Browsing by Subject "Givenness Hierarchy"

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    Development of scalar implicatures and the indefinite article.
    (2012-01) Johnson, Kaitlin Rose
    Previous research in pragmatic development suggests that children as old as ten often fail to make pragmatic inferences associated with quantifiers like some and modal verbs like might; instead they initially interpret these forms in terms of their logical meanings (i.e. some is compatible with all) (Chierchia et al., 2001; Noveck, 2001). This dissertation examines children's acquisition of pragmatic inferences associated with the definite and indefinite articles the and a (Gundel et al., 1993). In a series of three experiments, pragmatic comprehension of these forms is assessed in children and adults through two tasks: an evaluation-based comprehension task similar to tasks used by previous researchers (Puppet Task) as well as an action-based task (Action Task). The results of Experiment 1 indicate that, contrary to previous research with other scalar terms, by age 7 children overwhelmingly prefer the pragmatic interpretation of a. Experiment 1 also revealed that some 5-year-olds show non-adult-like behavior with respect to the definite article the--selecting a not-previously-mentioned object upon hearing the and accepting the puppet's actions when he did the same. Experiment 2 tests, and ultimately rejects, the hypothesis that the 5-year-olds' behavior in response to the in the previous experiment was due to processing difficulties as the result of their having a distributed attention. Experiment 3 attempts to arbitrate between two other explanations for the 5-year-olds' behavior in response to the; young children are either 1) less sensitive than adults and older children to the Relevance-based pragmatic inferences sometimes associated with the or 2) prone to favor new objects (in the Action Task) and agreeing with the puppet (in the Puppet Task) as opposed to attending to the linguistic input in each trial. The results of the Action Task in Experiment 3 lend support to the latter hypothesis; the results of the Puppet Task, however, support the former, suggesting that the Puppet Task was problematic and potentially calling into question some findings from previous research using evaluation-based tasks as a means of evaluating comprehension.
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    Pronouns in Kumyk discourse: a cognitive perspective.
    (2009-03) Humnick, Linda Anne
    This dissertation investigates pronominal forms of referring expressions in Kumyk, a Turkic language spoken primarily in the Dagestan region of Russia. The Kumyk language has six third person pronominals, including null arguments, demonstratives, and reflexives. Morphologically, each of these forms is unmarked for gender or animacy. This work provides an explanatory account of the distribution and interpretation of different pronominal forms in Kumyk primarily in terms of what these forms communicate about the status of their referents in the minds of the speech participants, specifically claiming that different pronominal forms signal differences in the cognitive status of their referents, following the Givenness Hierarchy model of Gundel, Hedberg, and Zacharski (1993). The analysis is based primarily on data from a corpus of oral and written Kumyk texts with supporting evidence from grammaticality judgments of constructed examples in questionnaires. According to the analysis, null arguments and reflexives signal the status, ‘in focus’, while demonstratives signal the status, ‘activated’. Particular attention is given to the role of scalar implicatures which arise from the unidirectional entailment of statuses on the Givenness Hierarchy and the fact that the demonstrative sho, which signals activation, has a particular association with this implicature. A unique contribution of the analysis is the evidence for the fact that sho not only gives rise to a scalar implicature in contexts where two referents have different maximal cognitive status(e.g. one in focus versus one at most activated), but also in contexts where two referents have the same maximal cognitive status, a fact which leads to the conclusion that this form specializes in indicating the less salient of two or more entities. The study also provides evidence that the demonstrative bu specializes in indicating the more prominent of two or more entities that are at least activated. Finally, in addition to the role of pronominals in signaling cognitive status and communicating the relative prominence of multiple referents, the study explores contextual effects such as imposed salience, point of view, empathy, or contrastive focus that are associated with particular forms.