Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T01:04:55.031Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Pragmatic inferences are QUD-sensitive: an experimental study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2020

ESZTER RONAI  and
MING XIANG
ESZTER RONAI
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago, 1115 E. 58th Street, Chicago, IL60637, USA, ronai@uchicago.edumxiang@uchicago.edu
MING XIANG
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago, 1115 E. 58th Street, Chicago, IL60637, USA, ronai@uchicago.edumxiang@uchicago.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Implicatures serve as an important testing ground for examining the process of integrating semantic and pragmatic information. Starting with Bott & Noveck (2004), several studies have found that implicature computation is costly. More recently, attention has shifted toward identifying contextual cues that modulate this processing cost. Specifically, it has been hypothesized that calculation rate and processing cost are a function of whether the Question Under Discussion (QUD) supports generating the implicature (Degen 2013; Degen & Tanenhaus 2015). In this paper, we present a novel elicitation task establishing what the relevant QUDs are for a given context (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, a sentence-picture verification study, we extend earlier findings about the effect of QUDs on scalar inference to a different kind of pragmatic inference: it-cleft exhaustivity. For both inferences, we find that under QUDs that bias toward calculation, there is no increase in reaction times, but under QUDs that bias against calculating the inference we observe longer reaction times. These results are most compatible with a constraint-based account of implicature, where QUD is one of many cues. Additionally, we explore whether our findings can be informative in narrowing down precisely what aspect of the inferential process incurs a cost.

Keywords

experimental pragmaticsimplicaturesinference processingQuestion Under Discussion
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 57 , Issue 4 , November 2021 , pp. 841 - 870
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

For their insightful comments and suggestions, we thank the three anonymous reviewers, Hannah Rohde and John Tomlinson, the audiences at AMLaP 24 and NELS 49, and especially Chris Kennedy and Michael Tabatowski. We are grateful to Bob van Tiel for sharing experimental materials with us and to Zsolt Veraszto for technical help. All mistakes and shortcomings are our own.

