| Popis: |
Children as young as four years old demonstrate a certain degree of ability in deriving ad-hoc implicatures. Previous literature on the matter suggests that they are easier for children to derive as compared to lexical scalar implicatures. There is however some doubt as to whether pre-school children derive ad-hoc implicatures by appealing to speaker's belief and intention (as many theories assume that adults do) or perform a simpler type of inference. The aim of this research is to investigate this issue by combining implicature derivation with Theory of Mind, testing children’s ability with ad-hoc implicatures in a False-or True-Belief environment. The main research question will not be at what age children start succeeding in ad-hoc implicature tasks, but whether young children’s successes can really be linked to pragmatic reasoning on intended meaning. The participants will be typically developing, mother tongue children between the ages of 4 and 7, who will be tested through a referent selection task in the form of a game. |
