10. Scalar implicature as a grammatical phenomenon

Chierchia, Gennaro; Fox, Danny; Spector, Benjamin

doi:10.1515/9783110589849-010

Cited by 93 publications

(143 citation statements)

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“…It is possible that different networks are involved in realizing the scalar inference versus revising the interpretation when the inference is infelicitous [see, e.g., Shetreet et al, 2014a; although neither this study nor Politzer-Ahles and Gwilliams, 2015, observed activation in the mentalizing network even for inference realization, let alone inference failure]. Another possibility is that scalar implicatures are generated only by a grammatical-semantic component [for detailed accounts, see Chierchia, 2004;Chierchia et al, 2012], resulting in activation in IFG rather than in regions related to mentalizing [Shetreet et al, 2014a]. Our result seems consistent with such an argument, in that it revealed an additional involvement of the ventral IFG in processing weak pragmatic incongruence that has high demand of inference, as well as dorsal IFG.…”

Section: Weak Versus Strong Implicature-specific Mismatch Processing:mentioning

confidence: 84%

Neural correlates of fine‐grained meaning distinctions: An fMRI investigation of scalar quantifiers

Zhan

Jiang

Politzer-Ahles

et al. 2017

Human Brain Mapping

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Communication involves successfully deriving a speaker's meaning beyond the literal expression. Using fMRI, it was investigated how the listener's brain realizes distinctions between enrichment-based meanings and literal semantic meanings. The neural patterns of the Mandarin scalar quantifier you-de (similar to some in English) which implies the meanings not all and not most via scalar enrichment, with the specific quantifier shao-shu-de (similar to less than half in English) which lexico-semantically encodes the meanings not all and not most, were compared. Listeners heard sentences using either quantifier, paired with pictures in which either less than half, more than half, or all of the people depicted in the picture were doing the described activity; thus, the conditions included both implicature-based and semantics-based picture-sentence mismatches. Imaging results showed bilateral ventral IFG was activated for both kinds of mismatch, whereas basal ganglia and left dorsal IFG were activated uniquely for implicature-based mismatch. These findings suggest that resolving conflicts involving inferential aspects of meaning employs different neural mechanisms than the processing based on literal semantic meaning, and that the dorsal prefrontal/basal ganglia pathway makes a contribution to implicature-based interpretation. Furthermore, within the implicature-based conditions, different neural generators were implicated in the processing of strong implicature mismatch (you-de in the context of a picture in which "all" would have been true) and weak implicature mismatch (you-de in the context of a picture in which "most" would have been true), which may have important implications for theories of pragmatic comprehension. Hum Brain Mapp 38:3848-3864, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Section: Weak Versus Strong Implicature-specific Mismatch Processing:mentioning

confidence: 84%

Neural correlates of fine‐grained meaning distinctions: An fMRI investigation of scalar quantifiers

Zhan

Jiang

Politzer-Ahles

et al. 2017

Human Brain Mapping

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Recent grammatical models of implicatures should also be considered salience models for the same reason. Indeed, Chierchia et al (2012) explicitly identify with salience model, "providing alternatives are active, such alternatives are obligatorily factored into meaning… if the alternatives are not active the plain unenriched meaning is used and no scalar implicature comes about." (p.2304).…”

Section: Combination and Salience Models Of Implicaturementioning

confidence: 99%

The role of alternative salience in the derivation of scalar implicatures

Rees

Bott

2018

Cognition

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Comprehension can be enriched by considering what a speaker could have said but did not; namely, the alternative. For example, "Betty passed some of her exams" can be interpreted as "Betty passed some but not all of her exams". This enriched interpretation is an example of a scalar implicature. We consider whether the salience and use of the alternative are independent processes in the derivation of scalar implicatures or whether use is dependent on salience. Participants completed three sentence interpretation experiments in which the sentences invited scalar implicatures. The experiments used a structural priming paradigm with alternatives and implicatures as primes. We found that (1) adults could be primed to derive scalar implicatures when the alternative was the prime (2) they did so at a rate equal to if the scalar implicature itself were the prime. In the absence of evidence that the use of the alternative can be primed independently of its salience, we conclude that salience and use are not independent processes. Instead, we suggest that when the alternative is sufficiently salient, the implicature will automatically be derived.

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“…The problem for this kind of pragmatic account is that there are cases of embedded uses of acceptable contradictions in non-asserted positions, as illustrated in (32)-(34). As is well known, such enriched embedded readings challenge post-compositional pragmatic stories which work on asserted contents as inputs (Chierchia et al 2012;Recanati 2003Recanati , 2010.…”

Section: Rescale Is Independently Needed: Embedded Trivialitiesmentioning

confidence: 98%

The Logicality of Language: A new take on Triviality, “Ungrammaticality”, and Logical Form*

Pinal

2017

Nous

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Recent work in formal semantics suggests that the language system includes not only a structure building device, as standardly assumed, but also a natural deductive system which can determine when expressions have trivial truth‐conditions (e.g., are logically true/false) and mark them as unacceptable. This hypothesis, called the ‘logicality of language’, accounts for many acceptability patterns, including systematic restrictions on the distribution of quantifiers. To deal with apparent counter‐examples consisting of acceptable tautologies and contradictions, the logicality of language is often paired with an additional assumption according to which logical forms are radically underspecified: i.e., the language system can see functional terms but is ‘blind’ to open class terms to the extent that different tokens of the same term are treated as if independent. This conception of logical form has profound implications: it suggests an extreme version of the modularity of language, and can only be paired with non‐classical—indeed quite exotic—kinds of deductive systems. The aim of this paper is to show that we can pair the logicality of language with a different and ultimately more traditional account of logical form. This framework accounts for the basic acceptability patterns which motivated the logicality of language, can explain why some tautologies and contradictions are acceptable, and makes better predictions in key cases. As a result, we can pursue versions of the logicality of language in frameworks compatible with the view that the language system is not radically modular vis‐á‐vis its open class terms and employs a deductive system that is basically classical.

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10. Scalar implicature as a grammatical phenomenon

Cited by 93 publications

References 0 publications

Neural correlates of fine‐grained meaning distinctions: An fMRI investigation of scalar quantifiers

Neural correlates of fine‐grained meaning distinctions: An fMRI investigation of scalar quantifiers

The role of alternative salience in the derivation of scalar implicatures

The Logicality of Language: A new take on Triviality, “Ungrammaticality”, and Logical Form*

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