"Liz can buy a croissant or donut. That's both together, right?" Distinguishing target Free Choice from non-target Modal Conjunction in Child French
Antoine Cochard, Angeliek van Hout, Hamida Demirdache
September 2024 

Several acquisition studies have reported that children draw free choice inferences at adult-like rates from modal disjunctive statements. This study explores an alternative explanation for children’s seemingly adult-like behavior: modal conjunction, which shares verifying and falsifying conditions with free choice. However, existing experimental setups were not able to distinguish the two. With our novel design, we were able to set apart modal conjunctive interpreters from genuine free choice interpreters, using a new type of condition: a mutually exclusive context. The results revealed that free choice inferences are not so early acquired as previously thought. In contrast to the earlier studies, only half of the children between 4 and 6 were genuine adult-like free choice interpreters. The other children either show the basic inclusive interpretation of disjunction, or, as hypothesized, a modal conjunctive interpretation.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/008462 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Proceedings of the 3rd Experiments in Linguistic Meaning
keywords:	acquisition; disjunction; free choice; modal conjunction; mutually exclusive context, semantics
Downloaded:	377 times

 

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