The Scope of Isomorphism: Turning Adults Into Children

Musolino, Julien; Lidz, Jeffrey

doi:10.1207/s15327817la1104_3

Cited by 54 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 6 publications

(8 reference statements)

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“…However, Musolino & Lidz (2003), Gualmini (2004), and Musolino & Lidz (2006) found that children can access the non-isomorphic reading of sentences like (1) if it is supported by the context, e.g., if (1) is uttered in a situation in which first all the horses jumped over a log, but only two of them managed to jump over the fence.…”

Section: Isomorphism As Consequence Of Parsing Difficultiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…So as to account for these new findings, Musolino & Lidz (2003; proposed a new explanation for the observed isomorphism of preschoolers. They claimed that the scopal ambiguity of sentences containing negation and quantification represents a kind of "gardenpath" situation, which might necessitate the revision of the initial interpretation.…”

Section: Isomorphism As Consequence Of Parsing Difficultiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The most promising theory of children's apparent isomorphism for us is the approach of Musolino & Lidz (2003;, who assume -relying on the experimental results of Trueswell et al (1999) -that preschoolers are reluctant, or unable, to revise their original interpretation of an ambiguous sentence. In sentences involving a quantifier and negation, the default reading (which is more frequent, and whose generation and processing is less costly)…”

Section: A Potential Explanation: the Kindergarten-path Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We survey the explanations offered to account for children's isomorphism attested in sentences containing quantification and negation, and examine if they can be reconciled with the lack of prevalent isomorphism in doubly quantified sentences. We will argue that the explanation that can be extended to doubly quantified sentences is the theory that analyzes children's isomorphism as a consequence of their reluctance to "turn back" in ambiguous "garden-path" situations and to revise their initial interpretations (Musolino & Lidz 2003. According to this view, the isomorphic reading is the default reading of ambiguous sentences, to which children are committed until the context or the situation forces them to revise it.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Why is children’s interpretation of doubly quantified sentences non-isomorphic?

Kiss

Zétényi

2017

Linguistics

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The initial hypothesis examined in this paper is that Hungarian preschoolers assign to sentences containing two numerical quantifiers and a distributivity marker the same isomorphic distributive interpretation as Hungarian adults do. This hypothesis is partially refuted by Experiment 1, a truth value judgement task, and Experiment 2, a forced choice task, which show that children can access distributive readings, however, they tend to accept both isomorphic and inverse scope. Experiment 3, an act-out task, demonstrates that if there are no strong pragmatic cues to enforce a distributive interpretation, children’s primary interpretation is the collective reading. This leads us to the formulation of a new hypothesis: if the default reading of a doubly quantified sentence for preschoolers is the collective interpretation, in line with scope economy, then a distributive reading always represents the revision of the collective interpretation. This is confirmed by Experiment 4, showing that inverse answers have an increased reaction time. The new hypothesis can explain the lack of isomorphism in children’s interpretation of distributive scope as follows: since the distributive reading is dissociated from the linear flow of speech, the linear order of the two quantifiers does not necessarily determine scope order; children can base relative scope on the hierarchy of grammatical functions, on pragmatic cues, etc.

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Section: Isomorphism As Consequence Of Parsing Difficultiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Isomorphism As Consequence Of Parsing Difficultiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Potential Explanation: the Kindergarten-path Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Why is children’s interpretation of doubly quantified sentences non-isomorphic?

Kiss

Zétényi

2017

Linguistics

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“…Meanwhile, children demonstrate ambiguity between the two readings (Musolino & Lidz 2006, Experiment 1) or a preference for a None reading, as in (3) (Musolino et al 2000). After several follow-up investigations, Musolino & Lidz (2003Lidz & Musolino, 2002) currently hypothesize that Every . .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Autism Can Reveal About Every ... not Sentences

Noveck

Guelminger

Guillaume

et al. 2006

Journal of Semantics

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The sentence Every horse did not jump over the fence can be interpreted with the negation taking scope over the quantifier (i.e. not every horse jumped) or with the quantifier Every taking scope over the negation (ultimately providing the reading no horse jumped). Beginning with Musolino, Crain and Thornton (2000), much work has shown that while adults typically adopt a Not every reading in '2-of-3' contexts (e.g. where 2-of-3 horses jump over a fence), children do not and often produce None readings instead. In line with suggestions from Lidz (2003, 2006), we propose that this developmental effect relies to a great extent on pragmatic capacities. In the present work, we aim to replicate Musolino et al.'s (2000) results with 4-year-olds and adults while including verbally competent autistic participants. Syntactic skills among verbally competent autistic participants are assumed to be unimpaired while their pragmatic deficiencies have been well documented. Our results show an adult preference for the Not every reading in 2-of-3 contexts and equivocality among children and autistic participants. This is in line with the expectation that syntax makes the two readings equally available and that adults, unlike young children and autistic participants, are efficient at exploiting the context in order to come up with a single consistent reading.

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Semantics in Acquisition

Geenhoven¹

2006

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The Scope of Isomorphism: Turning Adults Into Children

Cited by 54 publications

References 6 publications

Why is children’s interpretation of doubly quantified sentences non-isomorphic?

Why is children’s interpretation of doubly quantified sentences non-isomorphic?

What Autism Can Reveal About Every ... not Sentences

Semantics in Acquisition

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