item: #1 of 93 id: elm-4857 author: Castroviejo, Elena; Lazaridou-Chatzigoga, Dimitra; Ponciano, Marta; Vicente, Agustí­n title: Generics as default? Comparing the acquisition of universals and generics in Spanish date: 2021 words: 5664 flesch: 58 summary: Table 1 summarizes the mean accuracy and standard deviation of responses by NP type (GS vs. UQS) and age group (young, old, adult) in a by-item analysis. While young children (4-5 years old) seem to be more tolerant to exceptions for generics than older children (8-9 years old), they do not have an adult-like behavior in the interpretation of GS. keywords: adults; age; chatzigoga; children; generics; group; lazaridou; spanish; uqs cache: elm-4857.pdf plain text: elm-4857.txt item: #2 of 93 id: elm-4858 author: Zevakhina, Natalia; Pasalskaya, Elena title: Overspecification of small cardinalities in reference production date: 2021 words: 5614 flesch: 55 summary: An efficiency- based analysis of color overspecification. Overspecification of small cardinalities in reference production Natalia Zevakhina and Elena Pasalskaya* keywords: cardinalities; cardinality; color; condition; experiment; objects; overspecification; participants; reference cache: elm-4858.pdf plain text: elm-4858.txt item: #3 of 93 id: elm-4860 author: Mihoc, Teodora; Davidson, Kathryn title: Superlative-modified numerals and negation: A multiply negotiable cost date: 2021 words: 5976 flesch: 65 summary: We did not find a general penalty for the modifier being DE, though this is likely still there, being simply obscured by the strong interaction of SMN modifier monotonicity with the two kinds of polarity. General effects: For all environment types, and for both CMNs and SMNs, ratings were significantly lower for ModMon=DE, Pol=NEG, the interaction of ModMon=DE with Pol=NEG, and also (marginally) for Env=RESTUNIV. keywords: antcond; exp; neg; pos; restuniv; smns cache: elm-4860.pdf plain text: elm-4860.txt item: #4 of 93 id: elm-4863 author: Bleotu, Adina Camelia; Benz, Anton; Gotzner, Nicole title: Where truth and optimality part. Experiments on implicatures with epistemic adverbs date: 2021 words: 6809 flesch: 56 summary: We implement two reward versions of this paradigm, one that asks subjects to reward characters based on judgements about truth and falsity (Right- Wrong task) and one that asks them to reward characters based on judgements about the appropriateness of sentences (Best Description Task). Our experiments show that implicature rates with the epistemic adverb poate ‘maybe’ are significantly higher in the case of the optimality judgment task (Best Description Task) than in the Truth Value Judgment Task (Right-Wrong Task), thus emphasizing an important methodological point: that results and, consequently, the theory accounting for them are largely dependent upon the methods used. keywords: description; epistemic; implicatures; reward; sentences; statements; subjects; task; truth; wrong cache: elm-4863.pdf plain text: elm-4863.txt item: #5 of 93 id: elm-4864 author: Davis, E. Emory; Landau, Barbara title: Seeing vs. Seeing That: Children's Understanding of Direct Perception and Inference Reports date: 2021 words: 6235 flesch: 53 summary: Data from adult and child participants were analyzed together to more easily identify children whose responses were similar to those of adults (and vice versa). Given that the children 7 and older in Experiment 1 performed like adults, the overall lack of an age effect for children ages 4-6 suggests that there is a qualitative change in children’s understanding of see that around the age of seven. keywords: children; event; evidence; inference; participants; perception; sentences; understanding cache: elm-4864.pdf plain text: elm-4864.txt item: #6 of 93 id: elm-4865 author: Anderson, Carolyn Jane title: Coming in, or going out? Measuring the effect of discourse factors on perspective prominence date: 2021 words: 7056 flesch: 56 summary: Measuring the effect of discourse factors on perspective prominence Carolyn Jane Anderson* Abstract. This paper contributes to the growing body of work on perspective prominence (Harris 2012, Kaiser & Lee 2017a,b, Hinterwimmer 2019) by providing experimental data on a relatively under- explored class