Hello everybody,
Dan suggested that inform the list about a recent paper of mine that just
came out. Here is the reference and abstract (without italics):
Noveck, I.A.(2001). When children are more logical than adults:
Experimental investigations of scalar implicature. Cognition , 78/2, 165-188.
A conversational implicature is an inference that consists in attributing
to a speaker an implicit meaning that goes beyond the explicit linguistic
meaning of an utterance. This paper experimentally investigates scalar
implicature, a paradigmatic case of implicature in which a speaker's use of
a term like Some indicates that the speaker had reasons not to use a more
informative one from the same scale, e.g. All; thus, Some implicates Not
all. Pragmatic theorists like Grice would predict that a pragmatic
interpretation is determined only after its explicit, logical meaning is
incorporated (e.g. where Some means at least one). The present work aims
to developmentally unpack this prediction by showing how younger, albeit
competent, reasoners initially treat a relatively weak term logically
before becoming aware of its pragmatic potential. Three experiments are
presented. Experiment 1 presents a modal reasoning scenario offering an
exhaustive set of conclusions; critical among these is participants'
evaluation of a statement expressing Might be x when the context indicates
that the stronger Must be x is true. The conversationally-infelicitous
Might be x can be understood logically (e.g. as compatible with Must) or
pragmatically (as exclusive to must). Results from five-, seven-, and
nine-year-olds as well as adults revealed that a) seven-year-olds are the
youngest to demonstrate modal competence overall and that; b) seven- and
nine-year-olds treat the infelicitous Might logically significantly more
often than adults do. Experiment 2 showed how training with the modal task
can suspend the implicatures for adults. Experiment 3 provides converging
evidence of the developmental pragmatic effect with the French existential
quantifier Certains (Some). While linguistically-sophisticated children
(eight- and ten-year-olds olds) typically treat Certains as compatible with
Tous (All), adults are equivocal. These results, which are consistent with
unanticipated findings in classic developmental papers, reveal a consistent
ordering in which representations of weak scalar terms tend to be treated
logically by young competent participants and more pragmatically by older
ones. This work is also relevant to the treatment of scalar implicatures
in the reasoning literature.
I'll be happy to forward a hard copy to anyone who is interested.
Yours,
Ira
Ira Noveck
Institut des Sciences Cognitives
CNRS
67 Blvd. Pinel
69675 Bron FRANCE
Tel. (de la France): 04 37 91 12 68
Tel. (from abroad): + 33 4 37 91 12 68
http://www.isc.cnrs.fr/nov/novmenu.htm
http://www.isc.cnrs.fr/nov/novmenuen.htm
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