Preschoolers’ Generation of Quantity Implicatures

Author

André Eliatamby, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

9-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Linguistics

Advisor

Sam Al Khatib

Committee Members

Sandeep Prasada

Ailís Cournane

Jon Nissenbaum

Subject Categories

First and Second Language Acquisition | Linguistics | Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics | Semantics and Pragmatics

Keywords

scalar implicatures, quantifiers, first language acquisition, pragmatic development, free choice

Abstract

This dissertation uses the developing child as a window into the mechanisms and representations that allow us to understand the meaning of utterances in their contexts. I present three studies investigating 4- and 5-year-olds’ ability to generate two types of “quantity implicatures,” classic scalar implicatures with some that imply not all, and free choice inferences that arise with sentences like “Larry is allowed to have cake or ice-cream.” Together, the studies suggest a close relationship between pragmatic development and word learning, something not appreciated in existing literature. In the first study investigating some, I show that preschoolers interpret some to mean some but not all, without explicit signaling of all, when they are given cues to represent multiple entities as forming a larger group. I argue this result is evidence that children entertain two distinct representations of some, only one of which is truly quantificational. The second study, examining free choice inferences, investigates whether children’s surprisingly adult-like interpretation of free choice disjunctions reported in a previous study was the result of contextual support for the “disjunct alternatives.” I find that when the disjunct alternatives are not derivable from context, children give free choice disjunctions a Boolean interpretation, which I argue is evidence that free choice is a type of quantity implicature and that free choice inferences are not developmentally special. The third study analyzes the cross-study performance of children who took part in both the first and second studies to assess to what extent the ability to generate implicatures during development is uniform across constructions or develops independently for each construction. This study finds that implicature development is construction-specific, and not developmentally ordered or uniform. The three studies highlight the role that word learning plays in the development of pragmatic competence. The components needed to generate quantity implicatures are in place by age 4. What develops is an understanding of the meaning of quantificational and logical words and of the phrases they appear in.

Recommended Citation

Eliatamby, André, "Preschoolers’ Generation of Quantity Implicatures" (2024). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5967