of perspectival expressions: motion verbs like come and go. keywords: come; discourse; effect; experiment; person; perspective; prominence; sentence; subject; subjecthood; ● ● cache: elm-4865.pdf plain text: elm-4865.txt item: #7 of 93 id: elm-4866 author: Bleotu, Adina Camelia; Benz, Anton; Gotzner, Nicole title: Shadow playing with Romanian 5-year-olds. Epistemic adverbs are a kind of magic! date: 2021 words: 6697 flesch: 58 summary: Children produce deontic modals as early as 1;1, while they produce epistemic modals later (around 3). The first linguists to use this paradigm to investigate the semantics of epistemic modals were Hirst & Weil (1982), who implemented a Look for the Peanut Task, where 3-to-6-year-olds children heard statements (with epistemic modals) about a peanut, and they had to find it. keywords: adverbs; bleotu; children; epistemic; olds; paradigm; participants; romanian; sentences; shadow; statements; year cache: elm-4866.pdf plain text: elm-4866.txt item: #8 of 93 id: elm-4867 author: Choi, Sea Hee; Ionin, Tania title: What's the smallest part of spinach? A new experimental approach to the count/mass distinction date: 2021 words: 7015 flesch: 63 summary: A potential limitation of the quantity judgment task is that, in plural-marking languages such as English and French, the task confounds morphosyntax with interpretation: count nouns are presented in plural form (Who has more chairs / chocolates?) while mass nouns are presented in singular form (Who has more mustard / chocolate / spinach?). diagnostic count nouns mass nouns indefinite article a (count) a chair / chocolate / bean *a furniture/mustard/spinach plural marking (count) chairs / chocolates / beans *furnitures/mustards/spinaches ability to occur in bare (determiner-less) form (mass) keywords: categories; category; count; english; korean; languages; mandarin; mass; nouns; plural cache: elm-4867.pdf plain text: elm-4867.txt item: #9 of 93 id: elm-4868 author: Kruitwagen, Imke; Winter, Yoad; Hampton, James title: Reciprocal predicates: a prototype model date: 2021 words: 3569 flesch: 52 summary: If this is the case, effects of collective intentionality on acceptance of reciprocal verbs may only be an epiphenomenon of its effect on binary forms: the acceptability of unary form sentences may depend only on the acceptability of their binary correlates. This typicality approach is supported by experimental results on filmed scenarios where speakers accept reciprocal sentences (1) but reject sentences like (2). keywords: binary; form; intentionality; sentences; verbs cache: elm-4868.pdf plain text: elm-4868.txt item: #10 of 93 id: elm-4869 author: Gergel, Remus; Kopf-Giammanco, Martin; Puhl, Maike title: Simulating semantic change: A methodological note date: 2021 words: 6345 flesch: 61 summary: The current work discusses the Human Diachronic Simulation Paradigm (HUDSPA), a method to experimentally probe into historical meaning change set up to (i) scan for configurations similar to attested alterations of meaning but in (typi- cally, but not necessarily, related) languages or varieties which did not actualize the change(s) under investigations; (ii) measure the reactions of native speakers in order to ascertain the verisimilitude as well as the particular semantic and pragmatic prop- erties of the items scrutinized. Simulating semantic change: A methodological note Remus Gergel, Martin Kopf-Giammanco, & Maike Puhl* Abstract. keywords: change; doch; eben; english; gergel; german; giammanco; kopf; meaning; remus cache: elm-4869.pdf plain text: elm-4869.txt item: #11 of 93 id: elm-4871 author: Malt, Barbara C.; Yang, Xingjian; Joseph, Jessica title: (Not) acquiring meaning in a second language: Are input deficits key? date: 2021 words: 4370 flesch: 63 summary: Word meanings are not always parallel across languages, and second language (L2) learners often use words in non-native ways. We used a domain where word meanings cross-cut each other in the L1 and the to-be-learned language. keywords: group; labels; language; learning; malt; meanings; phase cache: elm-4871.pdf plain text: elm-4871.txt item: #12 of 93 id: elm-4872 author: Castillo-Gamboa, Jaime; Wellwood, Alexis; Rudin, Deniz title: Being tall compared to compared