It has been proposed that children differ from adults in that children license a conjunctive infe... more It has been proposed that children differ from adults in that children license a conjunctive inference to disjunctive sentences that lack any licensing expression. The proposal is that children infer "A and B" from sentences of the form "A or B." Although children's conjunctive interpretations of disjunction have been reported in some studies, they have not been observed in other studies. This study investigates one possible source of the different findings, which is the presence or absence of objects that are contextually introduced, beyond those mentioned in the test sentences. Using a Truth Value Judgment Task, we conducted three experiments with preschool Mandarin-speaking children and a control group of adults. Test sentences in Experiment 1 included disjunction and a deontic modal verb, and the contexts only included objects that were mentioned in the test sentences. In Experiment 2, the deontic modal verb was omitted from the test sentences. Experiment 3 presented the same sentences as Experiment 2, but the contexts included additional objects beyond those mentioned in the test sentences. Both children and adults assigned a conjunctive inference to the test sentences in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, with no deontic verbs and no contextually introduced objects, a subset of children computed conjunctive inferences, whereas none of the adults did. In Experiment 3, neither group made a conjunctive inference. The findings reveal that entities in nonlinguistic contexts influence children's understanding of logical expressions. Moreover, preschool children already have linguistic knowledge that modal verbs license conjunctive inferences for sentences with disjunction.
There are two approaches to negation. We refer to them as the unified approach and the ambiguist ... more There are two approaches to negation. We refer to them as the unified approach and the ambiguist approach (cf. Horn 1985, 2001). On the unified approach, negation markers share the same basic meaning, which corresponds to the negation operator in propositional logic. The ambiguist approach contends that there are two different negation markers, with different semantic/pragmatic functions (see Bochvar 1981; Horn 1985, 2001; Karttunen & Peters 1979; Ladusaw 1980; Schwarz & Bhatt 2006; Bar-Asher Siegal 2015). Adopting terminology by Bar-Asher Siegal (2015), we refer to these negation markers as internal and external negation. Syntactically, internal negation typically appears sentence-internally, as in (1), whereas external negation typically precedes the sentence that it negates, as in (2).
This study investigated 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's comprehension of wh-questions, un... more This study investigated 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's comprehension of wh-questions, universal statements and free choice inferences. Previous research has found that Mandarin-speaking children assign a universal interpretation to sentences with a wh-word (e.g., shei 'who') followed by the adverbial quantifier dou 'all' (Zhou in Appl Psycholinguist 36:411–435, 2013). Children also compute free choice inferences in sentences that contain a modal verb in addition to a wh-word and dou (Zhou, in: Nakayama, Su, Huang (eds.) Studies in Chinese and Japanese language acquisition: in honour of Stephen Crain. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, pp 223–235, 2017). The present study used a Question-Statement Task to assess children's interpretation of sentences containing shei + dou, both with and without the modal verb beiyunxu 'was allowed to', as well as the contrast between sentences with shei + dou, which are statements for adults, versus ones with dou + shei, which are wh-questions for adults. The 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking child participants exhibited adult-like linguistic knowledge of the semantics and pragmatics of wh-words, the adverbial quantifier dou, and the deontic modal verb beiyunxu.
It has been proposed that children differ from adults in that children license a conjunctive infe... more It has been proposed that children differ from adults in that children license a conjunctive inference to disjunctive sentences that lack any licensing expression. The proposal is that children infer "A and B" from sentences of the form "A or B." Although children's conjunctive interpretations of disjunction have been reported in some studies, they have not been observed in other studies. This study investigates one possible source of the different findings, which is the presence or absence of objects that are contextually introduced, beyond those mentioned in the test sentences. Using a Truth Value Judgment Task, we conducted three experiments with preschool Mandarin-speaking children and a control group of adults. Test sentences in Experiment 1 included disjunction and a deontic modal verb, and the contexts only included objects that were mentioned in the test sentences. In Experiment 2, the deontic modal verb was omitted from the test sentences. Experiment 3 presented the same sentences as Experiment 2, but the contexts included additional objects beyond those mentioned in the test sentences. Both children and adults assigned a conjunctive inference to the test sentences in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, with no deontic verbs and no contextually introduced objects, a subset of children computed conjunctive inferences, whereas none of the adults did. In Experiment 3, neither group made a conjunctive inference. The findings reveal that entities in nonlinguistic contexts influence children's understanding of logical expressions. Moreover, preschool children already have linguistic knowledge that modal verbs license conjunctive inferences for sentences with disjunction.
There are two approaches to negation. We refer to them as the unified approach and the ambiguist ... more There are two approaches to negation. We refer to them as the unified approach and the ambiguist approach (cf. Horn 1985, 2001). On the unified approach, negation markers share the same basic meaning, which corresponds to the negation operator in propositional logic. The ambiguist approach contends that there are two different negation markers, with different semantic/pragmatic functions (see Bochvar 1981; Horn 1985, 2001; Karttunen & Peters 1979; Ladusaw 1980; Schwarz & Bhatt 2006; Bar-Asher Siegal 2015). Adopting terminology by Bar-Asher Siegal (2015), we refer to these negation markers as internal and external negation. Syntactically, internal negation typically appears sentence-internally, as in (1), whereas external negation typically precedes the sentence that it negates, as in (2).
This study investigated 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's comprehension of wh-questions, un... more This study investigated 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's comprehension of wh-questions, universal statements and free choice inferences. Previous research has found that Mandarin-speaking children assign a universal interpretation to sentences with a wh-word (e.g., shei 'who') followed by the adverbial quantifier dou 'all' (Zhou in Appl Psycholinguist 36:411–435, 2013). Children also compute free choice inferences in sentences that contain a modal verb in addition to a wh-word and dou (Zhou, in: Nakayama, Su, Huang (eds.) Studies in Chinese and Japanese language acquisition: in honour of Stephen Crain. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, pp 223–235, 2017). The present study used a Question-Statement Task to assess children's interpretation of sentences containing shei + dou, both with and without the modal verb beiyunxu 'was allowed to', as well as the contrast between sentences with shei + dou, which are statements for adults, versus ones with dou + shei, which are wh-questions for adults. The 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking child participants exhibited adult-like linguistic knowledge of the semantics and pragmatics of wh-words, the adverbial quantifier dou, and the deontic modal verb beiyunxu.
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