Paul Marty, Jacopo Romoli, Yasutada Sudo, Richard Breheny
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引用次数: 0
摘要
涉及嵌入式分隔符的句子会产生分配推理和自由选择推理。这些推论表现出标量含义(SIs)的某些特征,因此一些研究人员提议将它们视为标量含义。然而,这一提议面临着一个重要的挑战:实验结果表明,这两种推论比常规的 SI 更稳健,处理速度更快,也更容易获得。应对这一挑战的常见方法是假设不同类型的 SI 之间的这种差异源于用于推导它们的替代方法的类型。也就是说,与常规 SI 不同,分配式推理和自由选择式推理是基于子成分替代物计算的,而子成分替代物是在没有词汇替换的情况下形成的。本文报告了一系列实验,通过比较产生这两种推理类型的正向、分词句子和涉及否定和连词或否定和分词的这些句子的变体来验证这一假设。调查还包括谓词性和认识性模态、否定的不同位置,并扩展到与简单分词及其引起的相关无知推理的类似比较。我们的研究结果表明,虽然在分词情况下,无论否定存在与否,推论都是相当稳健的,但其否定的连接词变体所引起的推论却并非如此。这些发现对以下假设提出了挑战:即 SI 计算中涉及的替代变量的类型是造成稳健性差异的主要因素。我们概述了我们的数据的两种可能的替代解释。
Sentences involving embedded disjunctions give rise to distributive and free choice inferences. These inferences exhibit certain characteristics of Scalar Implicatures (SIs) and some researchers have proposed to treat them as such. This proposal, however, faces an important challenge: experimental results have shown that the two inferences are more robust, faster to process, and easier to acquire than regular SIs. A common response to this challenge has been to hypothesise that such discrepancies among different types of SIs stem from the type of alternative used to derive them. That is, in contrast to regular SIs, distributive and free choice inferences are computed on the basis of sub-constituent alternatives, which are alternatives that are formed without lexical substitutions. This paper reports on a series of experiments that tested this hypothesis by comparing positive, disjunctive sentences giving rise to the two inference types to variants of these sentences involving either negation and conjunction, or negation and disjunction, for which the implicature approach predicts similar inferences on the basis of the same type of alternatives. The investigation also included deontic and epistemic modality, different positions of negation, and was extended to similar comparisons with simple disjunctions and the related ignorance inferences they give rise to. Our results show that, while the inferences are indeed quite robust in the disjunctive cases, regardless of whether negation is present or not, the inferences that their negative, conjunctive variants give rise to are not. These findings are challenging for the hypothesis that the type of alternatives involved in SI computation is a major factor responsible for differences in robustness. We outline two possible alternative explanations of our data.
期刊介绍:
Journal of Semantics aims to be the premier journal in semantics. It covers all areas in the study of meaning, with a focus on formal and experimental methods. The Journal welcomes submissions on semantics, pragmatics, the syntax/semantics interface, cross-linguistic semantics, experimental studies of meaning (processing, acquisition, neurolinguistics), and semantically informed philosophy of language.