Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar A model of scalar implicature processing Scalar implicatures - a view from processing Judith Degen University of Rochester September 18, 2009 Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar A model of scalar implicature processing Introduction 1 The psycholinguistic debate 2 Recent past Present Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar 3 A model of scalar implicature processing 4 Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar A model of scalar implicature processing Scalar implicatures (1) Peter: Did all of your guests stay until midnight? Mary: Some of them did. � It’s not the case that all of them did. Scale: � all, some � (2) Peter: Who is in that room? Mary: John or Bill. � It’s not the case that both John and Bill are. Scale: � and, or � Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar A model of scalar implicature processing The (neo-)Gricean explanation Grice’s conversational maxims: Quantity-1: Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose of the exchange). Truthfulness: Do not say what you believe to be false. Hearer’s reasoning about speaker S: S uttered the statement with some instead of all , which would have also been relevant the all statement entails the some statement if S knew that the all statement holds, she would have uttered it S is well-informed thus, it is not the case that the all statement holds [Grice (1975), Horn (1984), Levinson (2000)] Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar A model of scalar implicature processing Cancelability (3) Explicit a. Some of the guests stayed until midnight. In fact, they all did. # Some, but not all of the guests stayed until midnight. (4) Implicit a. If some of the guests stayed until midnight, it must have been a good party. # If they all stayed, it wasn’t. Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar A model of scalar implicature processing The Relevance Theory explanation “post-Gricean” no more maxims trade-off between cognitive effects and processing effort the implicature is computed only if the interpretation arrived at via the basic meaning of the scalar term does not satisfy the hearer’s expectations of relevance [Sperber and Wilson (1995), Carston (1998)] Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Recent past Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar Present A model of scalar implicature processing Relevance Theory vs. Neo-Griceanism Framing the empirical question Are scalar implicatures computed by default or as part of an effortful, context-driven process? Default model Pragmatic meaning (SI) is the default, cancellation is effortful Context-driven model Basic meaning is the default, SI derivation is effortful Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Recent past Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar Present A model of scalar implicature processing Relevance Theory vs. Neo-Griceanism Framing the empirical question Are scalar implicatures computed by default or as part of an effortful, context-driven process? Default model Pragmatic meaning (SI) is the default, cancellation is effortful Context-driven model Basic meaning is the default, SI derivation is effortful Theory Empirical model Neo-Griceanism Default Relevance Theory Context-driven Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Recent past Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar Present A model of scalar implicature processing Scalar implicatures: default or not? answer: it’s not that simple evidence supporting the Context-driven model: Noveck & Posada (2003) and Bott & Noveck (2004) - reaction times in a sentence verification task, Breheny et al. (2006) - reading times, Huang & Snedeker (2009) - eye movements evidence supporting the Default model: Grodner et al. (2007) - eye movements Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Recent past Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar Present A model of scalar implicature processing Scalar implicatures: default or not? answer: it’s not that simple evidence supporting the Context-driven model: Noveck & Posada (2003) and Bott & Noveck (2004) - reaction times in a sentence verification task, Breheny et al. (2006) - reading times, Huang & Snedeker (2009) - eye movements evidence supporting the Default model: Grodner et al. (2007) - eye movements Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Recent past Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar Present A model of scalar implicature processing Noveck & Posada (2003) sentence verification task on three kinds of sentences: underinformative: Some elephants have trunks. patently true: Some houses have bricks. patently false: Some crows have radios. for underinformative utterances, the ‘semantic’ interpretation leads to a TRUE response, the ‘pragmatic’ interpretation to a FALSE response predictions: default: semantic responses slower than pragmatic responses context-driven: pragmatic responses slower than semantic responses results: 63% pragmatic responses analysis of reaction times of pragmatic vs. semantic responses: pragmatic responses are slower Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Recent past Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar Present A model of scalar implicature processing Grodner et al. eye-tracking study in the visual world paradigm Click on the girl with some of the balls/all of the balloons. default prediction: pragmatic interpretation of “some”should lead to early disambiguation results: early increase in fixations to the target in both conditions (200-300 ms (A) after quantifier onset) Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Recent past Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar Present A model of scalar implicature processing Interpreting the Grodner results not exclusively support for the Default view alternative: pragmatic constraints strongly affect earliest stages of interpretation seemingly slow interpretations may result from integration of resultant interpretation with relevant contextual information computation vs. verification processes requiring additional processing effort constraints on both complement sets for pragmatic interpretation, only on one for semantic interpretation Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Recent past Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar Present A model of scalar implicature processing Things get tricky 2 problems with getting at the question of Relevance Theory vs. Neo-Griceanism via the question of Default: 1 mapping of theories to empirical predictions 2 the empirical data Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Recent past Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar Present A model of scalar implicature processing Problem 1 - from theory to processing claim the claim that Neo-Griceanism as a whole should endorse the Default model is not justified ambiguity of the term ” default” applies to output (e.g. Grice) - the mechanism may be quite complex/require lots of processing effort applies to processing mechanism (Levinson) conclusion: the question of Default is not a fruitful way of resolving the debate between Relevance Theory and Neo-Griceanism Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Recent past Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar Present A model of scalar implicature processing Problem 2 - divergent data . . . why? shift from the question of Default to the question of what factors influence implicature processing to whether or not the implicature arises to what influences processing, and how Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Recent past Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar Present A model of scalar implicature processing Brief pause 3 questions 1 Does integration of pragmatic information occur at the earliest stages of language processing? 2 What are the factors that influence whether or not the implicature arises? 3 How do these factors influence the processing mechanism itself? Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Recent past Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar Present A model of scalar implicature processing Brief pause 3 questions 1 Does integration of pragmatic information occur at the earliest stages of language processing? 2 What are the factors that influence whether or not the implicature arises? 3 How do these factors influence the processing mechanism itself? Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
Introduction The psycholinguistic debate Recent past Putting scalar implicatures in the grammar Present A model of scalar implicature processing Question 1 - evidence from the gumball paradigm participants: 28 paid undergraduates from the University of Rochester procedure: display 1 (2s) 1 Judith Degen Scalar Implicatures
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