Scales and scalarity: Processing scalar inferences

Tiel, Bob van; Pankratz, Elizabeth; Sun, Chao

doi:10.1016/j.jml.2018.12.002

Cited by 30 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…This B&N effect seems to provide strong evidence for the relevance-theoretic idea that the derivation of scalar inferences without a facilitating context is cognitively costly. However, more recent studies observed that the B&N effect does not consistently generalise beyond the ⟨some, all⟩ scale, which begs the question whether the B&N effect is really caused by the processing of the scalar inference (e.g., Chevallier et al 2010;Romoli & Schwarz 2015;van Tiel et al 2019b).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…However, they do not necessarily commit to the relevance-theoretic assumption that relevance is paramount in deciding whether or not a processing cost will be observed. Thus, e.g., these proposals have argued that the presence of a processing cost depends on the question under discussion (Westera 2017;Ronai & Xiang 2020), the structural characteristics of the alternatives (Chemla & Bott 2014;van Tiel & Schaeken 2016), the naturalness of the utterance (Degen & Tanenhaus 2016), and, as we will discuss in much more detail later, the polarity of the scalar inference (van Tiel et al 2019b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Adjectival polarity and the processing of scalar inferences

Tiel¹,

Pankratz

2021

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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In a seminal study, Bott & Noveck (2004) found that the computation of the scalar inference of 'some' implying 'not all' was associated with increased sentence verification times, suggesting a processing cost. Recently, van Tiel and colleagues (2019b) hypothesised that the presence of this processing cost critically depends on the polarity of the scalar word. We comprehensively evaluated this polarity hypothesis on the basis of a sentence-picture verification task in which we tested the processing of 16 types of adjectival scalar inferences. We develop a quantitative measure of adjectival polarity which combines insights from linguistics and psychology. In line with the polarity hypothesis, our measure of polarity reliably predicted the presence or absence of a processing cost (i.e., an increase in sentence verification times). We conclude that the alleged processing cost for scalar inferencing in verification tasks is not due to the process of drawing a scalar inference, but rather to the cognitive difficulty of verifying negative information.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adjectival polarity and the processing of scalar inferences

Tiel¹,

Pankratz

2021

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…However, contrary to our results, they did also find a working memory effect on the quantifiers and modals. Three important differences between their and our study might cause this difference: a statement-evaluation-task versus an inference paradigm, the answer options offered to the participants (a binary option versus 5 options) and, definitely important, the fact that we only measured working memory and therefore treated it as a interindividual difference variable, while in van Tiel et al (2019) working memory load was a manipulated factor (see also Dieussaert et al, 2011 for a discussion of measuring and manipulating working memory). What makes disjunctions special so that in both studies the inference from “ or ” to “ not and ” is cognitively costly?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Our data regarding the role of working memory are partly in line with the literature (see the introduction for more details on the controversial nature of the role of working memory), finding a small and specific working memory effect, that is, on disjunctive items. Most relevant for our study presumably is van Tiel et al (2019) , which combined investigating scalar diversity with manipulations of working memory load with typically developed adults. Their study revealed an interesting significant interaction between memory load and scalar type.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Working Memory in the Processing of Scalar Implicatures of Patients With Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders

et al. 2021

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A number of studies have demonstrated pragmatic language difficulties in people with Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders. However, research about how people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders understand scalar implicatures (SIs) is surprisingly rare, since SIs have generated much of the most recent literature. Scalar implicatures are pragmatic inferences, based on linguistic expressions like some, must, or, which are part of a scale of informativeness (e.g., some/many/all). Logically, the less informative expressions imply the more informative ones, but pragmatically people usually infer that the presence of a less informative term implies that the more informative term was not applicable. In one of the few existing studies with people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders, Wampers et al. (2018) observed that in general, people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders were less likely to derive SIs than controls. The current study has three main aims. First, we want to replicate the original finding with the scalar terms some-all. Second, we want to investigate how these patients deal with different scalar terms, that is, we want to investigate if scalar diversity is also observed in this clinical group. Third, we investigate the role of working memory, often seen as another important mechanism to enable inferring SIs. Twenty-one individuals with a psychotic disorder and 21 matched controls answered 54 under-informative statements, in which seven different pairs of scalar terms were used. In addition, working memory capacity was measured. Patients with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders did not make more logical interpretations when processing quantifiers, disconfirming Wampers et al. (2018). However, certain scalar scales elicited more pragmatic interpretations than others, which is in line with the scalar diversity hypothesis. Additionally, we observed only partial evidence for the role of working memory. Only for the scalar scale and-or, a significant effect of working memory was observed. The implications of these results for patients with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders are discussed, but also the role of working memory for pragmatic inferences, as well as the place of SIs in experimental pragmatics.

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“…Several studies on adults' SI generation seem to support this idea (Huang and Snedeker, 2009;Tomlinson et al, 2013;cf. Chemla andBott, 2014 andvan Tiel et al, 2019). Moreover, processing effort is most likely to re-emerge whenever a SI is canceled.…”

Section: Scalar Implicature Generation and Tommentioning

confidence: 99%

Complex Inferential Processes Are Needed for Implicature Comprehension, but Not for Implicature Production

et al. 2021

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Upon hearing “Some of Michelangelo’s sculptures are in Rome,” adults can easily generate a scalar implicature and infer that the intended meaning of the utterance corresponds to “Some but not all Michelangelo’s sculptures are in Rome.” Comprehension experiments show that preschoolers struggle with this kind of inference until at least 5 years of age. Surprisingly, the few studies having investigated children’s production of scalar expressions like some and all suggest that production is adult-like already in their third year of life. Thus, children’s production of implicatures seems to develop at least 2 years before their comprehension of implicatures. In this paper, we present a novel account of scalar implicature generation in the framework of Bidirectional Optimality Theory: the Asymmetry Account. We show that the production–comprehension asymmetry is predicted to emerge because the comprehension of some requires the hearer to consider the speaker’s perspective, but the production of some does not require the speaker to consider the hearer’s perspective. Hence, children’s comprehension of scalar expressions, but not their production of scalar expressions, is predicted to be related to their theory of mind development. Not possessing fully developed theory of mind abilities yet, children thus have difficulty in comprehending scalar expressions such as some in an adult-like way. Our account also explains why variable performance is found in experimental studies testing children’s ability to generate scalar implicatures; moreover, it describes the differences between children’s and adults’ implicature generation in terms of their ability to recursively apply theory of mind; finally, it sheds new light on the question why the interpretation of numerals does not require implicature generation.

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Scales and scalarity: Processing scalar inferences

Cited by 30 publications

References 52 publications

Adjectival polarity and the processing of scalar inferences

Adjectival polarity and the processing of scalar inferences

The Role of Working Memory in the Processing of Scalar Implicatures of Patients With Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders

Complex Inferential Processes Are Needed for Implicature Comprehension, but Not for Implicature Production

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