Acquiring scope interactions of root modals and negation Children’s preference for modal strength Paloma Jeretiˇ c paloma@nyu.edu Child Language Lab October 10, 2018
The learning problem Consider utterances (1) and (2) (1) that baby is very small and Xn’t have pie. (1) (2) Mar´ ıa hears this at 1;11 (2) actually it’s really hot outside he Yn’t wear a scarf. Madeleine hears this at 1;09
The learning problem Consider utterances (1) and (2) (1) that baby is very small and Xn’t have pie. (3) (4) Mar´ ıa hears this at 1;11 (2) actually it’s really hot outside he Yn’t wear a scarf. Madeleine hears this at 1;09 ◮ can we guess what X and Y are?
The learning problem Consider utterances (1) and (2) (1) that baby is very small and Xn’t have pie. (5) (6) Mar´ ıa hears this at 1;11 (2) actually it’s really hot outside he Yn’t wear a scarf. Madeleine hears this at 1;09 ◮ can we guess what X and Y are? ◮ at best, we can guess that (1) is a prohibition, and (2) a denial of necessity
The learning problem Consider utterances (1) and (2) (1) that baby is very small and Xn’t have pie. (7) (8) Mar´ ıa hears this at 1;11 (2) actually it’s really hot outside he Yn’t wear a scarf. Madeleine hears this at 1;09 ◮ can we guess what X and Y are? ◮ at best, we can guess that (1) is a prohibition, and (2) a denial of necessity ◮ but even if we know that X and Y are modals, both force and scope with respect to negation are indeterminate, making it impossible from this data to guess the semantics of X and Y
The learning problem Consider utterances (1) and (2) (1) that baby is very small and Xn’t have pie. (9) (10) Mar´ ıa hears this at 1;11 (2) actually it’s really hot outside he Yn’t wear a scarf. Madeleine hears this at 1;09 ◮ what do kids do when confronted with this data?
The learning problem Consider utterances (1) and (2) (1) that baby is very small and Xn’t have pie. (11) (12) Mar´ ıa hears this at 1;11 (2) actually it’s really hot outside he Yn’t wear a scarf. Madeleine hears this at 1;09 ◮ what do kids do when confronted with this data? ◮ assuming they are able to learn from contextual cues (cf. Tomasello, 2003), there are several possibilities:
The learning problem Consider utterances (1) and (2) (1) that baby is very small and Xn’t have pie. (13) (14) Mar´ ıa hears this at 1;11 (2) actually it’s really hot outside he Yn’t wear a scarf. Madeleine hears this at 1;09 ◮ what do kids do when confronted with this data? ◮ assuming they are able to learn from contextual cues (cf. Tomasello, 2003), there are several possibilities: ◮ they infer the meaning of the whole modal+negation complex ◮ don’t assume anything about the meaning of the form ◮ have a default assumption about the meaning of the form ◮ they first learn the non-negated forms, then can infer scope
Scope interactions of root modals and negation force of modal form possibility necessity existential quantification universal quantification can must, have to peut faut, besoin puede debe, tiene que
Scope interactions of root modals and negation force of modal form possibility necessity existential quantification universal quantification can must, have to + peut faut, besoin puede debe, tiene que can’t mustn’t, don’t have to peut pas faut pas, pas besoin ¬ no puede no debe, no tiene que
Scope interactions of root modals and negation force of modal form possibility necessity existential quantification universal quantification can + strength of modal expression peut NA weak puede logically equiva- lent to existential don’t have to quantification pas besoin, doit pas ¬ no necesita, no tiene que must + faut NA strong tiene que logically equiva- lent to universal can’t mustn’t quantification peut pas faut pas, doit pas ¬ no puede no debe, no tiene que
Scope interactions of root modals and negation force of modal form possibility necessity existential quantification universal quantification can + strength of modal expression peut NA weak puede logically equiva- lent to existential don’t have to quantification ? pas besoin, doit pas ¬ no necesita, no tiene que must + faut NA strong tiene que logically equiva- lent to universal can’t mustn’t quantification peut pas faut pas, doit pas ¬ no puede no debe, no tiene que
Scope interactions of root modals and negation force of modal form possibility necessity existential quantification universal quantification can + strength of modal expression peut NA weak puede logically equiva- lent to existential don’t have to quantification ? pas besoin, doit pas ¬ no necesita, no tiene que must + faut NA strong tiene que logically equiva- lent to universal can’t mustn’t quantification peut pas faut pas, doit pas ¬ no puede no debe, no tiene que ◮ Does this asymmetric typology arise from a learning bias active in acquisition?
