Why children aren't universally successful with quantification

Musolino, Julien; Lidz, Jeffrey

doi:10.1515/ling.2006.026

Cited by 139 publications

(193 citation statements)

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“…However, Musolino & Lidz (2003), Gualmini (2004), and Musolino & Lidz (2006) found that children can access the non-isomorphic reading of sentences like (1) if it is supported by the context, e.g., if (1) is uttered in a situation in which first all the horses jumped over a log, but only two of them managed to jump over the fence.…”

Section: Isomorphism As Consequence Of Parsing Difficultiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why is children’s interpretation of doubly quantified sentences non-isomorphic?

Kiss

Zétényi

2017

Linguistics

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The initial hypothesis examined in this paper is that Hungarian preschoolers assign to sentences containing two numerical quantifiers and a distributivity marker the same isomorphic distributive interpretation as Hungarian adults do. This hypothesis is partially refuted by Experiment 1, a truth value judgement task, and Experiment 2, a forced choice task, which show that children can access distributive readings, however, they tend to accept both isomorphic and inverse scope. Experiment 3, an act-out task, demonstrates that if there are no strong pragmatic cues to enforce a distributive interpretation, children’s primary interpretation is the collective reading. This leads us to the formulation of a new hypothesis: if the default reading of a doubly quantified sentence for preschoolers is the collective interpretation, in line with scope economy, then a distributive reading always represents the revision of the collective interpretation. This is confirmed by Experiment 4, showing that inverse answers have an increased reaction time. The new hypothesis can explain the lack of isomorphism in children’s interpretation of distributive scope as follows: since the distributive reading is dissociated from the linear flow of speech, the linear order of the two quantifiers does not necessarily determine scope order; children can base relative scope on the hierarchy of grammatical functions, on pragmatic cues, etc.

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Section: Isomorphism As Consequence Of Parsing Difficultiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why is children’s interpretation of doubly quantified sentences non-isomorphic?

Kiss

Zétényi

2017

Linguistics

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“…As Musolino & Lidz (2006) themselves point out, the findings and suggestions from the papers on Every . .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Meanwhile, children demonstrate ambiguity between the two readings (Musolino & Lidz 2006, Experiment 1) or a preference for a None reading, as in (3) (Musolino et al 2000). After several follow-up investigations, Musolino & Lidz (2003Lidz & Musolino, 2002) currently hypothesize that Every .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…. not sentences are syntactically ambiguous but that either performance factors play a role among children (Musolino & Lidz, 2006) or that scope relations favour a None reading among children (Musolino et al 2000). 2 That is, children make their judgements by choosing (at random) one of the two possible readings or because there are reasons that encourage a None reading (based on contextual factors or parsing mechanisms).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We thus investigate the same sentences as Musolino et al (2000) and Musolino & Lidz (2006) and, critically, we add a third group that is known for having pragmatic deficiencies: verbally competent autistic participants. 4 We include such participants because their syntactic skills are assumed to be relatively unimpaired (Tager-Flusberg 1981), while their pragmatic deficiencies have been well documented (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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What Autism Can Reveal About Every ... not Sentences

Noveck

Guelminger

Guillaume

et al. 2006

Journal of Semantics

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The sentence Every horse did not jump over the fence can be interpreted with the negation taking scope over the quantifier (i.e. not every horse jumped) or with the quantifier Every taking scope over the negation (ultimately providing the reading no horse jumped). Beginning with Musolino, Crain and Thornton (2000), much work has shown that while adults typically adopt a Not every reading in '2-of-3' contexts (e.g. where 2-of-3 horses jump over a fence), children do not and often produce None readings instead. In line with suggestions from Lidz (2003, 2006), we propose that this developmental effect relies to a great extent on pragmatic capacities. In the present work, we aim to replicate Musolino et al.'s (2000) results with 4-year-olds and adults while including verbally competent autistic participants. Syntactic skills among verbally competent autistic participants are assumed to be unimpaired while their pragmatic deficiencies have been well documented. Our results show an adult preference for the Not every reading in 2-of-3 contexts and equivocality among children and autistic participants. This is in line with the expectation that syntax makes the two readings equally available and that adults, unlike young children and autistic participants, are efficient at exploiting the context in order to come up with a single consistent reading.

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Quantifier Scope Ambiguities

Kiss

2006

The Blackwell Companion to Syntax

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Why children aren't universally successful with quantification

Cited by 139 publications

References 6 publications

Why is children’s interpretation of doubly quantified sentences non-isomorphic?

Why is children’s interpretation of doubly quantified sentences non-isomorphic?

What Autism Can Reveal About Every ... not Sentences

Quantifier Scope Ambiguities

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