References

REFERENCES

Atlas, Jay D. & Levinson, Stephen C.. 1981. It-clefts, informativeness and logical form. In Cole, P. (ed.), Radical pragmatics, 1–62. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Barner, David, Brooks, Neon & Bale, Alan. 2011. Accessing the unsaid: The role of scalar alternatives in children’s pragmatic inference. Cognition 118.1, 84–93. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.10.010.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barr, Dale J., Levy, Roger, Scheepers, Christoph & Tily, Harry J.. 2013. Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language 68.3, 255–278. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2012.11.001.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bates, Douglas, Mächler, Martin, Bolker, Ben & Walker, Steve. 2015. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67.1, 1–48. doi:10.18637/jss.v067.i01.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonnefon, Jean-François, Feeney, Aidan & Villejoubert, Gaëlle. 2009. When some is actually all: Scalar inferences in face-threatening contexts. Cognition 112.2, 249–258. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2009.05.005.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bott, Lewis & Noveck, Ira A.. 2004. Some utterances are underinformative: The onset and time course of scalar inferences. Journal of Memory and Language 51.3, 437–457. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2004.05.006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breheny, Richard, Katsos, Napoleon & Williams, John. 2006. Are generalised scalar implicatures generated by default? An on-line investigation into the role of context in generating pragmatic inferences. Cognition 100.3, 434–463. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2005.07.003.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Büring, Daniel & Križ, Manuel. 2013. It’s that, and that’s it! Exhaustivity and homogeneity presuppositions in clefts (and definites). Semantics and Pragmatics 6.6, 1–29. doi:10.3765/sp.6.6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Washburn, Byram, Mary, Elsi Kaiser & Zubizarreta, Maria Luisa. 2019. The English it-cleft: No need to get exhausted. In von Heusinger, Klaus, Zimmermann, Malte & Onea, Edgar (eds.), Questions in discourse, vol. 1: Semantics, 198–236. Leiden: Brill. doi:10.1163/9789004378308_006.Google Scholar
Chemla, Emmanuel & Bott, Lewis. 2014. Processing inferences at the semantics/pragmatics frontier: disjunctions and free choice. Cognition 130.3, 380–396. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2013.11.013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro. 2004. Scalar implicatures, polarity phenomena and the syntax/pragmatics interface. In Belletti, Adriana (ed.), Structures and beyond, 39–103. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro, Crain, Stephen, Guasti, Maria Teresa, Gualmini, Andrea & Meroni, Luisa. 2001. The acquisition of disjunction: Evidence for a grammatical view of scalar implicatures. In Do, Anna H.-J., Domínguez, Laura & Johansen, Aimee (eds.), Proceedings of the Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD) 25, 157–168. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Cummins, Chris & Rohde, Hannah. 2015. Evoking context with contrastive stress: Effects on pragmatic enrichment. Frontiers in Psychology 6, 1779. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01779.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Degen, Judith. 2013. Alternatives in pragmatic reasoning. Dissertation, University of Rochester.Google Scholar
Degen, Judith & Tanenhaus, Michael K.. 2015. Processing scalar implicature: A constraint-based approach. Cognitive Science 39.4, 667–710. doi:10.1111/cogs.12171.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Degen, Judith & Tanenhaus, Michael K.. 2019. Constraint-based pragmatic processing. In Cummins, Chris & Katsos, Napoleon (eds.), The Oxford handbook of experimental semantics and pragmatics, 21–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
De Neys, Wim & Schaeken, Walter. 2007. When people are more logical under cognitive load: Dual task impact on scalar implicature. Experimental Psychology 54.2, 128–133. doi:10.1027/1618-3169.54.2.128.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Drenhaus, Heiner, Zimmermann, Malte & Vasishth, Shravan. 2011. Exhaustiveness effects in clefts are not truth-functional. Journal of Neurolinguistics 24.3, 320–337. doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2010.10.004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drummond, Alex. 2007. Ibex Farm. http://spellout.net/ibexfarm.Google Scholar
É. Kiss, Katalin. 1998. Identificational focus versus information focus. Language 74.2, 245–273. doi:10.1353/lan.1998.0211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, Danny. 2007. Free choice and the theory of scalar implicatures. In Sauerland, Uli & Stateva, Penka (eds.), Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics, 71–120. London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9780230210752_4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, Danny & Katzir, Roni. 2011. On the characterization of alternatives. Natural Language Semantics 19.1, 87–107. doi:10.1007/s11050-010-9065-3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gazdar, Gerald. 1979. Pragmatics: Implicature, presupposition and logical form. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Goodman, Noah D. & Stuhlmüller, Andreas. 2013. Knowledge and implicature: Modeling language understanding as social cognition. Topics in Cognitive Science 5.1, 173–184. doi:10.1111/tops.12007.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grice, Herbert Paul. 1967. Logic and conversation. In Grice, Paul (ed.), Studies in the way of words, 41–58. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Grodner, Daniel J., Klein, Natalie M., Carbary, Kathleen M. & Tanenhaus, Michael K.. 2010. ‘Some’, and possibly all, scalar inferences are not delayed: Evidence for immediate pragmatic enrichment. Cognition 116.1, 42–55. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.03.014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gualmini, Andrea, Hulsey, Sarah, Hacquard, Valentine & Fox, Danny. 