7,200 research outputs found
Cognitive Processing of Verbal Quantifiers in the Context of Affirmative and Negative Sentences: a Croatian Study
Studies from English and German have found differences in the processing of affirmative and negative sentences. However, little attention has been given to quantifiers that form negations. A picture-sentence verification task was used to investigate the processing of different types of quantifiers in Croatian: universal quantifiers in affirmative sentences (e.g. all), non-universal quantifiers in compositional negations (e.g. not all), null quantifiers in negative concord (e.g. none) and relative disproportionate quantifiers in both affirmative and negative sentences (e.g. some). The results showed that non-universal and null quantifiers, as well as negations were processed significantly slower compared to affirmative sentences, which is in line with previous findings supporting the two-step model. The results also confirmed that more complex tasks require a longer reaction time. A significant difference in the processing of same-polarity sentences with first-order quantifiers was observed: sentences with null quantifiers were processed faster and more accurately than sentences with disproportional and non-universal quantifiers. A difference in reaction time was also found in affirmatives with different quantifiers: sentences with universal quantifiers were processed significantly faster and more accurately compared to sentences with relative disproportionate quantifiers. These findings indicate that the processing of quantifiers follows after the processing of affirmative information. In the context of the two-step model, the processing of quantifiers occurs in the second step, along with negations
The logic of forbidden colours
The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to clarify Ludwig Wittgensteinâs thesis
that colours possess logical structures, focusing on his âpuzzle propositionâ that
âthere can be a bluish green but not a reddish greenâ, (2) to compare
modeltheoretical and gametheoretical approaches to the colour exclusion
problem. What is gained, then, is a new gametheoretical framework for the logic of
âforbiddenâ (e.g., reddish green and bluish yellow) colours. My larger aim is to
discuss phenomenological principles of the demarcation of the bounds of logic as
formal ontology of abstract objects
The effect of negative polarity items on inference verification
The scalar approach to negative polarity item (NPI) licensing assumes that NPIs are allowable
in contexts in which the introduction of the NPI leads to proposition strengthening (e.g., Kadmon &
Landman 1993, Krifka 1995, Lahiri 1997, Chierchia 2006). A straightforward processing prediction
from such a theory is that NPIâs facilitate inference verification from sets to subsets. Three
experiments are reported that test this proposal. In each experiment, participants evaluated whether
inferences from sets to subsets were valid. Crucially, we manipulated whether the premises
contained an NPI. In Experiment 1, participants completed a metalinguistic reasoning task, and
Experiments 2 and 3 tested reading times using a self-paced reading task. Contrary to expectations,
no facilitation was observed when the NPI was present in the premise compared to when it was
absent. In fact, the NPI significantly slowed down reading times in the inference region. Our results
therefore favor those scalar theories that predict that the NPI is costly to process (Chierchia 2006),
or other, nonscalar theories (Giannakidou 1998, Ladusaw 1992, Postal 2005, Szabolcsi 2004) that
likewise predict NPI processing cost but, unlike Chierchia (2006), expect the magnitude of the
processing cost to vary with the actual pragmatics of the NPI
Matching bias in syllogistic reasoning: Evidence for a dual-process account from response times and confidence ratings
We examined matching bias in syllogistic reasoning by analysing response times, confidence ratings, and individual differences. Robertsâ (2005) ânegations paradigmâ was used to generate conflict between the surface features of problems and the logical status of conclusions. The experiment replicated matching bias effects in conclusion evaluation (Stupple & Waterhouse, 2009), revealing increased processing times for matching/logic âconflict problemsâ. Results paralleled chronometric evidence from the belief bias paradigm indicating that logic/belief conflict problems take longer to process than non-conflict problems (Stupple, Ball, Evans, & Kamal-Smith, 2011). Individualsâ response times for conflict problems also showed patterns of association with the degree of overall normative responding. Acceptance rates, response times, metacognitive confidence judgements, and individual differences all converged in supporting dual-process theory. This is noteworthy because dual-process predictions about heuristic/analytic conflict in syllogistic reasoning generalised from the belief bias paradigm to a situation where matching features of conclusions, rather than beliefs, were set in opposition to logic
QUALITATIVE ANSWERING SURVEYS AND SOFT COMPUTING
In this work, we reflect on some questions about the measurement problem in economics and, especially, their relationship with the scientific method. Statistical sources frequently used by economists contain qualitative information obtained from verbal expressions of individuals by means of surveys, and we discuss the reasons why it would be more adequately analyzed with soft methods than with traditional ones. Some comments on the most commonly applied techniques in the analysis of these types of data with verbal answers are followed by our proposal to compute with words. In our view, an alternative use of the well known Income Evaluation Question seems especially suggestive for a computing with words approach, since it would facilitate an empirical estimation of the corresponding linguistic variable adjectives. A new treatment of the information contained in such surveys would avoid some questions incorporated in the so called Leyden approach that do not fit to the actual world.Computing with words, Leyden approach, qualitative answering surveys, fuzzy logic
Vagueness as Cost Reduction : An Empirical Test
This work was funded in part by an EPSRC Platform Grant awarded to the NLG group at Aberdeen.Publisher PD
Semantic Ambiguity and Perceived Ambiguity
I explore some of the issues that arise when trying to establish a connection
between the underspecification hypothesis pursued in the NLP literature and
work on ambiguity in semantics and in the psychological literature. A theory of
underspecification is developed `from the first principles', i.e., starting
from a definition of what it means for a sentence to be semantically ambiguous
and from what we know about the way humans deal with ambiguity. An
underspecified language is specified as the translation language of a grammar
covering sentences that display three classes of semantic ambiguity: lexical
ambiguity, scopal ambiguity, and referential ambiguity. The expressions of this
language denote sets of senses. A formalization of defeasible reasoning with
underspecified representations is presented, based on Default Logic. Some
issues to be confronted by such a formalization are discussed.Comment: Latex, 47 pages. Uses tree-dvips.sty, lingmacros.sty, fullname.st
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