Acquisition of modal force ◮ kids are probably not adult-like from the beginning
Acquisition of modal force ◮ kids are probably not adult-like from the beginning ◮ previous studies: ◮ English-acquiring children are sensitive to truth conditions and relative force by age 5 (Hirst & Weil, 1982; Noveck et al., 1996, a.o.), but they may not compute scalar implicatures until age 7 (Noveck, 2001)
Acquisition of modal force ◮ kids are probably not adult-like from the beginning ◮ previous studies: ◮ English-acquiring children are sensitive to truth conditions and relative force by age 5 (Hirst & Weil, 1982; Noveck et al., 1996, a.o.), but they may not compute scalar implicatures until age 7 (Noveck, 2001) ◮ Dieuleveut et al. (in prep.): relative to their input, English-learning children produce more possibility than necessity modals, and more negation with possibility than with necessity
Child corpus study ◮ selected corpora from CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2000) of including spontaneous French and Spanish speech of 11 children and their input # utterances up to age 3 Language Corpus Child Age range child adult Antoine 1;0–6;4 6931 36609 Paris Julie 0;11–5;3 1898 9323 French (Morgenstern & Madeleine 1;0–7;0 7503 19447 Parisse, 2007) Th´ eophile 0;7–4;11 4211 22528 Anae 1;04–5;02 5859 15747 Irene 0;11–3;02 11159 15419 LlineasOjea Yasmin 1;10–2;9 2713 5510 L´ opez Ornat (1994) Mar´ ıa 1;7–4;0 8112 10320 Spanish Vila (1990) Emilio 0;11–4;08 4857 8058 Aguirre (2000) Magn 1;7–2;11 10921 12599 Remedi Vicky 1;10–2;11 1866 2497 Table: Corpora information
Coding Coded child and adult speech for: ◮ strength ◮ intended [strong, weak] ◮ target [strong, weak, ambiguous] ◮ target force [existential, universal] ◮ sentential negation [absent, present] ◮ flavor [root, epistemic] ◮ utterance type [declarative, question] ◮ repetition [previous utterance, answer to question, song, self]
Results � � ¬ ¬ � ♦ ¬ ♦ must mustn’t not have to can can’t CHI 252 32 2 244 43 ADU 1876 265 78 1326 317 Table: Counts of French forms � � ¬ ¬ � ♦ ¬ ♦ must mustn’t not have to can can’t CHI 119 7 1 39 98 ADU 717 28 12 264 400 Table: Counts of Spanish forms
Results: comparing proportions French Spanish comparing p-values CHI residuals p-values CHI residuals � ♦ p = 0.001 ( -1.95 , +2.27 ) p = 0.584 ( -1.99 , +0.94) p = 0.748 ¬ � ¬ ♦ p = 0.013 ( -2.73 , +0.62) p > 0.999 ¬ � ♦ p = 0.013 ( -2.21 , +0.43) p > 0.999 ¬ � � p = 0.010 ( -1.76 , +0.91) p > 0.999 ¬ � � ¬ p = 0.025 p = 0.084 ( -1.71 , +1.34 ) ♦ ¬ ♦ p = 0.013 p > 0.999 ( -1.44 , +1.87 ) � ¬ ♦ p = 0.008 p = 0.590 p = 0.332 � � ¬ � ¬ ¬ ♦ p = 0.639 p > 0.999 Aggregate results for χ 2 or Fisher exact tests comparing forms across children and adults
Results: comparing proportions French Spanish comparing p-values CHI residuals p-values CHI residuals 1 – � ♦ p = 0.001 ( -1.95 , +2.27 ) p = 0.584 ( -1.99 , +0.94) p = 0.748 ¬ � ¬ ♦ p = 0.013 ( -2.73 , +0.62) p > 0.999 ¬ � ♦ p = 0.013 ( -2.21 , +0.43) p > 0.999 ¬ � � p = 0.010 ( -1.76 , +0.91) p > 0.999 ¬ � � ¬ p = 0.025 p = 0.084 ( -1.71 , +1.34 ) ♦ ¬ ♦ p = 0.013 p > 0.999 ( -1.44 , +1.87 ) � ¬ ♦ p = 0.008 p = 0.590 p = 0.332 � � ¬ � ¬ ¬ ♦ p = 0.639 p > 0.999 Aggregate results for χ 2 or Fisher exact tests comparing forms across children and adults 1. non-negated existentials are preferred over non-negated universals (French)
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