, 2000), others as pragmatic in nature (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). A growing body of research, prompted by pioneering work by Bott and Noveck (2004), focused on the computational cost related with the computation of scalar implicatures. The present study addresses such topic through the use of different experimental techniques. With Experiment 1 (N = 57) we replicated the third experiment of Bott and Noveck (2004), the first study that identified a cost related to a pragmatic response. With Experiment 2 (N = 58), using a pseudo-word paradigm, we excluded the possibility that the computational cost is due to an experimental artifact, such as an increased difficulty in moving up in the conceptual hierarchy (e.g., ‘Some elephants are mammals’) than in moving down (e.g. ‘Some mammals are elephants’). In Experiment 3 (N = 54), with a Sentence Evaluation Task, we collected reading times, reaction times and eye gaze data. Results showed that the cost of the computation disappears when there is contextual support. Overall, our results seem to support the idea that scalar implicatures are not automatically computed with context playing an important role.
Keywords: scalar implicatures, eye-tracking, experimental pragmatics, reaction times
Published in RUNG: 22.09.2021; Views: 2727; Downloads: 9
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Abstract: Scalar implicatures have enjoyed the status of one of the most researched topics in both theoretical and experimental pragmatics in recent years. This Research Topic presents new developments in studying the comprehension, as well as the production of scalar inferences, suggests new testing paradigms that trigger important discussions about the methodology of experimental investigation, explores the effect of prosody and context on inference rates. To a great extent the articles reflect the state of the art in the domain and outline promising paths for future research.
Keywords: Scalar implicature, Lexical scales, Scalar variability, Cross-linguistic variation, Production, Comprehension, Prosody, Context
Published in RUNG: 06.11.2019; Views: 4114; Downloads: 121
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Abstract: In 1975, Grice introduced the notion of implicature, arguing that it was more appropriate to account for a class of apparent lexical ambiguities through pragmatic processes than by multiplying lexical meanings (Modified Ockham's razor: Do not multiply meanings beyond necessity; Grice, 1975). For the past 20 years, experimental approaches have superseded purely theoretical ones, with mixed results. Paradigms using verification tasks on infelicitous sentences, with rate of pragmatic answers and reaction time as measures, have generally concluded in favor of the post-Gricean views (Bott and Noveck, 2004; Noveck and Reboul, 2008). However, some recent studies discuss additional factors affecting implicature processing and have introduced new paradigms which suggest a different conclusion (Katsos and Bishop, 2011; Breheny et al., 2013; Degen and Tanenhaus, 2015; Foppolo and Marelli, 2017; Bill et al.; Jasbi et al.; Sikos et al.). In addition, current research has shown that lexical scales may play a role in the process in keeping with neo-Gricean views. This Frontiers topic is a collection of 12 contributions in experimental pragmatics focusing on different aspects of child and adult processing of implicatures, factors affecting their rate, relevance of testing paradigms, scale diversity, cross-linguistic differences, and variation in triggers.
Keywords: scalar implicature, experimental pragmatics, neo-Gricean pragmatics, post-Gricean pragmatics, grammatical theory of implicatures
Published in RUNG: 31.07.2019; Views: 4208; Downloads: 98
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Keywords: večjezičnost, glasbena izobrazba, učenje tujih jezikov
Published in RUNG: 07.06.2018; Views: 4802; Downloads: 32
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Abstract: This study investigated whether early bilingualism and early musical training positively influence the ability to discriminate between prosodic patterns corresponding to different syntactic structures in otherwise phonetically identical sentences in an unknown language. In a same-different discrimination task, participants (N = 108) divided into four groups (monolingual non-musicians, monolingual musicians, bilingual non-musicians, and bilingual musicians) listened to pairs of short sentences in a language unknown to them (French). In discriminating phonetically identical but prosodically different sentences, musicians, bilinguals, and bilingual musicians outperformed the controls. However, there was no interaction between bilingualism and musical training to suggest an additive effect. These results underscore the significant role of both types of experience in enhancing the listeners' sensitivity to prosodic information.
Keywords: prosody, bilingualism, same-different task, French, musical training, acoustics, brain
Published in RUNG: 10.01.2018; Views: 4815; Downloads: 0
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