Cochard, Antoine

Demirdache, Hamida

van Hout, Angeliek

English

Dissertations of the University of Groningen

   University of GroningenProbing OR vs. NOT-OR in French childrenCochard, Antoine; van Hout, Angeliek ; Demirdache, HamidaIMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite fromit. Please check the document version below.Document VersionFinal author's version (accepted by publisher, after peer review)Publication date:2022Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research databaseCitation for published version (APA):Cochard, A., van Hout, A., & Demirdache, H. (2022). Probing OR vs. NOT-OR in French children: Semanticor pragmatic immaturity?. Poster session presented at The 47th Boston University Conference onLanguage Development, Boston, United States.CopyrightOther than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of theauthor(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons).The publication may also be distributed here under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, indicated by the “Taverne” license.More information can be found on the University of Groningen website: https://www.rug.nl/library/open-access/self-archiving-pure/taverne-amendment.Take-down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediatelyand investigate your claim.Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons thenumber of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum.Download date: 21-01-2023Child disjunction across positive and negative contexts:Evidence from French Antoine Cochard (1.2), Hamida Demirdache (1), Angeliek van Hout (2)Nantes Université, CNRS, Laboratoire de linguistique de Nantes, LLING, UMR 6310, France (1)University of Groningen, Center for Language and Cognition Groningen, Netherlands (2)  Pragmatic reasoning: scalar implicature.(1)	 Liz	drew	the	flower	or the tree.= Liz drew either	the	flower	or the tree.→ Exclusive reading.(2) a. Generate AND alternative	Liz	drew	the	flower	and	the	tree. b. Strengthening	Liz	drew	the	flower	or the tree… …but not both.  Children’s non-target readings of OR:(3)	 Liz	drew	the	flower	and/or the tree.→ Inclusive reading “and/or” [1].Failure to compute scalar implicature.(4)	 Liz	drew	the	flower	and the tree.→ Conjunctive reading “both” [7].i. Failure to generate AND alternative.ii. Conjunctive inference trigerred by (i). 	 (via	an	exhaustification	mechanism) Positive disjunction (or) Aim of study  No acquisition study has investigated children’s range of interpretation for OR across contexts.  Research question:To what extent are (non-)target interpretation patterns for OR and NOT-OR related within learners?   Approach: test OR in both positive and negative contexts.  – Same set-up and task.  – Same participants.  Language of interest: French.[1] Chierchia, G., Guasti M.T., Gualmini A., Meroni L., Crain S., and Foppolo F. (2004). Semantic and Pragmatic Competence in Children’s and Adults’ Comprehension of Or. In Experimental Pragmatics. Edited by Ira A. Noveck and Dan Sperber, 283–300. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. [2] Crain, S. (2012). The Emergence of Meaning. Cambridge University Press. [3] Lungu,	O.,	Fălăuş	A.	&	Panzeri	F.	(2021).	Disjunction	in	negative	contexts: A cross-linguistic experimental study. 38 (2), 221-247. [4] Marty, P.	&	Nicolae,	A.	(2021).	Conjunctive	disjunctions:	When	adults	behave like children. [5] Pagliarini, E. , Lungu O., van Hout A., Pintér L.,	Surányi	B.,	Crain	S.	&	Guasti	M.T.	(2021):	How	Adults	and	Children	Interpret Disjunction under Negation in Dutch, French, Hungarian and Italian: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison, Language Learning and Development. [6] Skordos,	D.,	Feiman	R.,	Bale	A.	&	Barner	D.	(2020).	Do children interpret ‘or’ conjunctively? Journal of Semantics 37(2). 247–267. [7] Singh,	R.,	Wexler	K.,	Astle-Rahim	A.,	Kamawar	D.	&	Fox	D. (2017). Children interpret disjunction as conjunction: Consequences for theories of implicature and child development. Natural Language Semantics 24. [8] Szabolcsi, A. (2002). Hungarian disjunction and positive	 polarity.	 