Exploring the connection between Question Under Discussion and scalar diversity

Ronai, Eszter; Xiang, Ming

doi:10.3765/plsa.v6i1.5001

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Inroads have recently been made into studying such questions, e.g., by Ronai and Xiang (2021). Their Experiment 3 relates to our first question, since it proposes a way to measure which QUDs are more likely in a given context by forcing participants to choose between a QUD containing the weaker scalar term and one containing the stronger term (e.g., when describing a student, the experiment tests whether participants would be more likely to ask "Is the student intelligent?"…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of relevance for scalar diversity: a usage-based approach

Pankratz

Tiel

2021

Lang. cogn.

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Scalar inferences occur when a weaker statement like It’s warm is used when a stronger one like It’s hot could have been used instead, resulting in the inference that whoever produced the weaker statement believes that the stronger statement does not hold. The rate at which this inference is drawn varies across scalar words, a result termed ‘scalar diversity’. Here, we study scalar diversity in adjectival scalar words from a usage-based perspective. We introduce novel operationalisations of several previously observed predictors of scalar diversity using computational tools based on usage data, allowing us to move away from existing judgment-based methods. In addition, we show in two experiments that, above and beyond these previously observed predictors, scalar diversity is predicted in part by the relevance of the scalar inference at hand. We introduce a corpus-based measure of relevance based on the idea that scalar inferences that are more relevant are more likely to occur in scalar constructions that draw an explicit contrast between scalar words (e.g., It’s warm but not hot). We conclude that usage has an important role to play in the establishment of common ground, a requirement for pragmatic inferencing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of relevance for scalar diversity: a usage-based approach

Pankratz

Tiel

2021

Lang. cogn.

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“…The discovery of this variation in the rates of implicatures has led to much research devoted to explaining the phenomenon. It has been found that there are general differences between various broad types of scalar words (Van Tiel et al, 2016;Sun et al, 2018;Gotzner et al, 2018;van Tiel et al, 2019;Ronai & Xiang, 2021aSun et al, 2023).…”

Section: Scalar Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring scalar diversity through priming: A lexical decision study with adjectives

Lacina,

Gotzner

2024

Preprint

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When someone says 'My soup was warm', they are often understood as saying that it was warm, but not hot. This is assumed to arise via a scalar implicature. According to the standard assumption, 'warm' and 'hot' are in competition and by saying 'warm', we reason that the speaker did not intend to convey 'hot'. This exclusion of alternatives should apply uniformly to any expression that can be ordered on a scale. Yet there are substantial differences in the endorsement rates of the strengthened meaning between various scales. These could be due to the availability of expressions or to the underlying semantic structure. We use priming to measure how active in the mind lexical expressions are. Contrary to the standard assumption, the more an expression was primed, the less likely a scalar implicature was endorsed. We discuss how the semantic structure of adjectives can support pragmatic reasoning without lexical alternatives.

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“…Testing 43 lexical scales, van Tiel et al (2016) found that the range of SI rates spanned 4% to 100%. The existing body of work investigating scalar diversity has largely concentrated on identifying properties of different lexical scales that can predict how likely they are to lead to SI, thereby explaining the observed across-scale variation (Gotzner, Solt & Benz 2018;Hu, Levy & Schuster 2022;Hu, Levy, Degen & Schuster 2023;Pankratz & van Tiel 2021;Ronai & Xiang 2021Sun, Tian & Breheny 2018; van Tiel et al 2016;Westera & Boleda 2020). However, much less attention has been paid to within-scale variation: namely, how properties of the sentence a particular scalar term (old, smart) appears in affect the likelihood of SI calculation, and how these differences relate to across-scale variation, that is, scalar diversity itself.…”

Section: Previous Work On Scalar Diversitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Scalar implicature rates vary within and across adjectival scales

Aparicio,

Ronai

2024

SALT

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Recent experimental literature has investigated across-scale variation in scalar implicature calculation: lexical scales significantly differ from each other in how likely they are to be strengthened (e.g., old → not ancient vs. smart → not brilliant). But in existing studies of this scalar diversity, not enough attention has been paid to potential variation introduced by the carrier sentences that scales occur in. In this paper, we carry out the first systematic investigation of the role of sentential context on scalar diversity. Focusing on scales formed by two grad- able adjectives, we manipulate the comparison class, specifically whether a noun is likely to have the property described by the scalar adjective (e.g., brilliant employee vs. brilliant scientist). Our results show within-scale variation: a significant effect of comparison class on the likelihood of scalar implicature calculation. We explain this result in terms of the adjectival threshold distance between the weaker (smart) and stronger (brilliant) adjective, conditioned on the comparison class (employee vs. scientist). Our findings also highlight the methodological importance of controlling carrier sentences.

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Exploring the connection between Question Under Discussion and scalar diversity

Cited by 9 publications

References 15 publications

The role of relevance for scalar diversity: a usage-based approach

The role of relevance for scalar diversity: a usage-based approach

Exploring scalar diversity through priming: A lexical decision study with adjectives

Scalar implicature rates vary within and across adjectival scales

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