to being tall and being taller date: 2021 words: 5688 flesch: 57 summary: This paper investigates the semantics of implicit comparatives (Alice is tall compared to Bob) and its connections to the semantics of explicit comparatives (Alice is taller than Bob) and sentences with adjectives in plain positive form (Alice is tall). This paper investigates the semantics of implicit comparatives (1), and its con- nections to the semantics of explicit comparatives (2) and sentences with adjectives in their plain positive form (3):1 (1) Alice is tall compared to Bob. (2) Alice is taller than Bob. (3) Alice is tall. keywords: comparatives; context; difference; semantics; standard cache: elm-4872.pdf plain text: elm-4872.txt item: #13 of 93 id: elm-4873 author: Torres, Ilana; Slusarczyk, Kathryn; Alikhani, Malihe; Stone, Matthew title: Intention and Attention in Image-Text Presentations: A Coherence Approach date: 2021 words: 5146 flesch: 49 summary: Additionally, we have not yet been able to report results for the distribution of sentence structure types in Identification coherence relation image caption pairs yet. Predicate 0.3% 1.5% 0.0% 0.4% 0.4% Other 0.3% 1.4% 0.2% 0.0% 0.6% Table 5: The distribution of sentence structure types in coherence relation types. keywords: caption; coherence; image; pronouns; relations; text; types cache: elm-4873.pdf plain text: elm-4873.txt item: #14 of 93 id: elm-4874 author: Zhang, Yuhan; Davidson, Kathryn title: De re interpretation in belief reports: An experimental investigation date: 2021 words: 6572 flesch: 54 summary: We report three novel experiments which highlight some ad- vantages of obtaining quantitative judgments for readings with this ambiguity, focusing on definite DPs, given that they have already generated some judgment inconsistency in the litera- ture. One may wonder whether Nelson’s reason- ing is representative of a dispreference for de re: to test this, it helps to gather judgment data across a wider variety of scenarios. keywords: belief; dicto; dps; experiment; interpretation; judgment; participants; readings; reports; scenario cache: elm-4874.pdf plain text: elm-4874.txt item: #15 of 93 id: elm-4875 author: Geiger, Jeffrey; Xiang, Ming title: Toward an accommodation account of deaccenting under nonidentity date: 2021 words: 6011 flesch: 42 summary: If the broader context supports parallel readings for inferable verbs and their antecedents, participants might find it more natural to accommodate the necessary alternative antecedent according to the accommodation model, increasing ratings for tokens with deaccented inferable verbs. In turn, this might encourage accommodation of the necessary alternative antecedent to license deaccenting, increasing the ratings for sentences with deaccented inferable verbs. keywords: accommodation; antecedent; constituents; deaccenting; deaccentuation; experiment; material; new; verbs cache: elm-4875.pdf plain text: elm-4875.txt item: #16 of 93 id: elm-4876 author: Storbeck, Jesse; Kaiser, Elsi title: Discourse behavior of possessives reflects the importance of interpersonal relationships date: 2021 words: 6468 flesch: 43 summary: Therefore, the Anima- cy Hypothesis proposes that animate possessions (e.g. Sam’s doctor) are more prominent in discourse than inanimate ones (e.g. Sam’s car) for the same reasons and to the same extent that simpler nominals exhibit animacy effects (the/a doctor vs. the/a car). On the other hand, Di Eugenio (1998) proposes (for possessives involving animate possessors) that the ranking depends on the animacy of the possession; animate possessions im- mediately outrank their possessors, while inanimate possessions are ranked immediately below their possessors. keywords: animacy; continuation; discourse; hypothesis; possession; possessives; prominence; relationships; sam; subject cache: elm-4876.pdf plain text: elm-4876.txt item: #17 of 93 id: elm-4877 author: Chanchaochai, Nattanun title: The interpretations of scalar implicatures, presuppositions, and implicated presupposition by Thai children with autism date: 2021 words: 6002 flesch: 50 summary: No additive effects of implicated presuppositions are found in any group of the participants. While it is claimed that implicated presuppositions