1
Counting
piglets: who
cares if two is
less than three?
Biolinguistic Investigations
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
February 23
-
25, 2007
Aniela Improta França*
Miriam Lemle*
Maurício Cagy**
Antonio Fernando Catelli Infantosi***
* Linguistics Department / Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
**
Epidemiology and Biostatistics Department/
UFF
-
Federal Fluminense
University
,
Brazil
*** Biomedical Engineering Program / Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2
Scalar Implicature
The sow is nursing two piglets
Yes!
No!
Reinhart, (1999)
Chierchia, (2000)
Noveck, (2001)
Musolino, (2004)
3
Language development involves three
factors (Chomsky, 2005):
Genetic Endowment
Experience
Principles not specific to the
faculty of language
What about Scalar Implicature
4
In a sentential derivation, when do we
compute scalar implicature?
•
Standard View
•
Semantic Core Model
Syntactic Computation
Pragmatics
Syntax
LF
Scalar Implicatures
Phase by phase interspersed with syntax
•
Affected by downward entailment
•
Affected by memory resources
Noveck, (2001)
Musolino, (2004)
Chierchia, (2000)
Reinhart, (1999)
5
Psycholinguistic investigation:
Testing 3, 4 , 5 and 6 year
-
olds*
Meet
the
brothers
Wacko
and
Walter
.
Walter
is
an
ordinary
kid
.
But
Wacko
is
kind
of
crazy
.
He
likes
to
say
funny
things
.
For
example,
I
asked
Walter
what
food
he
liked
best
and
he
said
it
was
pizza
.
Then
I
asked
Wacko,
and
he
said
it
was
sardine
sundae!
The
other
day
I
had
a
lot
of
fun
looking
at
some
pictures
with
Walter
and
Wacko
.
They
said
lots
of
things
about
the
pictures
.
Now
let’s
play
a
guessing
game
.
I
will
tell
you
things
that
they
said
to
me
when
they
looked
at
the
pictures
and
you
will
guess
if
it
was
Walter
or
Wacko
who
said
those
things
.
One of the brothers said: “The girls /
boys are reading a magazine.”
Who said that?
One of the brothers said: “The horse
is carrying two / four kids”
Who said that?
One of the brothers said: “The sow is
nursing two piglets”
Who said that?
•
Congruous Fillers
10 tokens
•
Pragmatically
adjusted
10 tokens
Scalar
implicature
20 tokens
•
Larger number
20 tokens
•
Incongruous Fillers
20 tokens
*CNPq (National Research Council) grant
6
Balancing stimuli in the SI group
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
10
Congruous fillers
-
expected to yield references to Walter
Incongruous fillers
-
expected to yield references to Wacko
Pragmatically adjusted
-
expected to yield references to Walter
Scalar Implicature
-
expected to yield references to Walter
Larger number
-
expected to yield references to Wacko
Now, extracting just the scalar implicature ones
7
Volunteers
24 children completed the test
6 per target age
3 boys / 3 girls
11 children did not complete or engage in
the test
8
Results
P= 0,6
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Local verb selection:John is
eating sandals
Inheritance: John is holding a
pizza and will read it.
Wh dislocation: What song is
Diane washing?
Scalar implicature: The sow is
nursing two piglets
3 year-olds
4 year-olds
5 year-olds
6 year-olds
FRANÇA, A. I. O processamento de concatenações lingüísticas na aquisição.
In: Revista Letra UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, v. 1, n. 1, p. 9
-
28, 1806
-
5333, Ed.
Faculdade de Letras, 2004
Scalar
Implicature
Percentage of judgment deviations from adult standards per age, per type of cognition
9
Percentage of application of scalar
implicature per age
95
90
100
95
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
3 year-olds
4 year-olds
5 year-olds
6 year-olds
Conclusion
: Despite the fact
that children had a good performance
on controls, for instance by massively
rejecting higher
-
than
-
real values,
until the age of 6 children equally
accept all downward values.
Is the Gricean Law of Informativeness
acquired later on? (Pragmatic View)
or
Is there a computational cost related
to applying Scalar Implicatures?
(Structural View)
10
Now, the adults: the ERP experiment
Twenty
-
nine adults (15 males)
While monitored by an EEG,
each volunteer looked at a
picture for 2000 ms.
Then a sentence describing the
scene in the picture started
appearing on the screen word
by word.
Each sentence had five words.
Each word was on for 200ms.
In 50% of cases, the quantities
were adjusted to describe the
total quantity of items
In 50%, quantities were smaller
than the exact total.
11
Results
12
Results
Wilcoxon test (non
-
parametric) was
applied to amplitudes and latencies:
N600: Derivations in which the
amplitude of the wave related to
the sentence with incongruous
number was meaningfully higher
than that of sentence related to
the congruous number
Cz Pz P4 C4 C3
N600 Derivations in which the latency
of the pragmatically congruous was
meaningfully longer than that of the
incongruous
Fz Cz Pz C4 P4 C3 P3 F3
N400: Overlapping (statistically
irrelevant) for all derivations
13
What else do we know about
electrical responses to linguistic stimuli?
The boy ate
l
a
sandal
FRANCA,
A
.
I
.
