on the processing of “ might ”

On the PROCESSING of “might”Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz & John Trueswell

University of Pennsylvania

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PLC 36

Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

Literal vs. Pragmatically enriched meaning


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Did Mary eat the cookies? (1) Mary ate some of the cookies a. Mary ate some, but not all of the

cookies b. In fact, Mary ate all of them (Grice, 1975): speakers are expected to

be as informative as necessary, but no more than that (quantity maxim).

Implicatures and scales

Mary ate some of the cookies Some and possibly all (literal) Some but not all (pragmatically enriched)

Would you happen to know where Mary is?

(2) Mary might be in her office


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Quantity

none some all might must

Certainty

Gadzar (1979) and Horn (1972

Visual world paradigm


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Previous psycholinguistics work: evidence for delayed implicatures


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Huang & Snedeker (2011) : Evidence for delayed implicature processing (600ms)

Point to the girl that has [some/two/all/three] of the ice cream sandwiches.

Some Two

target

distractor

target

distractor

target

distractor

target

distractor

all three

Previous psycholinguistics work: evidence for immediate implicatures


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Grodner et al. (2010): some is processed immediately.

Degen & Tanenhaus 2012: speed of computing some impl. depends on naturalness of some and its lexical alternatives

Click on the girl who has summa the balls/ alla the balloons/nunna the items.

Early summa condition Late summa condition

no way to identify target prior to phonological disambiguation.

summa target

summa target

More work on implicatures:


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Camp “Rapid” Camp “Delayed”Sedivy et al., 1999Degen & Tanenhaus 2012

Bott & Noveck, 2004Noveck & Posada, 2003 Huang & Snedeker, 2009a

Present study:


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Compares might to must instead of some to all

Instead of using prerecorded stimuli incorporates target utterances within a natural conversation with a confederate

A game of guessing with a confederate


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Subject and confederate take turns guessing shapes on a screen (Building on a design by Brown-Schmidt et al., 2008; Brown-Schmidt, 2009) Guesser: each time sees only part of the display

and has to guess whatever is hidden Verifier: sees entire display, including whatever is

hidden for the verifier, and has to mark guesses as “correct” or “incorrect”

Part I: subject guesses; Part 2: confederate guesses

Target sentences incorporated as part of the confederate’s “guesses”.

The game-rules:


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4 types of shapes 4 possible colors In each row either

all shapes are of the same type or all are different

In each column either all items have same color or all have different color Col: all

different colors

Col: all same colors

Row: all different shapes

Example of a target trial


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Two conditions for every scene:confederate utters (1) followed by (2a) or (2b)1. Hmm…in the upper left there is a red square.2a.There must be a red square located in the upper right.2b. There might be a red square located in the bottom left.

Target

Competitor

Example of an “incorrect guess”


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½ target items had guesses for “might” that happened to be incorrect (but consistent with rules)

There must be a green square located in the upper right. There might be a green square located in the bottom left. (but in reality it’s a green heart)

There must be a green square located in the upper right. There might be a green square located in the bottom left. (but in reality it’s a green heart)

Procedure


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14 subjects, all native English speakers and undergraduates at UPenn participated for course credit (2 were taken out due to high track loss)

Stimuli presented in Experiment Builder Eye tracking data collected in Eyelink 1k

eye tracker Sampling rate: 1 kHz, re-sampled offline

to 100Hz

Results:


14Target Advantage for entire sentence (500ms prior to modal onset until 2 sec after onset of right/left)

Modal onset1s after mo

There must be a red square located in the upper right might bottom left

Avg. disambiguati

ontime

Target Advantage: looks to target- Looks to competitor.Target= shape that can be guessed with certainty (must)Competitor= shape that cannot be guessed with certainty (might)

Target Advantage: looks to target- Looks to competitor.Target= shape that can be guessed with certainty (must)Competitor= shape that cannot be guessed with certainty (might)

Results (continued):


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A B

Ambiguity period: from modal onset (marked as 0) until 200ms after disambiguation (onset of upper right/ bottom left)

Significant interaction between condition and time window :by item p <.01; by subject p <.05

Correct Guesses, Ambiguity period

Interpretation: Implicature processing is

delayed by 800ms

Interpretation: Implicature processing is

delayed by 800ms

Conclusion


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Evidence for delayed processing times of scalar implicatures (800ms)

Comparable to previous results on all vs some (Huang & Snedeker)

Evidence based on different implicature triggers (must &might) using natural discourse context


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Thank You!

And many thanks to our confederates, Aviad Eilam and David Faber!

on the processing of “ might ”

Documents

upenn plc

confederatedimka atanassov

adimka atanassov

officedimka atanassov

huang snedeker

subject guesses

degen tanenhaus

delayed implicature