are pragmatically derived in the same fashion as implicature, they are still backgrounded in the presuppositional domain. keywords: adults; asd; autism; box; children; condition; group; implicatures; presuppositions cache: elm-4877.pdf plain text: elm-4877.txt item: #18 of 93 id: elm-4880 author: Bosch, Jasmijn E.; Chailleux, Mathilde; Foppolo, Francesca title: Incremental processing of telicity in Italian children date: 2021 words: 4090 flesch: 56 summary: It is a well-known fact that, during sentence processing, we can anticipate upcoming nouns on the basis of the lexical semantics of prenominal verbs. From a psycholinguistic perspective, the question that can be tested experimentally is whether (and when) this interpretation is carried out incrementally during sentence processing. keywords: children; condition; event; lexical; processing; sentence; verb cache: elm-4880.pdf plain text: elm-4880.txt item: #19 of 93 id: elm-4883 author: Dieuleveut, Anouk; Cournane, Ailis; Hacquard, Valentine title: Finding the force: a novel word learning experiment with modals date: 2021 words: 4918 flesch: 49 summary: Necessity teleological modals are quite often translated with possibility modals (21%), but epistemic modals are not (8%). Epistemic necessity modals are quite often translated with be; teleological modals with verbs. keywords: epistemic; force; modals; necessity; novel; possibility; situations; teleological cache: elm-4883.pdf plain text: elm-4883.txt item: #20 of 93 id: elm-4885 author: Neal, Anissa; Dillon, Brian title: Definitely Islands? Experimental investigation of definite islands date: 2021 words: 5687 flesch: 59 summary: Cognitive constraints and island effects. Experimental syntax and the variation of island effects in English and Italian. keywords: definite; definiteness; distance; effect; experiment; gap; islands; participants; questions cache: elm-4885.pdf plain text: elm-4885.txt item: #21 of 93 id: elm-4886 author: Zaitsu, Anissa; Wehbe, Jad; Hacquard, Valentine; Lidz, Jeff title: Clause types and speech acts in speech to children date: 2021 words: 7616 flesch: 67 summary: The question of how and when children learn to associate clause type with its canonical function, or speech act, is currently unknown. Although these canonical links between clause type and speech act are principled, they are known to be defeasible. keywords: act; acts; children; clause; declarative; interrogative; polar; question; speech; type cache: elm-4886.pdf plain text: elm-4886.txt item: #22 of 93 id: elm-4887 author: Bar-Asher Siegal, Elitzur Avraham; Bassel, Noa; Hagmayer, York title: Causal selection – the linguistic take date: 2021 words: 6903 flesch: 57 summary: We can now consider proper- ties taken previously as contributing factors to causal selection as parameters in the licensing of Proceedings of ELM 1: 027-038, 2021 Elitzur A. Bar-Asher Siegal, Noa Bassel and York Hagmayer: Causal selection: the linguistic take. We take CC-selection to underlie causal selection, since the latter is restricted by the linguistic possibilities re- sulting from the former. keywords: agent; causal; causative; conditions; effect; order; participants; selection; set cache: elm-4887.pdf plain text: elm-4887.txt item: #23 of 93 id: elm-4889 author: Francis, Naomi; Jones, Shuli; Rosenstein, Leo; Hackl, Martin title: On the acquisition of either and too date: 2021 words: 6760 flesch: 55 summary: Either would be marked to occur with negative sentences, taking necessarily wide scope over the negative operator, while too would be confined to positive sentences either via designated marking or as the result of competition with its more marked counterpart either.1 (2) Jeither/tooK(p) = λw: ∃q ∈ ALT(p) This model showed main effects of polarity and age; chil- dren were more likely to select either in negative sentences than in positive sentences (Pr(>|z|) = 0.000171 ***), and 6-year-olds were less likely to select either overall (Pr(>|z|) = 0.009378 **). keywords: additive; adult; children; data; environments; grammar; like; polarity; rullmann; sentences cache: elm-4889.pdf plain text: elm-4889.txt item: #24 of 93 id: elm-4894 author: Bade, Nadine; Schwarz, Florian title: New data on the competition between definites and