;
et
alii
(
2004
)
trigger
The boy ate
l
a sandwich
The boy kicked
l
the ball
The chair kicked
l
the ball
LAGE,
A
.
C
.
(
2005
)
trigger
14
Artificially aligning the three experiments
Experiment 1
The boy ate a sandal.
Verb
-
object integration: 375ms
Experiment 2
The chair kicked the ball.
Subject
-
vP integration: 670ms
Experiment 3
The sow is nursing two piglets.
Cardinality Judgment: 560ms
15
The sow is nursing two piglets
nP
piglets
dP
d
two
Root
Phrase
v’
vP
nurse
cardinality
congruence
two
v
d
nP
the
sow
dP
Aspect’
Asp
Cause’
Cause P
Aspect P
ing
16
The sow is nursing two piglets
nP
piglets
dP
d
two
Root
Phrase
v’
vP
nursing
cardinality
congruence
two
C’
CP
v
d
nP
the
sow
i
dP
Aspect’
Asp
Cause’
Cause P
Aspect P
pres
be
T’
T
TP
T Aux
Electrophysiological consequence:
The deeper the embedding, the shorter the wave latency.
two
t
i
17
Scalar Implicature
The sow is nursing two piglets
Yes!
No!
18
Conclusion:
Children
get
to
the
total
number
of
items
in
the
picture
by
literally
counting
and,
in
fact,
if
a
person
is
counting,
two
is
on
the
way
to
reach
three
.
This
explains
why
children
accepted
any
number
within
the
downward
range
.
They
had
an
array
of
potentially
right
answers
activated
in
their
minds
;
Presumably,
children’s
method
of
accessing
a
number
by
counting
is
less
costly
for
them
than
that
used
by
adults,
who
access
small
numbers
without
counting
and
keep
a
record
of
the
total
in
the
working
memory
to
be
checked
later
against
the
number
uttered
by
the
experimenter
;
As
to
the
adults,
the
sequence
of
ERPs
shows
us
that
syntactic
computations
take
place
one
after
the
other,
depending
on
the
depth
of
embedding
;
There
is
more
electrical
activity
(greater
amplitude)
connected
to
the
processing
of
incongruous
sentences
in
the
scalar
implicature
series
and
also
in
the
other
tests
used
as
comparisons
;
Since
cardinality
checking
seems
to
be
computed
earlier
than
subject
integration,
we
propose
that,
in
this
syntactic
structure
tested,
cardinality
congruence
between
image
and
utterance
happens
at
the
vP
phase
.
If
this
computation
is
to
be
called
Pragmatics,
then
we
can
say
that
Pragmatics
is
interspersed
with
syntax,
coming
in
right
in
the
middle
of
the
derivation,
but
in
a
principled
way,
at
the
vP
phase
border
.
19
Language development involves three
factors (Chomsky, 2005):
Genetic Endowment
Experience
Principles not specific to the faculty of
language
What about Scalar Implicature
20
1. ERP investigations of other types of scalar implicature
both linguistically and pragmatically motivated
What now?
21
What now?
2. Playing with the Scalar Implicatures inserted in the subject position
Two boys drive their carts.
22
What now?
3. Manipulating with Root vocabulary items in nPs (Encyclopedic knowledge)
The dog chews some sticks.
23
Bibliography
Chierchia, G. (2004). Scalar implicatures, polarity phenomena and the syntax/pragmatic interface. In A. Beletti (Ed.),
Structures and Beyond
. Oxford University Press.
Ferreira, F. & Clifton, C. (1986). The independence of syntactic processing.
Journal of Memory and Language
,
25
,
348
-
358.
FRANCA, A. I. ; CAGY, Maurício ; LEMLE, Miriam ; CONSTANT, Pedro ; INFANTOSI, Antonio Fernando Catelli .
Discriminating amo
ng different types of verb
-
complement merge in Brazilian Portuguese: an ERP study of morpho
-
syntactic sub
-
processes. Journal of Neurolinguistics, Estados Unidos, v. 17, n. 6, p. 425
-
437, 2004.
FRANÇA, A. I. O processamento de concatenações lingüísticas na aquisição. In: Maria Cecilia de Magalhães Mollica.
(Org.). A segunda Língua: aquisição e linguagem. Revista Letra UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, v. 1, n. 1, p. 9
-
28, 1806
-
5333,
Ed. Faculdade de Letras, 2004
Lage, A. C. . Concatenações do objeto e do sujeito em português e em alemão: conclusões de experimentos
psicolingüísticos on
-
line.. Linguística Revista da Pós Graduação Em Linguistica da Universidade Federal do Rio de
Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, v. 1, n. 1, p. 81
-
108, 2005.
Katsos, N., Breheny, R., & Williams, J. (2005). Interaction of structural and contextual constraints during the on
-
line
generation of scalar inferences.
Proceedings of the 27thAnnual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
Noveck, I. A. & A. Posada (2003). Characterising the time course of an implicature.
Brain and Language
,
85
, 203
-
210.
Noveck, I. A. (2001). When children are more logical than adults: experimental investigation of scalar implicatures.
Cognition
, 78, 165
-
188.
Papafragou, A. & Musolino J. (2003). Scalar implicatures: experiments at the semantics/pragmatics interface.
Cognition
,
86
, 253
-
282.
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