The Role of Perspective-Taking in Children’s Quantity Implicatures
View / Open Files
Publication Date
2022Journal Title
Language Learning and Development
ISSN
1547-5441
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Wilson, E., Lawrence, R., & Katsos, N. (2022). The Role of Perspective-Taking in Children’s Quantity Implicatures. Language Learning and Development https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2022.2050236
Abstract
Young children excel at pragmatic inferences known as ad hoc quantity implicatures: they can infer, for example, that a speaker who said “the card with apples” meant the card with nothing but apples. However, it is not known whether children take into account the speaker’s perspective in deriving such inferences, as adults are able to do, and as the received theories of pragmatics claim. In two experiments, we tested children (5-7 years, N = 33 and N = 25) and adults using a picture-matching director task, in which participants played a game giving cards to the speaker, with some cards being in common ground and some in privileged ground. We found that adults can both derive implicatures when all information is in common ground and not derive them when relevant information is in privileged ground. Children also derive ad hoc implicatures when relevant information is in common ground but, crucially, fail to not derive them when it is in privileged ground. Children’s difficulty to integrate perspective-taking with pragmatic inferencing challenges the received theories about the necessity of perspective-taking in pragmatics.
Sponsorship
ESRC (1376526)
Economic and Social Research Council (ES/S010203/1)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2022.2050236
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/334747
Statistics
Total file downloads (since January 2020). For more information on metrics see the
IRUS guide.
Recommended or similar items
The current recommendation prototype on the Apollo Repository will be turned off on 03 February 2023. Although the pilot has been fruitful for both parties, the service provider IKVA is focusing on horizon scanning products and so the recommender service can no longer be supported. We recognise the importance of recommender services in supporting research discovery and are evaluating offerings from other service providers. If you would like to offer feedback on this decision please contact us on: support@repository.cam.ac.uk