2008. The Question-Answer Requirement for scope assignment. Natural Language Semantics 16.3, 205–237. doi:10.1007/s11050-008-9029-z.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamblin, Charles Leonard. 1976. Questions in Montague English. In Partee, Barbara H. (ed.), Montague grammar, 247–259. Academic Press. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-545850-4.50014-5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, Robert X. D., Stuhlmüller, Andreas, Degen, Judith & Goodman, Noah D.. 2015. Why do you ask? Good questions provoke informative answers. In Noelle, David C., Dale, Rick, Warlaumont, Anne, Yoshimi, Jeff, Matlock, Teenie, Jennings, Carolyn & Maglio, Paul P. (eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 878–883. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Horn, Lawrence R. 1972. On the semantic properties of the logical operators in English. Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Horn, Lawrence R. 1981. Exhaustiveness and the semantics of clefts. In Burke, Victoria & Pustejovsky, James (eds.), Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS), vol. 11, 125–142. Amherst, MA: GLSA Publications.Google Scholar
Huang, Yi Ting & Snedeker, Jesse. 2009. Online interpretation of scalar quantifiers: Insight into the semantics–pragmatics interface. Cognitive Psychology 58.3, 376–415. doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2008.09.001.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hulsey, Sarah, Hacquard, Valentine, Fox, Danny & Gualmini, Andrea. 2004. The Question-Answer Requirement and scope assignment. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 48, 71–90.Google Scholar
Katzir, Roni. 2007. Structurally-defined alternatives. Linguistics and Philosophy 30.6, 669–690. doi:10.1007/s10988-008-9029-y.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Kuppevelt, Jan. 1996. Inferring from topics: scalar implicatures as topic-dependent inferences. Linguistics and Philosophy 19.4, 393–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kursat, Leyla & Degen, Judith. 2020. Probability and processing speed of scalar inferences is context-dependent. In Denison, Stephanie, Mack, Michael, Xu, Yang & Armstrong, Blair C. (eds.), Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 1236–1242. Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Kuznetsova, Alexandra, Brockhoff, Per B. & Christensen, Rune H. B.. 2017. lmerTest package: Tests in linear mixed effects models. Journal of Statistical Software 82.13, 1–26. doi:10.18637/jss.v082.i13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 2000. Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Musolino, Julien. 1998. Universal grammar and the acquisition of semantic knowledge: An experimental investigation of quantifier–negation interaction in English. Dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Musolino, Julien. 2011. Studying language acquisition through the prism of isomorphism. In de Villiers, Jill & Roeper, Tom (eds.), Handbook of generative approaches to language acquisition, 319–349. Dordrecht: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-1688-9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noveck, Ira A. 2001. When children are more logical than adults: Experimental investigations of scalar implicature. Cognition 78, 165–188.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Noveck, Ira A. & Posada, Andres. 2003. Characterizing the time course of an implicature: An evoked potentials study. Brain and Language 85.2, 203–210. doi:10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00053-1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Onea, Edgar & Beaver, David. 2011. Hungarian focus is not exhausted. In Cormany, Ed, Ito, Satoshi & Lutz, David (eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 19, 342–359. doi:10.3765/salt.v19i0.2524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Papafragou, Anna & Tantalou, Niki. 2004. Children’s computation of implicatures. Language Acquisition 12.1, 71–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Percus, Orin. 1997. Prying open the cleft. Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS) 27, 337–351.Google Scholar
Politzer-Ahles, Stephen & Fiorentino, Robert. 2013. The realization of scalar inferences: Context sensitivity without processing cost. PLOS ONE 8.5, 1–6. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063943.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roberts, Craige. [1996] 2012. Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics and Pragmatics 5.6, 1–69. doi:10.3765/sp.5.6.Google Scholar
Sauerland, Uli. 2004. Scalar implicatures in complex sentences. Linguistics and Philosophy 27.3, 367–391. doi:10.1023/B:LING.0000023378.71748.db.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singh, Raj, Wexler, Ken, Astle-Rahim, Andrea, Kamawar, Deepthi & Fox, Danny. 2016. Children interpret disjunction as conjunction: Consequences for theories of implicature and child development. Natural Language Semantics 24.4, 305–352. doi:10.1007/s11050-016-9126-3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Tiel, Bob & Schaeken, Walter. 2017. Processing conversational implicatures: Alternatives and counterfactual reasoning. Cognitive Science 41, 1119–1154. doi:10.1111/cogs.12362.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tiel, van, Bob, Emiel van Miltenburg, Zevakhina, Natalia & Geurts, Bart. 2016. Scalar diversity. Journal of Semantics 33.1, 137–175. doi:10.1093/jos/ffu017.Google Scholar
Yang, Xiao, Minai, Utako & Fiorentino, Robert. 2018. Context-sensitivity and individual differences in the derivation of scalar implicature. Frontiers in Psychology 9, 1720. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01720.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zondervan, Arjen, Meroni, Luisa & Gualmini, Andrea. 2008. Experiments on the role of the question under discussion for ambiguity resolution and implicature computation in adults. In Friedman, Tova & Ito, Satoshi (eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 18, 765–777. doi:10.3765/salt.v18i0.2486.CrossRefGoogle Scholar