Some utterances are underinformative: The onset and time course of scalar inferences

doi:10.1016/J.JML.2004.05.006

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Some utterances are underinformative: The onset and time course of scalar inferences

Journal Article•DOI•

Some utterances are underinformative: The onset and time course of scalar inferences

Lewis Bott¹, Ira A. Noveck¹•Institutions (1)

Centre national de la recherche scientifique¹

01 Oct 2004-Journal of Memory and Language (Elsevier)-Vol. 51, Iss: 3, pp 437-457

TL;DR: The authors showed that participants are less accurate and take significantly longer to answer correctly when instructions call for a Some but not all interpretation rather than a Some and possibly all interpretation, and that the rate of scalar inferences increased as permitted response time did.

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About: This article is published in Journal of Memory and Language.The article was published on 2004-10-01. It has received 436 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Scalar implicature & Inference.

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語用論(Pragmatics)を考える

[...]

和夫木村

01 Mar 1999

3,234 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Are Generalised Scalar Implicatures Generated by Default? An On-Line Investigation into the Role of Context in Generating Pragmatic Inferences.

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Richard Breheny¹, Napoleon Katsos², John A. Williams²•Institutions (2)

University College London¹, University of Cambridge²

01 Jul 2006-Cognition

TL;DR: The results suggest that these scalar implicatures are dependent on the conversational context and that they show none of the autonomy predicted by the Default view.

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348 citations

Cites background or result from "Some utterances are underinformativ..."

...Single sentence truth value judgment tasks by Noveck and Posada (2003); Bott and Noveck (2004) consistently support the Context-Driven view....
[...]
...Noveck and Posada (2003); Bott and Noveck (2004) asked subjects to perform a truth-value judgement task on sentences like (7): 7....
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...Bott and Noveck (2004) replicated these findings in an experiment where an additional layer of narration is introduced....
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...These findings corroborate the results obtained by Noveck and Posada (2003); Bott and Noveck (2004) through single-sentence truth value judgements tasks....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Online Interpretation of Scalar Quantifiers: Insight into the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface

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Yi Ting Huang¹, Jesse Snedeker¹•Institutions (1)

Harvard University¹

01 May 2009-Cognitive Psychology

TL;DR: In these studies, the visual-world paradigm is used as a test case for exploring the relations between semantic and pragmatic processes during language comprehension and quick resolution of the target is found, suggesting that previous delays were specifically linked to pragmatic analysis.

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302 citations

Cites background from "Some utterances are underinformativ..."

...For example, Bott and Noveck (2004) examined the response times for truth-value judgments of sentences containing weak scalar quantifiers like ‘‘Some elephants are mammals.”...
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...Second, the use of verification tasks creates uncertainty about whether the increases in reaction times are actually attributable to linguistic processes, rather than processes involved in verification (Bott & Noveck, 2004)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Pragmatic Tolerance: Implications for the Acquisition of Informativeness and Implicature.

[...]

Napoleon Katsos¹, Dorothy V. M. Bishop²•Institutions (2)

University of Cambridge¹, University of Oxford²

01 Jul 2011-Cognition

TL;DR: Three studies with 5-to-6-year-old English-speaking children and adults employing utterances involving scalar and non-scalar expressions show that both age-groups are competent with informativeness, but also tolerant of pragmatic infelicity.

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287 citations

Cites background or result from "Some utterances are underinformativ..."

...This finding is in line with the participant distributions reported by Guasti et al. (2005) for children and Bott and Noveck (2004) for adults for the scalar expressions....
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...(2005) for children and Bott and Noveck (2004) for adults for the scalar expressions....
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Journal Article•DOI•

“Some,” and possibly all, scalar inferences are not delayed: Evidence for immediate pragmatic enrichment

[...]

Daniel J. Grodner¹, Natalie M. Klein², Kathleen M. Carbary², Michael K. Tanenhaus²•Institutions (2)

Swarthmore College¹, University of Rochester²

01 Jul 2010-Cognition

TL;DR: A visual-world study investigating how and when perceivers compute scalar inferences indicates that the scalar inference is computed immediately and is not delayed relative to the literal interpretation of some.

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238 citations

Cites background or methods from "Some utterances are underinformativ..."

...This would serve to explain the processing delays observed by Bott and Noveck (2004), Breheny et al. (2006) and Huang and Snedeker (2009)....
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...This would serve to explain the processing delays observed by Bott and Noveck (2004), Breheny et al....
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...…still be far sooner than either the ∼600ms delay that might be inferred from the difference in verification times to pragmatic and logical some (Bott & Noveck 2004, Experiments 1 & 3; Noveck & Prasada 2003) or the 800–1000ms delay in referent identification observed by Huang and Snedeker…...
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...This would serve to explain the processing delays observed by Bott and Noveck (2004), Breheny et al. (2006) and Huang and Snedeker (2009). Pickering, McElree, Frisson, Chin and Traxler (2006) have made a similar proposal for processing difficulty associated with coercing the aspect of a semantic event....
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