Processing Scalar Implicature: A Constraint-Based Approach

Three experiments investigated the processing of the implicature associated with some using a "gumball paradigm." On each trial, participants saw an image of a gumball machine with an upper chamber with 13 gumballs and an empty lower chamber. Gumballs then dropped to the lower chamber and participants evaluated statements, such as "You got some of the gumballs." Experiment 1 established that some is less natural for reference to small sets (1, 2, and 3 of the 13 gumballs) and unpartitioned sets (all 13 gumballs) compared to intermediate sets (6-8). Partitive some of was less natural than simple some when used with the unpartitioned set. In Experiment 2, including exact number descriptions lowered naturalness ratings for some with small sets but not for intermediate size sets and the unpartitioned set. In Experiment 3, the naturalness ratings from Experiment 2 predicted response times. The results are interpreted as evidence for a Constraint-Based account of scalar implicature processing and against both two-stage, Literal-First models and pragmatic Default models.

[1]  Sarah Brown-Schmidt,et al.  Addressees distinguish shared from private information when interpreting questions during interactive conversation , 2008, Cognition.

[2]  D. Kahneman.  Thinking, Fast and Slow , 2011 .

[3]  E. L. Kaufman,et al.  The discrimination of visual number. , 1949, The American journal of psychology.

[4]  Maryellen C. MacDonald,et al.  A probabilistic constraints approach to language acquisition and processing , 1999, Cogn. Sci..

[5]  Craige Roberts,et al.  Information Structure: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics , 2012 .

[6]  M. Tanenhaus,et al.  The effects of common ground and perspective on domains of referential interpretation , 2003 .

[7]  Robyn Carston,et al.  Informativeness, relevance and scalar implicature , 1998 .

[8]  Mitchell S. Green,et al.  Quantity, volubility, and some varieties of discourse , 1995 .

[9]  M. Tanenhaus,et al.  Circumscribing Referential Domains during Real-Time Language Comprehension , 2002 .

[10]  Michael C. Frank,et al.  Ad-hoc scalar implicature in adults and children , 2011, CogSci.

[11]  D. Barr,et al.  Perspective-free pragmatics: Broken precedents and the recovery-from-preemption hypothesis , 2007 .

[12]  Chigusa Kurumada,et al.  Pragmatic interpretation of contrastive prosody: It looks like speech adaptation , 2012, CogSci.

[13]  Michael K Tanenhaus,et al.  Scalar reference, contrast and discourse: Separating effects of linguistic discourse from availability of the referent. , 2011, Journal of memory and language.

[14]  Tessa Bent,et al.  Perceptual adaptation to non-native speech , 2008, Cognition.

[15]  S. Brown-Schmidt,et al.  Partner-specific interpretation of maintained referential precedents during interactive dialog. , 2009, Journal of memory and language.

[16]  J. Elman.  An alternative view of the mental lexicon , 2004, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[17]  Gerald Gazdar,et al.  Pragmatics: Implicature, Presupposition, and Logical Form , 1978 .

[18]  Julie C. Sedivy,et al.  Pragmatic Versus Form-Based Accounts of Referential Contrast: Evidence for Effects of Informativity Expectations , 2003, Journal of psycholinguistic research.

[19]  Lewis Bott,et al.  Some utterances are underinformative: The onset and time course of scalar inferences , 2004 .

[20]  R. Shiffrin,et al.  Controlled and automatic human information processing: I , 1977 .

[21]  Michael K. Tanenhaus,et al.  Availability of Alternatives and the Processing of Scalar Implicatures: A Visual World Eye-Tracking Study , 2016, Cogn. Sci..

[22]  H. Grice.  Logic and conversation , 1975 .

[23]  Eytan Zweig,et al.  Number-neutral bare plurals and the multiplicity implicature , 2009 .

[24]  Julie C. Sedivy,et al.  The effect of speaker-specific information on pragmatic inferences , 2011 .

[25]  Walter Schneider,et al.  Controlled and automatic human information processing: II. Perceptual learning, automatic attending and a general theory. , 1977 .

[26]  M. Tanenhaus,et al.  The role of perspective in identifying domains of reference , 2008, Cognition.

[27]  B. Keysar,et al.  The Effect of Culture on Perspective Taking , 2007, Psychological science.

[28]  Lewis Bott,et al.  Distinguishing speed from accuracy in scalar implicatures , 2012 .

[29]  J. Hintikka.  On denoting what? , 2005, Synthese.

[30]  Irina A. Sekerina,et al.  The kindergarten-path effect: studying on-line sentence processing in young children , 1999, Cognition.

[31]  U. Sauerland,et al.  The Plural Is Semantically Unmarked , 2005 .

[32]  F. Campbell,et al.  The Magic Number 4 ± 0: A New Look at Visual Numerosity Judgements , 1976, Perception.

[33]  D. Barr,et al.  Taking Perspective in Conversation: The Role of Mutual Knowledge in Comprehension , 2000, Psychological science.

[34]  Craige Roberts.  Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated for-mal theory of pragmatics , 1996 .

[35]  Uli Sauerland,et al.  Scalar Implicatures in Complex Sentences , 2004 .

[36]  J. H. Neely.  Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Roles of inhibitionless spreading activation and limited-capacity attention. , 1977 .

[37]  R. Levy.  Expectation-based syntactic comprehension , 2008, Cognition.

