Referential mismatches : complement set reference

• In this talk, we present the results of a semantic plausibility study investigating systematic mismatches in anaphoric reference to quantified expressions (QEs) in Swedish. Sentences as (1)–(2) have a similar meaning but differ in their use of quantifier: some is a positive (upward entailing) quantifier, while few is a negative (downward entailing) quantifier [1].(1) Some students attended the lecture.(2) Few students attended the lecture.Both (1) and (2) are sentences about students attending a lecture. However, when referring back to ‘the students’, a difference can be detected between the two sentences. (1) is naturally followed by a sentence like (3), which, like (1), is about the students attending the lecture (the reference set, REFSET). (2), on the other hand, is naturally followed by (4), which differs from (2) in being about the students not attending the lecture (the complement set, COMPSET) [e.g. 2]. While (2) can in fact be followed either by (3) or (4), is also a possible continuation of (2), the case where there is a mismatch, i.e. (4) following (2), is actually the preferred continuation [3]. For (1), the mismatch continuation ((4) following (1)) is not allowed.(3)  They found it very interesting.(4)  They stayed at home instead.Anaphoric reference to QEs has been extensively investigated in English and one important factor influencing set-reference is the positivity/negativity of the quantifier [see e.g. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. As quantifiers do not always behave the same across languages [7, 8], we investigated this issue for Swedish in a semantic plausibility study where we tested whether quantified expressions gave rise to REFSET or COMPSET interpretations.The material was manipulated along two dimensions: positive vs negative quantifier (några vs få in (5)), and REFSET vs COMPSET targeting disambiguating adjective (duktiga vs dåliga in (5)). The quantifiers included were: några (‘some’), få (‘few’), många (‘many’), inte många (‘not many’), alla (‘all’), inga (‘no’), nästan alla (‘almost all’), inte alla’ (‘not all’).(5) Några/Få studenter skrev bra på tentan igår och att de var såsome/few students wrote well on the-exam yesterday and that they were soduktiga/dåliga förbryllade professorn.good/bad confused the-professorA linear mixed model showed that positive quantifiers with anaphoric reference to the REF-SET were judged as semantically congruent, while they were judged as anomalous with ana- phoric reference to the COMPSET. For the negative quantifiers, the opposite pattern emerged: they were judged as congruent with anaphoric reference to the COMPSET but anomalous with the reference to the REFSET. There was also a difference between positive and negative QEs. The preferred continuation for positive QEs, the matching continuation, was rated as more con- gruent than the preferred continuation for negative QEs, the mismatched continuation. There were also internal differences within the groups of positive and negative quantifiers. More spe- cifically, sentences where the syntactic subject included the positive quantifier några (‘some’) were significantly different from sentences with the other positive quantifiers in the subject: when reference was made to the REFSET, the sentences were judged as semantically congruent to a lesser degree than for the other positive quantifiers. Similarly for the negative quantifiers få (‘few’) and inte alla (‘not all’): when reference was made to the COMPSET, the sentences were judged as semantically congruent to a lesser degree than for the negative quantifiers inga (‘no’) and inte många (‘not many’).In a follow-up study, we investigated whether the relative size of the sets, in terms of number of members, influence anaphoric set interpretation. According to Zulaica-Herna ́ndez [9], the set with the largest number of members is the one most easily referred to. In relation to our results, this would mean that några (‘some’) should pick out a smaller REFSET than the other three positive QEs, and få (‘few’) and inte alla (‘not all’) should pick out larger REFSET than inga (‘no’) and inte många (‘not many’). To test these claims, we carried out an investigation using a questionnaire where each participant was instructed to write down the number they thought a quantifier corresponded to, given a fixed total number and a specific context, as in the following example [cf. 10]:(6) There were 100 students in the auditory. QE of them had been there before. How many do you think had been there before? ANSWER:The results were that några (‘some’) was taken to pick out a significantly smaller REFSET than the other positive QEs, and inte alla (‘not all’) was taken to pick out a significantly larger REFSET than inte många (‘not many’). However, få (‘few’) was taken to pick out a smaller, rather than bigger, REFSET than inte många (‘not many’). In addition, få (‘few’) and inte alla (‘not all’) were taken to pick out REFSET of very different sizes. Thus, these studies show that anaphoric reference to QEs in Swedish behaves as in English when it comes to polarity and also, unexpectedly, that the relative size of COMPSET and REFSET plays a role in the focussing one of the two sets.[1]  Stanley Peters and Dag Westersta ̊hl. Quantifi- ers in language and logic. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006.[2]  Linda M. Moxey and Anthony J. Sanford. Quantifiers and focus. Journal of semantics, 5:189–206, 1987.[3]  Anthony J. Sanford, Linda M. Moxey, and Kevin B. Paterson. Attentional focusing with quantifiers in production and comprehension.Memory & Cognition, 24(2):144–155, 1996.[4]  Kevin B. Paterson, Anthony J. Sanford, Linda M. Moxey, and Eugene Dawydiak. Quantifier polarity and referential focus dur- ing reading. Journal of Memory and Lan- guage, 39(2):290–306, 1998.[5]  Linda M. Moxey, Anthony J. Sanford, and E. Dawydiak. Denials as controllers of neg- ative quantifier focus. Journal of memory & language, 44:427–442, 2001.[6]  Linda M Moxey. Effects of what is expec- ted on the focussing properties of quantifi- ers: A test of the presupposition-denial ac- count. Journal of Memory and Language, 55 (3):422–439, 2006.[7]  Rick Nouwen. What’s in a quantifier? In Martin Everaert, Tom Lentz, Hannah de Mulder, Øystein Nilsen, and Arjen Zon- dervan, editors, The linguistics enterprise: from knowledge of language to knowledge in linguistics, pages 235–256. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2010.[8]  C.-Y.EdwinTsai,GregoryScontras,Kenneth Mai, and Maria Polinsky. Prohibiting inverse scope: An experimental study of Chinese vs. English. In Christopher Pin ̃o ́n, editor, Empir- ical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 10, pages 305–322, Paris, 2014. CSSP.[9]  Iker Zulaica-Herna ́ndez. Complement ana- phora in Spanish: Reference and discourse re- lations. Journal of psycholinguistic research, 43(2):449–466, 2018.[10]  Linda M Moxey and Anthony J Sanford. Prior expectation and the interpretation of natural language quantifiers. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 5:73–91, 1993.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

set focus

polarity

psycholinguistics

Lingvistik

Linguistics

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)