Reciprocal expressions and the Maximal Typicality Hypothesis
| Autor: | Poortman, E.B., Struiksma, M.E., Kerem, Nir, Friedmann, Naama, Vinter Seggev, Y.S., ILS L&C, LS Comp.semantiek en kunstm.intelligent., LS taalbeheersing van het Nederlands |
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| Přispěvatelé: | ILS L&C, LS Comp.semantiek en kunstm.intelligent., LS taalbeheersing van het Nederlands |
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2018 |
| Předmět: |
Linguistics and Language
media_common.quotation_subject typicality effects Verb Context (language use) 050105 experimental psychology Language and Linguistics concepts reciprocity Strongest Meaning Hypothesis (SMH) Maximal Typicality Hypothesis (MTH) Reciprocity (social psychology) 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences Meaning (existential) Mathematics media_common 060201 languages & linguistics Language. Linguistic theory. Comparative grammar P101-410 Interpretation (logic) 05 social sciences 06 humanities and the arts Ambiguity 16. Peace & justice 0602 languages and literature linguistics semantics pragmatics lexical semantics language comprehension Sentence Reciprocal Cognitive psychology |
| Zdroj: | Glossa: a journal of general linguistics Glossa: a journal of general linguistics; Vol 3, No 1 (2018); 18 Glossa, 3(1). Ubiquity Press Glossa, Vol 3, Iss 1 (2018) |
| ISSN: | 2397-1835 |
| Popis: | In two experiments, we study the effects of verb concepts on the interpretation of reciprocal expressions in Dutch and Hebrew. One experiment studies Hebrew to test a previous account, the Strongest Meaning Hypothesis, which suggests that listeners resolve ambiguity in reciprocal sentences using the logically strongest meaning that is consistent with the context. The results challenge this proposal, as participants often adopt a weaker meaning than what the Strongest Meaning Hypothesis expects. We propose that these results reflect the sensitivity of reciprocal quantifiers to verb concepts, which is modelled by a new principle, the Maximal Typicality Hypothesis (MTH). For any given reciprocal sentence, the MTH specifies a core situation: the maximal situation that is also maximally typical for the verb concept. The MTH predicts reciprocal sentences to be maximally acceptable in the core situation and, under certain conditions, in situations that contain it, but substantially less acceptable in other situations. To test this prediction, we conducted a two-part experiment among Dutch speakers: (a) a membership test that ranks typicality preferences with different verbs; (b) a truth-value judgement test with reciprocal sentences containing these verbs. The results show that the typical number of patients per agent varies between verbs, with a significant effect of these preferences on reciprocal quantification: the stronger the verb concept’s bias is for one-patient situations, the weaker is the interpretation of reciprocal sentences containing it. These results support the MTH as a basis for a general theory of reciprocal quantification. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
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