Memory Load Effect in the Real-Time Processing of Scalar Implicatures
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Memory Load Effect in the Real‑Time Processing of Scalar Implicatures Jacee Cho1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This study examines effects of memory load on the processing of scalar implicature via a dual-task paradigm using reading span and self-paced reading. Results indicate that participants showed online sensitivity to underinformative sentences (e.g., Some birds have wings and beaks) at the end of the sentence. This online sensitivity disappeared when participants were under increased memory load. Moreover, participants in the memory-load condition did not show sensitivity to semantically false sentences (e.g., All books have pictures and drawings). These results pose important conceptual and methodological questions of (1) whether the processing cost associated with scalar implicatures can be attributed to general proposition evaluation rather than scalar implicature derivation per se (Bale et al. in Semant Linguist Theory 20:525–543, 2010), and (2) to what degree memory load affects implicature computation only. I conclude with a discussion of these two issues for future research. Keywords Scalar implicature · Memory load · Language processing · Self-paced reading · Dual-task paradigm
Introduction According to Horn (1984), Hirschberg (1991), and Levinson (2000), inter alia, some linguistic forms, such as , , , can be arranged on a linguistic scale in terms of informational strength; moreover, their interpretations are constrained by Grice’s (1975, 1989) Maxim of Quantity. The Quantity Maxim states that utterances should be as informative as is required but no more informative than is necessary. (1)
Some of the students passed the exam.
According to this account, the statement some of the students passed the exam in (1) when all of the students passed the exam is true but underinformative; the optimal level * Jacee Cho [email protected] 1
Department of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 600 N. Park Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
of informativeness in this situation can be achieved by using the term all, as in all of the students passed the exam. This prompts the hearer in (1) to make the inference that the stronger term all does not hold since the speaker would have said all of the students if all students had passed the exam following the Quantity Maxim. This type of inference is called scalar implicature or quantity implicature. Paul Grice’s extensive work on inferential communication has provided a framework for the way logical inferences are made in context. For example, the quantifier some has a weak sense (‘inclusive’) which is compatible with all (‘some and possibly all’) but is generally interpreted in a stronger sense (‘exclusive’) (i.e., ‘some but not all’) through conversational principles like the Quantity Maxim. Drawing on Grice’s idea, two different approaches to scalar implicatures have been proposed to explain how scalar inferences arise in realtime communication
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