The abundance inference of pluralised mass nouns is an implicature: Evidence from Greek

Abstract

Across languages, plural marking on count nouns typically gives rise to a multiplicity inference, indicating that the noun ranges over sums with a cardinality of 2 or more. Plural marking has also been observed to occur on mass nouns in Greek and a few other languages, giving rise to a parallel abundance inference, indicating that there is a lot of the relevant substance. It has been observed in the literature that both of these inferences disappear in downward-entailing environments, such as when a plural appears in the scope of negation (Tsoulas 2009; Kane et al. 2015). There are two main competing approaches in the literature that aim to account for the described pattern with respect to multiplicity inferences: the ambiguity approach (Farkas & de Swart 2010) and the implicature approach (Sauerland 2003; Spector 2007; Mayr 2015, among others). As discussed in Tieu et al. (2018), while both approaches can account for the upward-versus downward-entailing pattern of multiplicity inferences, they differ in what they predict with respect to the acquisition of these inferences and their relationship with implicatures. Tieu et al. (2014; 2018) investigated multiplicity inferences in English and reported evidence for the implicature approach. In this paper, we first show how the ambiguity approach and the implicature approach to the multiplicity inference can be extended to account for the abundance inference. We then report on an experiment that tests the predictions of the two approaches for multiplicity and abundance inferences in preschool-aged children and adult native speakers of Greek. Our results replicate the patterns reported in Tieu et al. (2014; 2018) for multiplicity inferences, and crucially reveal an analogous pattern for abundance inferences. Adults computed both kinds of inferences more in upward-entailing environments than in downward-entailing ones, and children computed fewer inferences overall than adults did. These results reflect an overall pattern of implicature calculation in line with a unified implicature analysis across the three kinds of inferences. By contrast, we discuss how they pose a challenge for the ambiguity approach.

Plurality and crosslinguistic variation: an experimental investigation of the Turkish plural

“…We tested the predictions discussed above by investigating Turkish speakers' interpretations of plural nouns in positive and negative sentences and comparing the plural to the scalar implicature of bazı 'some'. We employed the methodology used in the previous studies on English and Greek reported by Tieu et al (2020) and Renans et al (2018). Below, we also discuss how our results relate to theirs.…”

“…1: there is a first choice point between exclusive and inclusive approaches; if the latter path is taken, the choice is among the three accounts outlined above. In the following, we focus on the main predictions regarding the first choice, but we also discuss the predictions and the results of our experiments in relation to the specific predictions of the different accounts within the inclusive approach, based on discussion in Tieu et al (2020) and Renans et al (2018). We turn to this in the next section.…”

“…Plurals The three accounts differ in the predictions they make for the acquisition of the plural and how children might differ from adults at a certain stage in their development (see Renans et al 2018;Tieu and Romoli 2019;Tieu et al 2020, for similar discussion).…”

Homogeneity or implicature: An experimental investigation of free choice

“…In recent years, a variety of studies have used a ternary judgment task to investigate implicatures (Katsos & Bishop 2011;Tieu et al 2017a;Renans et al 2018), presuppositions (Abrusan & Szendroi 2013), and homogeneity (Križ & Chemla 2015;Tieu, Kriz & Chemla 2019). As first conceived of in Katsos & Bishop (2011) for implicatures, the idea behind the ternary judgment task is that the lowest valued judgment (e.g., the smallest reward) is reserved for false sentences, the highest valued judgment (e.g., the biggest reward) is reserved for true and felicitous sentences, and the intermediate judgment is meant for true but infelicitous sentences, e.g., sentences with a true literal meaning but a false implicature.…”

Testing theories of temporal inferences: Evidence from child language

“…There is, therefore, no expectation that children should be more or less adult-like on temporal inferences compared to other implicatures. If anything, without further assumptions about the syntax of these sentences, this approach instead predicts that children should display similar performance on temporal inferences and classical scalar implicatures, or at least that they might differ from adults in the same way on the two inferences (see Renans et al 2018 andTieu et al 2018 for discussion of a similar uniformity prediction in the domain of plurality inferences). That is, if children differ from adults, they should differ to the same degree for temporal inferences and standard implicatures; there is no specific theoretical reason to expect that they should fare better (i.e.…”