The effect of context in children's interpretations of universally-quantified sentences

  • Kenneth Drozd

Research output: Contribution to book/anthology/report/proceedingBook chapterResearch

Abstract

This chapter investigates the effects of perceptual and discourse context on children's Exhaustive Pairing interpretation of universally quantified sentences. Two experiments compared the predictions of two recent accounts of Exhaustive Pairing. In one account, Crain et al. (1996) arge that children make the Exhaustive Pairing error because the experiments used to elicit the error do not satisfy a felicity condition called the Condition of Plausible Dissent. In another account, Drozd (2001) argued that children adopt Exhaustive Pairing when they fail to evaluate the presuppositions adults normally use to constrain the interpretation of a universal quantifier. We argue that the results support Drozd's account.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSemantics in Acquisition
EditorsVeerle van Geenhoven
Place of publicationDordrecht
PublisherSpringer
Publication date2006
Pages115-140
Publication statusPublished - 2006

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