In	Kenesei	&	 Siptar	 (eds.),	Approaches to Hungarian 8.	Budapest:	Akademiai	Kiado.	[9] Tieu,	L.,	Yatsushiro	K.,	Cremers	A.,	Romoli	J.,	Sauerland	U.	&	Chemla	E.	(2017),	On	the	role	of	alternatives	in the acquisition of simple and complex disjunctions in French and Japanese. Journal of Semantics 34.  Cross-linguistic differences (PPI parameter)(5) Liz did not	draw	the	flower	or the tree.a. Liz drew neither the	flower	nor the tree.b. Either Liz did not	draw	the	flower	 	 	 or she did not draw the tree.c. Liz	did	not	draw	the	flower	and/or the tree. → Not both readingNegated disjunction (NoT-or)Selected referencesMethods and materialsDiscussion  Hypothesis 2: validated.Children either always calculate scalar implicature (SI) or do not.Neither (5a) (-PPI) Exclusive (5b) (+PPI)Dutch, English,Korean,	German,	Greek, Romanian,…French, Italian,Japanese, Russian,Mandarin Chinese,…  Children: Preference for neither reading [5].→ Semantic Subset Principle [2].  Adults: neither reading is in fact accessible even in exclusive languages [3].  Truth-Value Judgment Task in Prediction mode. – Satisfy ignorance inference [4].	 –	 Falsifiable	disjunctive	guess	[6]. 2 disjuncts true 1 disjunct true 0 disjunct trueIntroductionReward systemReward + JudgmentResultsChildren (Adults)NOT-OR patternsExclusive Not-both Neither OtherOR patternsExclusive 20 (29) 0 (2) 9 (13) 10 (17)Inclusive 0 (0) 1 (4) 5 (1) 4 (3)Conjunctive 0 (0) 0 (0) 12 (0) 2 (2)Other 2 (2) 0 (2) 11 (0) 8 (2)Hypotheses  H1: Two adult patterns: (1) exclusive with OR and NOT-OR ; (2) exclusive OR and neither NOT-OR.  H2: Children who fail to generate scalar implicature in positive context will fail to generate scalar implicature in negative context (assuming +PPI OR).  H3: Children who fail to generate AND alternative in positive context (p AND q) will fail to generate AND alternative in negative context (¬p AND ¬q).Predict: Conjunctive or interpreters should only show     neither readings in negative context (NOT-OR).  Participants: native French speakers. – 84 children (age = 3;6 – 8;5 | μ = 6;3), 4 age groups. – 77 adults (age = 18 – 67 | μ = 28;2).Test sentence  Sample test sentences:(6) a. OR Liz	a	colorié	la	fleur	ou l’arbre. b. NOT-OR Liz n’a pas	colorié	la	fleur	ou l’arbre.  	 	 	 “Liz	colored	the	flower	or the tree.”   “Liz did not	color	the	flower	or the tree.”  Systematic response patterns with OR and NOT-OR.Bimodal distribution with NOT-OR in adults and children.   Age effect with OR.GMMs: Estimate = 2.20; std.error = 0.43; z = 5.11; Pr(>|z|) >.0001But not with NOT-OR. GMMs: Estimate = -0.46; std.error = 0.23; z = -1.94; Pr(>|z|) = 0.0518  Hypothesis 1: validated across adults as well as children. – Adult pattern 1: Idealized exclusive French  – Adult pattern 2: Neither French  Hypothesis 3: validated. Conjunctive interpreters only show neither readings. Two sources of neither readings: – +PPI OR and missing AND alternative.  – -PPI OR.  Future research: develop experimental paradigm that targets	specifically	knowledge	of	AND alternative.OR NOT-OR  Unattested, systematic adult and non-adult patterns.Strong criteria to categorize participants: accept 5/6 times a condition, and reject 5-6 others.  Participants have to infer from the reward what Liz did and say whether the owl made the right guess or not.Proportion of yes answersShapes = distribution; dots = participants OR NOT-ORExclusiveSI ✔ Exclusive  (+PPI / SI ✔) Adult 1Not-both  (+PPI / SI ✳) ✳Neither  (-PPI) Adult 2InclusiveSI ✳ Exclusive  (+PPI / SI ✔) ✳Not-both  (+PPI / SI ✳) Non-adultNeither  (-PPI) Non-adultWhen	 UG	 makes	 available	 two	 readings	 in	 a	subset-superset relation (e.g. neither/not-both), children initially assign the subset reading (neither).

Probing OR vs. NOT-OR in French children:Semantic or pragmatic immaturity?

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Probing OR vs. NOT-OR in French children:Semantic or pragmatic immaturity?

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