Priming pragmatic reasoning in the verification and evaluation of comparisons

Most studies on scalar implicature focus on the lexical scale ‘some’ vs ‘all’, which tends to elicit high rates of pragmatic responses [1-4]. Here we examined an understudied scale formed by two syntactic constructions: categorizations and comparisons (e.g., ‘A robin is a bird’ vs ‘A robin is like a bird’). Unlike ‘some’ statements, superordinate comparisons have been found to elicit high rates of logical responses [5], even though they are under-informative when interpreted pragmatically (SI: A robin is not a bird). Following recent work on enrichment priming [6-9], we predicted that ‘some’ and ‘all’ statements would introduce an informativity bias in sentence verification and evaluation, increasing pragmatic responses to under-informative comparisons

Creación y Simulación de Metodologías de Análisis, Clasificación e Integración de Nuevos Requerimientos a Software Propietario

La priorización de nuevos requerimientos a implementar en un software propietario es un punto fundamental para su mantenimiento, la conservación de la calidad, observación de las reglas de negocio y los estándares de la empresa. Aunque existen herramientas de priorización basadas en técnicas probadas y reconocidas, las mismas requieren una calificación previa de cada requerimiento. Si la empresa cuenta con solicitudes provenientes de varios clientes de un mismo producto, aumentan los factores que afectan a la empresa, las herramientas disponibles no contemplan estos aspectos y hacen mucho más compleja la tarea de calificación. Este trabajo de investigación abarca la realización de un relevamiento de los métodos de priorización y selección de nuevos requerimientos utilizados por empresas de la zona de Rosario, y la definición de una metodología para la selección un nuevo requerimiento, que implica el análisis y evaluación de todas las implicaciones sobre el producto de software y la empresa, respetando sus reglas de negocio. La metodología creada conduce a la definición de los procesos para la construcción de una herramienta de calificación y priorización de nuevos requerimientos en software propietario que tiene solicitudes de varios clientes al mismo tiempo, con instrumentos de calificación que consideran todos los aspectos relacionados, proveerá técnicas de priorización actuales y emitirá informes personalizados según diferentes perspectivas de la empresa.Eje: Ingeniería de SoftwareRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

The development of simile comprehension: From similarity to scalar implicature

Poster for CUNY 202

The Development of Simile Comprehension: From Similarity to Scalar Implicature

Similes require two different pragmatic skills: appreciating the intended similarity and deriving a scalar implicature (e.g., “Lucy is like a parrot” normally implies that Lucy is not a parrot), but previous studies overlooked this second skill. In Experiment 1, preschoolers (N = 48; ages 3–5) understood “X is like a Y” as an expression of similarity. In Experiment 2 (N = 99; ages 3–6, 13) and Experiment 3 (N = 201; ages 3–5 and adults), participants received metaphors (“Lucy is a parrot”) or similes (“Lucy is like a parrot”) as clues to select one of three images (a parrot, a girl or a parrot-looking girl). An early developmental trend revealed that 3-year-olds started deriving the implicature “X is not a Y,” whereas 5-year-olds performed like adults

Children’s acquisition of new/given markers in English, Hindi, Mandinka and Spanish: Exploring the effect of optionality during grammaticalization

We investigated the effect of optionality on the acquisition of new/given markers, with a special focus on grammaticalization as a stage of optional use of the emerging form. To this end, we conducted a narrative-elicitation task with 5-year-old children and adults across four typologically-distinct languages with different new/given markers: English, Hindi, Mandinka and Spanish. Our starting assumption was that the Hindi numeral ‘ek’ (one) is developing into an indefinite article, which should delay children’s acquisition because of its optional use to introduce discourse referents. Supporting the Optionality Hypothesis, Experiment 1 revealed that obligatory markers are acquired earlier than optional markers. Experiment 2 focused on Hindi and showed that 10-year-old children’s use of ‘ek’ to introduce discourse characters was higher than 5-year-olds’ and comparable to adults’, replicating this pattern of results in two different cities in Northern India. Lastly, a follow-up study showed that Mandinka-speaking children and adults made use of all available discourse markers when tested on a familiar story, rather than with pictorial prompts, highlighting the importance of using culturally-appropriate methods of narrative elicitation in cross-linguistic research. We conclude by discussing the implications of article grammaticalization for common ground management in a speech community

Word Order Typology Interacts With Linguistic Complexity: A Cross‐Linguistic Corpus Study

Supplementary materials, data and code for Word Order Typology Interacts With Linguistic Complexity: A Cross‐Linguistic Corpus Study. Cognitive Science. 2020. (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cogs.12822

Contrastive inferences are sensitive to informativity expectations, adjective semantics and visual salience

People sometimes derive contrastive inferences from adjective-modified noun phrases. For example, the description ‘the short pencil’ would normally be understood to contrast a shorter and a longer pencil. In a series of eye-tracking studies, Sedivy (2003, 2004) found that scalar and material adjectives elicited contrastive inferences, but color adjectives did not, which she interpreted as a difference in informativity expectations. Here we assessed whether not only pragmatics, but also semantic and perceptual factors contribute to the derivation of contrastive inferences. We used Sedivy’s eye-tracking paradigm to compare the interpretation of scalar, material and color adjectives, employing new analyses to test the view that different fixation patterns should be observed on the target and the competitor objects depending on the semantics of the adjective and the visual salience of the encoded property. The results support our hypotheses, confirming that all three adjective types can elicit contrastive inferences, but their derivation is shaped differently by pragmatic, semantic and perceptual factors