[38]  Roger M. Cooper,et al.  The control of eye fixation by the meaning of spoken language: A new methodology for the real-time investigation of speech perception, memory, and language processing. , 1974 .

[39]  Natalie M. Klein,et al.  “Some,” and possibly all, scalar inferences are not delayed: Evidence for immediate pragmatic enrichment , 2010, Cognition.

[40]  R. Jacobs,et al.  Perception of speech reflects optimal use of probabilistic speech cues , 2008, Cognition.

[41]  Julie C. Sedivy,et al.  Subject Terms: Linguistics Language Eyes & eyesight Cognition & reasoning , 1995 .

[42]  Christopher T. Kello,et al.  Verb-specific constraints in sentence processing: separating effects of lexical preference from garden-paths. , 1993, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[43]  R. Baayen,et al.  Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items , 2008 .

[44]  Julie C. Sedivy,et al.  Eye movements and spoken language comprehension: Effects of visual context on syntactic ambiguity resolution , 2002, Cognitive Psychology.

[45]  Michael K Tanenhaus,et al.  Tracking the time course of orthographic information in spoken-word recognition. , 2010, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[46]  Maryellen C. MacDonald,et al.  Constraint Satisfaction Accounts of Lexical and Sentence Comprehension , 2006 .

[47]  Eva Belke,et al.  Early activation of object names in visual search , 2007, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[48]  Falk Huettig,et al.  The tug of war between phonological, semantic and shape information in language-mediated visual search , 2007 .

[49]  Roger Levy,et al.  Random e ects structure in mixed-e ects models: Keep it maximal UNDER REVIEW: Please do not cite , 2011 .

[50]  Julie C. Sedivy,et al.  Evidence of Perspective-Taking Constraints in Children's On-Line Reference Resolution , 2002, Psychological science.

[51]  G. Dell,et al.  Becoming syntactic. , 2006, Psychological review.

[52]  M. Kutas,et al.  Reading senseless sentences: brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. , 1980, Science.

[53]  Ting Qian,et al.  Rapid Expectation Adaptation during Syntactic Comprehension , 2013, PloS one.

[54]  Yi Ting Huang,et al.  Online interpretation of scalar quantifiers: Insight into the semantics–pragmatics interface , 2009, Cognitive Psychology.

[55]  John N. Williams,et al.  Are generalised scalar implicatures generated by default? An on-line investigation into the role of context in generating pragmatic inferences , 2006, Cognition.

[56]  D. Sperber,et al.  Relevance: Communication and Cognition , 1997 .

[57]  Julie C. Sedivy,et al.  Achieving incremental semantic interpretation through contextual representation , 1999, Cognition.

[58]  Katrin Schulz,et al.  Exhaustive Interpretation of Complex Sentences , 2004, J. Log. Lang. Inf..

[59]  G. Mandler,et al.  Subitizing: an analysis of its component processes. , 1982, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[60]  Michael K. Tanenhaus,et al.  Pragmatic effects on reference resolution in a collaborative task: evidence from eye movements , 2004, Cogn. Sci..

[61]  M. Tanenhaus,et al.  Looking at the rope when looking for the snake: Conceptually mediated eye movements during spoken-word recognition , 2005, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[62]  Karl G. D. Bailey,et al.  Do speakers and listeners observe the Gricean Maxim of Quantity , 2006 .

[63]  C Davies,et al.  Are interlocutors as sensitive to over-informativeness as they are to under-informativeness? Proceedings of the Workshop on Production of Referring Expressions: Bridging Computational and Psycholinguistic Approaches , 2009 .

[64]  D. Barr.  Pragmatic expectations and linguistic evidence: Listeners anticipate but do not integrate common ground , 2008, Cognition.

[65]  Benjamin Russell,et al.  Probabilistic reasoning and the computation of scalar implicatures , 2012 .

[66]  Yi Ting Huang,et al.  Logic and conversation revisited: Evidence for a division between semantic and pragmatic content in real-time language comprehension , 2011 .

[67]  A. Clark.  Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. , 2013, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[68]  I. Noveck,et al.  Characterizing the time course of an implicature: An evoked potentials study , 2003, Brain and Language.

[69]  A. Feeney,et al.  When some is actually all: Scalar inferences in face-threatening contexts , 2009, Cognition.

[70]  Maryellen C. MacDonald,et al.  The lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity resolution , 1994 .

[71]  D. Barr,et al.  Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. , 2013, Journal of memory and language.

[72]  S. Brown-Schmidt,et al.  The role of executive function in perspective taking during online language comprehension , 2009, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

[73]  Sharon Lee Armstrong,et al.  What some concepts might not be , 1983, Cognition.

[74]  M. Tanenhaus,et al.  Context and spoken word recognition in a novel lexicon. , 2008, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[75]  G. Schwarz.  Estimating the Dimension of a Model , 1978 .

[76]  J. Barwise,et al.  Generalized quantifiers and natural language , 1981 .

[77]  W. Schaeken,et al.  When people are more logical under cognitive load: dual task impact on scalar implicature. , 2007, Experimental psychology.

[78]  M. Tanenhaus,et al.  Actions and affordances in syntactic ambiguity resolution. , 2004, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[79]  G. Altmann,et al.  Incremental interpretation at verbs: restricting the domain of subsequent reference , 1999, Cognition.