Developmental evidence against the theoretical distinction between Horn and pragmatic scales  

Oleh:

Verbuk, Anna

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Journal of Pragmatics: An Interdiciplinary Journal of Language Studies vol. 44 no. 12 (2012), page 1680-1700.
Topik: Acquisition; Scalar implicature; Horn scale; Pragmatic scale; Question-under-discussion
Fulltext: Verbuk_A.pdf (338.03KB)

Isi artikel

A theoretical distinction between Horn and pragmatic scales that are instrumental in generating scalar implicatures (SIs) is widely accepted in neo-Gricean pragmatics; at the same time, this distinction has been questioned insome neo-Gricean and post-Gricean accounts of SIs. In order to explore whether or not this distinction has a reflex on the way inwhich children acquire SIs, I tested 40 children (4;3-7;7) on computing SIs based on Horn and pragmatic scales. If this distinction is postulated, children are predicted to performbetter on computing SIs based on Horn scales. In my experiment, children did significantly better on computing SIs based on pragmatic scales. Moreover, children performed worse on certain Horn scales than on the pragmatic scales, and better on other Horn scales than on the pragmatic scales. I provide theoretical reasons against distinguishing between Horn and pragmatic scales, and propose my own Context-based QUD account of SIs on which children's performance on computing SIs is a function of challenges presented by individual scales. I identify three major linguistic and cognitive acquisitional challenges presented by scales, and how these predict the timeline of SI acquisition.

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