Some Means All Until Mutual Exclusivity Says It Doesn’t
Document Type
Paper Presentation
Presenter Language
English
Research Area
Psycholinguistics
Location
MBSC Council Room 306
Start Date
17-10-2024 5:30 PM
End Date
17-10-2024 6:00 PM
Abstract
4- and 5-year-old monolingual Spanish-speaking children can show adult-like knowledge of the some, but not all scalar implicature associated with the existential quantifier algunos. Children who do not show adult-like implicature behavior may show “anti-adult” behavior. Specifically, they treat some as if it meant all, rejecting it in situations in which an adult would accept it and vice-versa (not an underspecification pattern). This bimodal pattern in 4- and 5-year-olds, followed by virtually adult-like behavior from 6-year-olds, is consistent with children crossing a categorical threshold, and not changing gradually. How do these “anti-adult” 4- and 5-year-olds grow to draw adult-like existential quantifier interpretations? We hypothesize that the version of some in their lexicon is simply all, with a different phonological matrix. However, we think that the Mutual Exclusivity word learning principle (e.g., Markman & Wachtel 1988) drives the learner to find a different meaning for the phonologically different word. Even if a Mutual Exclusivity account of the change in quantifier meaning is correct, however, full implicature sentence interpretations seem unlikely to emerge simply from the quantifier changing its meaning. What else must develop? Specifically: 1) what linguistic and cognitive non-linguistic factors are significantly more developed in 4- and 5-year-old children who generate implicatures vs. those who do not?, and 2) which of these factors, if any, contributes significantly to a linear discriminant function capable of identifying implicature-generators and non-generators with high levels of sensitivity and specificity?
We test 4- and 5-year-old monolingual child Spanish-speakers (n=26, mean age=62 months, SD=6.51) to measure their algunos implicature interpretations, along with other aspects of language and cognition. They are then divided into implicature-generators and implicature-non-generators. Results showed significant differences (p
Some Means All Until Mutual Exclusivity Says It Doesn’t
MBSC Council Room 306
4- and 5-year-old monolingual Spanish-speaking children can show adult-like knowledge of the some, but not all scalar implicature associated with the existential quantifier algunos. Children who do not show adult-like implicature behavior may show “anti-adult” behavior. Specifically, they treat some as if it meant all, rejecting it in situations in which an adult would accept it and vice-versa (not an underspecification pattern). This bimodal pattern in 4- and 5-year-olds, followed by virtually adult-like behavior from 6-year-olds, is consistent with children crossing a categorical threshold, and not changing gradually. How do these “anti-adult” 4- and 5-year-olds grow to draw adult-like existential quantifier interpretations? We hypothesize that the version of some in their lexicon is simply all, with a different phonological matrix. However, we think that the Mutual Exclusivity word learning principle (e.g., Markman & Wachtel 1988) drives the learner to find a different meaning for the phonologically different word. Even if a Mutual Exclusivity account of the change in quantifier meaning is correct, however, full implicature sentence interpretations seem unlikely to emerge simply from the quantifier changing its meaning. What else must develop? Specifically: 1) what linguistic and cognitive non-linguistic factors are significantly more developed in 4- and 5-year-old children who generate implicatures vs. those who do not?, and 2) which of these factors, if any, contributes significantly to a linear discriminant function capable of identifying implicature-generators and non-generators with high levels of sensitivity and specificity?
We test 4- and 5-year-old monolingual child Spanish-speakers (n=26, mean age=62 months, SD=6.51) to measure their algunos implicature interpretations, along with other aspects of language and cognition. They are then divided into implicature-generators and implicature-non-generators. Results showed significant differences (p