Hello all,
There are some interesting developmental data in the literature (from
Musolino, Lidz and company) and which my lab has largely replicated
showing that young children (4 year olds) are more likely to accept the
narrow scope reading of negation in sentences such as:
All the children are not in the pool.
That is, children interpret this as "No children are in the pool."
Adults,
on the other hand, treat this with wide scope as "Not all the children
are
in the pool." Robyn Carston, who has been generous in talking this over
with me, has argued that the linguistic code gives you an unspecified
scope and it's up to pragmatics to fix its scope.
Now, given the data, I'm ready to go further and argue that the narrow
scope is the initial interpretation and that wide scope occurs through
some form of pragmatic loosening. It makes sense to me in light of our
other developmental data showing how children's initial semantic
interpretations are prominent before pragmatic (narrowing) influences
kick
in. The only difference with the narrow-cum-wide scope adjustment is
that
in this case it is surface form that prompts the initial narrow scope
reading. My questions for the list are as follows:
Is there any reason not to suppose that a) only the narrow scope reading
is the initial reading and that b)the wide scope reading is the result
of
a pragmatic, and not linguistic-encoding, process?
Ira
-- Ira Noveck (Through July 2005) Princeton University Psychology Department Princeton, NJ 08544 609 258 9498Otherwise: 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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