To accommodate or to ignore?: The presuppositions of &lt;i&gt;again&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;continue&lt;/i&gt; across contexts

Bacovcin, Hezekiah Akiva; Zehr, Jérémy; Schwarz, Florian

doi:10.5334/gjgl.402

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…15 Bacovcin et al (2018) offer a proposal based on Sudo (2012) and Klinedinst (2016) which, in a sense, also suggests that identifiability is a key factor: some triggers also entail their presupposition, which is then easier to accommodate than non-entailed presuppositions, since addressees can rely on this entailed meaning in order to identify the presupposition-we thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this reference to us. Zehr and Schwarz (2016) show that the additive presupposition is not entailed.…”

Section: Accommodatability: the Bigger Picturementioning

confidence: 99%

Presupposition Accommodation of the German Additive Particle auch (= “too”)

Grubic

Wierzba

2019

Front. Commun.

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Presupposition triggers differ with respect to whether their presupposition is easily accommodatable. The presupposition of focus-sensitive additive particles like also or too is often classified as hard to accommodate, i.e., these triggers are infelicitous if their presupposition is not entailed by the immediate linguistic or non-linguistic context. We tested two competing accounts for the German additive particle auch concerning this requirement: First, that it requires a focus alternative to the whole proposition to be salient, and second, that it merely requires an alternative to the focused constituent (e.g., an individual) to be salient. We conducted two experiments involving felicity judgments as well as questions asking for the truth of the presupposition to be accommodated. Our results suggest that the latter account is too weak: mere previous mention of a potential alternative to the focused constituent is not enough to license the use of auch. However, our results also suggest that the former account is too strong: when an alternative of the focused constituent is prementioned and certain other accommodation-enhancing factors are present, the context does not have to entail the presupposed proposition. We tested the following two potentially accommodation-enhancing factors: First, whether the discourse can be construed to be from the perspective of the individual that the presupposition is about, and second, whether the presupposition is needed to establish coherence between the host sentence of the additive particle and the preceding context. The factor coherence was found to play a significant role. Our results thus corroborate the results of other researchers showing that discourse participants go to great lengths in order to identify a potential presupposition to accommodate, and we contribute to these results by showing that coherence is one of the factors that enhance accommodation.

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Section: Accommodatability: the Bigger Picturementioning

confidence: 99%

Presupposition Accommodation of the German Additive Particle auch (= “too”)

Grubic

Wierzba

2019

Front. Commun.

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“…The pragmatic interpretation in the covered box, which was readily available to the L2 speakers, became a safe choice. In fact, even with the native speakers, they were least certain (indicated by giving the lowest confidence ratings) about sentences with inconsistent presuppositions (Bacovcin et al, 2018). 11 Furthermore, it should be noted that L2 speakers’ ‘being notably pragmatic’ has been repeatedly reported in L2 research on scalar implicatures.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…To convert examples (11) and (12) into visual stimuli for use in the covered-box paradigm, the 5-day calendar-strip design was adapted, which has been commonly used to investigate the availability of presupposition interpretations (Bacovcin et al, 2018; Bill et al, 2015; Romoli and Schwarz, 2015; Schwarz, 2014). In the experiment, the calendar strip contains icons of various activities and locations from Monday to Friday.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The computation and suspension of presuppositions by L1-Mandarin Chinese L2-English speakers

Feng

2021

Second Language Research

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The Interface Hypothesis proposes that second language (L2) learners, even at highly proficient levels, often fail to integrate information at the external interfaces where grammar interacts with other cognitive systems. While much early L2 work has focused on the syntax–discourse interface or scalar implicatures at the semantics–pragmatics interface, the present article adds to this line of research by exploring another understudied phenomenon at the semantics–pragmatics interface, namely, presuppositions. Furthermore, this study explores both inference computation and suspension via a covered-box picture-selection task. Specifically, this study investigates the interpretation of a presupposition trigger stop and stop under negation. The results from 38 native English speakers and 41 first language (L1) Mandarin Chinese learners of English indicated similar response patterns between native and L2 groups in computing presuppositions but not in suspending presuppositions. That is, L2 learners were less likely to suspend presuppositions than native speakers. This study contributes to a more precise understanding of L2 acquisition at the external interface level, as well as computation and suspension of pragmatic inferences.

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“…To convert (10b-c) and (11b-c) into visual stimuli to fit the covered box paradigm , the 5-day calendar-strip design was adapted which has been commonly used commonly to investigate the availability of presupposition interpretations was adapted for our study (Schwarz, 2014; Bill et al, 2015; Romoli and Schwarz, 2015; Bacovcin et al, 2016). In this experiment, the calendar-strip contains icons of various activities and locations from Monday to Friday 4 .…”

Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Asymmetries Between Direct and Indirect Scalar Implicatures in Second Language Acquisition

Feng

Cho

2019

Front. Psychol.

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A direct scalar implicature (DSI) arises when a sentence with a weaker term like sometimes implies the negation of the stronger alternative always (e.g., John sometimes (∼ not always) drinks coffee). A reverse implicature, often referred to as indirect scalar implicature (ISI), arises when the stronger term is under negation and implicates the weaker alternative (e.g., John doesn’t always (∼ sometimes) drink coffee). Recent research suggests that English-speaking adults and children behave differently in interpreting these two types of SI ( Cremers and Chemla, 2014 ; Bill et al., 2016 ). However, little attention has been paid to how these two types of SI are processed in a non-native, or second language (L2). By using a covered box paradigm, this study examines how these two types of SI are computed and suspended in a second language by measuring the visible vs. covered picture selection percentage as well as response times (RTs) taken for the selection. Data collected from 26 native speakers of English to 24 L1-Chinese L2-English learners showed that unlike native speakers, L2 speakers showed asymmetries in their generation and suspension of DSI and ISI. That is, L2 speakers computed DSI more often than ISI, but they suspended ISI more frequently than DSI. Furthermore, our RT data suggested that L2 speakers suspended ISI not only more frequently but also significantly faster than DSI. Regarding the asymmetrical behavior among L2 speakers, we consider the number of alternative meanings involved in DSI vs. ISI suspension and different routes to the suspension of SI.

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To accommodate or to ignore?: The presuppositions of <i>again</i> and <i>continue</i> across contexts

Cited by 5 publications

References 20 publications

Presupposition Accommodation of the German Additive Particle auch (= “too”)

Presupposition Accommodation of the German Additive Particle auch (= “too”)

The computation and suspension of presuppositions by L1-Mandarin Chinese L2-English speakers

Asymmetries Between Direct and Indirect Scalar Implicatures in Second Language Acquisition

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