The role of partitive construction

in generating scalar implicatures

Mirjana Mandić, Boban Arsenijević

Department of Serbian Language

Faculty of Philosophy

University of Niš, Serbia

Olinco 2013

Scalar implicatures (SIs)

• Scalar terms (Horn 2006)– sets of alternative meanings, ordered according to their

informativness

• (1a) <a, some, many, most, all>

• (1b) <or, and>

• (1c) <one, two, three>

• <weak, strong> <some, all>

• S (x) → W (x) all (x) → some (x)

• W (x) +> ¬ S (x) some (x) +> ¬ all (x)

2

Scalar implicatures

Some elephants have trunks. (Noveck 2001)

→ Not all elephants have trunks.

(We bought 5 apples. )

Some (of the) apples are on the table.

→ Not all (the) apples are on the table.

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Theoretical background

• two different words or one word with two

readings?

• which one is the default one:

– a lower-bounding truth-conditional

component (“at least some”)

– an upper-bounding non-truth-conditional

component (“not all”)

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Theoretical background

• defaultism

– strong: a scalar inference is triggered by a word

and the triggering process is fast

– weak: “By default interpretation, I simply mean

the one that most people would give in

circumstances in which the context is unbiased

one way or the other.” (Chierchia 2004: 51)

• contextualism

– scalar term meaning must be strengthened in

the context (Geurts 2011)

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Previous research

• developmental perspective• Noveck 2001, Papafragou & Musolino 2003, Barner,

Brooks i Bale 2010

• COST Action project • Katsos et al. 2009, Katsos et al. 2011

– Serbian neki 54% vs. English some 99%

• Methodological problem: partitive vs. non-

partitive some.

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Serbian quantifier neki ‘some’

• Neke jabuke / neke od jabuka su na stolu.

‘Some /some of the apples are on the table.’

– cardinal, i.e. weak reading

– proportional, i.e. strong reading

• [some]weak = A∩B ≠ Ø

[some]strong = A∩B ≠ Ø. [¬(A ⊂ B)]

• the ambiguity of Serbian bare nouns (due to the lack of articles): definite, indefinite, non-referential and generic interpretation

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Hypothesis

• the scalar implicature of the quantifier neki ‘some’

in adults fails due to a failure in the establishment

of the right reference domain restriction

• SIs should be facilitated if the proper reference

domain is provided by linguistic means:

– the use of contexts facilitating the definite

interpretation of the noun

– the use of partitive construction in which the

noun receives a definite interpretation

(neki od + noun.gen ‘some of the NOUN’)8

Partitivity and scalar implicatures

• Pouscoulous et al. 2007

– certains vs. quelques in French

• Banga et al. 2009

– sommige (van de) vs. enkele (van de) in

Dutch

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Experiments• Conditions:

– partitivity: non-partitive (some apples) vs. partitive (some of the apples)

– contrastive focus: quantifier, predicate, neutral

1. SOME (of the) apples are on the table.

2. Some (of the) apples are ON THE TABLE.

3. Some (of the) apples are on the table.

– word order: initial vs. final QNP

1. Some (of the) apples are on the table.

2. On the table are some (of the) apples.

• Dependent measure: percentage of rejected statements (SI)

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Truth-Value Judgment Task

Participants: 56 adult native speakers of Serbian

We picked 5 apples from the tree.

Neke jabuke su na stolu.

some apples are on table.

Did Pera see it well?11

Truth-Valued Judgment Task

We picked 5 apples from the tree. 5 birds live in the park.

Target (5/5): Filler:

Some apples are on the table. (The) red birds are in the tree.

We brought 5 bananas from the market. We got 5 balls for the birthday.

Control (3/5): true Control (0/5): false

Some bananas are on the table. Some balls are on the table.12

Results

• General Linear Model Repeated Measures

ANOVA

partitivity x focus x word order

– main effect of partitivity (F=33.921, df=1,

p<0.0001)

– main effect of word order (F=4.061, df=1,

p<0.05)

– reliable interaction between partitivity and

focus (F=4.116, df=2, p<0.05)13

Results: overall SIs derived:

59% in part, 27% in non-part constr.

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

part non-part part non-part part non-part

quantifier predicative neutral

-SI

+SI

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

part non-part part non-part part non-part

quantifier predicative neutral

-SI

+SI

14

Initial QNP: 49% part, 16.6.%

non-part

Some apples are

on (the) table.

Final QNP: 68% part, 37% non-part

On (the) table are

some apples.

The role of partitivity

• partitivity affects the availability of SIs

• two loci of scalarity:

1. the scalarity between the weaker, ambiguous

neki+noun ‘some+noun’ construction and the

stronger, only scalar partitive construction

2. the scalarity of the term neki ‘some’ with

respect to other terms such as svi ‘all’ or

nijedan ‘none’

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Concluding remarks

• cross-linguistic variation

• the role of linguistic factors in generating SIs

• implications for the developmental perspective

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References

• Banga, A. et al. 2009. Some implicature reveal semantic differences. Available at: http://www.let.rug.nl/hendriks/papers/bangaetal09.pdf

• Barner, D. et al. 2010. Quantity implicatures and access to scalar alternatives in language acquisition. InProceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 20, 525–543.

• Breheny, R. et al. 2006. Are scalar implicatures generated on-line by default? Cognition 100: 434–463.

• Geurts, B. 2011. Quantity implicatures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Chierchia, G. 2004. Scalar implicatures, polarity phenomena and the syn-tax/pragmatics interface. In A. Belletti (Ed.),Structures and beyond, 39–103.

• Oxford University Press.

• Horn, L. 2006. Implicatures. In The Handbook of Pragmatics, eds. L. Horn i G. Ward, 3–28. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

• Herburger, E. 1997. Focus and weak noun phrases. Natural Language Semantics 5: 53–78.

• Katsos, N. et al. 2009. Semantika kvantifikatora u srpskom. Implikature i domet kod odraslih i dece. Radpredstavljen na Petnaestoj godišnjoj konferenciji Empirijska istraživanja u psihologiji, 6–7. Februar2009, Beograd, Srbija.

• Katsos, N. et al. 2012. The acquisition of quantification across languages. In Proceedings of the 36th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, eds. A. Biller, E. Chung &A. Kimball, 258–268. Cascadilla Press.

• Noveck, I. 2001.When children are more logical than adults: experimental investigations of scalar implicature. Cognition 78: 165–188.

• Papafragou, A. ,Musolino, J. 2003. Scalar implicatures: experiments at the semantic/pragmatic interface. Cognition 86: 253–282.

• Pouscoulous, N. et al. 2007. A developmental investigation of processing costs in implicature production. Language Acquisition14 (4): 347–375. 17

THANK YOU!

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Acknowledgments

• We are grateful to Darinka Anñelković, Maja

Savić and Oliver Tošković (Laboratory for

Experimental Psychology, Belgrade) for their

help in designing the experiments, as well as

Tihana Smiljanić, Lazar Bojičić and Snežana

Todorović (Petnica Science Center, Serbia) for

their help in pursuing the experiments.

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