indefinites date: 2021 words: 5128 flesch: 55 summary: To sum up, non-uniqueness inferences associated with indefinite determiners drive picture choices (Exp 1), but only when its ’exactly-one’ implicature is true (Exp 1). -8.754 < 2e-16 *** Table 1: Output of glmer for interaction between picture context and determiner To see whether determiners differed in the rate of target choices for the picture condition where both pictures satisfied the implicature, we looked at the interaction between context and determiner with target coded as the dependent variable. keywords: choices; competition; determiner; implicatures; indefinite; non; picture; schwarz; uniqueness cache: elm-4894.pdf plain text: elm-4894.txt item: #25 of 93 id: elm-4946 author: Bergey, Claire; Yurovsky, Daniel title: Listeners use descriptive contrast to disambiguate novel referents and make inferences about novel categories date: 2021 words: 4250 flesch: 52 summary: Can they turn this process around, using the principle of descriptive contrast to learn about novel objects and categories in the world? In a reference game, participants see groups of novel objects and hear a referring expression asking them to pick one, e.g., “Find the small toma.” keywords: contrast; feature; object; participants; target; use cache: elm-4946.pdf plain text: elm-4946.txt item: #26 of 93 id: elm-5013 author: Dionne, Danielle; Coppock, Elizabeth title: Tattoos as a window onto cross-linguistic differences in scalar implicature date: 2021 words: 4663 flesch: 59 summary: The second model is a prevalence-based speaker model that has perfect knowledge of speaker production (henceforth referred to as the Production model). For the big toe and ring toe image pair, English participants showed a slight preference for the ring toe image, with roughly 63% of participants choosing that image. keywords: english; finger; model; production; thumb; toe cache: elm-5013.pdf plain text: elm-5013.txt item: #27 of 93 id: elm-5026 author: Romero, Maribel; Meertens, Erlinde; Beltrama, Andrea title: Or not Alternative Questions, Focus and Discourse Structure date: 2021 words: 6516 flesch: 68 summary: Following Beltrama et al. (2020), we have reframed Cornering Part 2 as non intrinsic to NAQs per se, but as a general constraint on question strategies in general. We note, though, that there exist discourse initial contexts which do allow for question forms that deliberately signal that the only relevant live possibility is the content proposition p and that no other alternative q, r, s… matters. keywords: beltrama; caqs; cornering; discourse; light; naqs; pqs; questions cache: elm-5026.pdf plain text: elm-5026.txt item: #28 of 93 id: elm-5072 author: Modarresi, Fereshteh; Krifka, Manfred title: Pseudo-Incorporated Antecedents and Anaphora in Persian: The Influence of Stereotypical Knowledge date: 2021 words: 7146 flesch: 59 summary: a, b) speak against the possibility that anaphora to bare objects in Persian is predominantly by associative anaphora, as in this case we should find full DPs as the preferred case of anaphoric uptake. Modarresi assumes that bare objects differ minimally insofar as they introduce number neutral DRs (already assumed by Kamp & Reyle 1993 for different phenomena), which are given here by Greek letters ξ. keywords: anaphora; anaphoric; antecedents; bias; drs; krifka; modarresi; objects; persian; pins; pseudo; sara; singular cache: elm-5072.pdf plain text: elm-5072.txt item: #29 of 93 id: elm-5329 author: Gergel, Remus; Puhl, Maike; Dampfhofer, Simon; Onea, Edgar title: The rise and particularly fall of presuppositions: Evidence from duality in universals date: 2023 words: 4928 flesch: 54 summary: 0.1 ‘ ’ 1 Table 6: Anova for presupposition test model, Experiment 2 3.3 DISCUSSION. Crucially for the current enterprise, the question how lexical items come to be presupposition triggers or lose this property has been much less discussed on a principled basis, although case studies on presuppositional items certainly exist (see Beck, Berezovskaya & Pflugfelder 2009, Schwenter & Waltereit 2010, Los & Komen 2012, Beck & Gergel 2015, Gergel, Blümel & Kopf 2016, Gergel & Kopf-Giammanco 2021, Carlier & Lamiroy 2018, among others). keywords: change; experiment; gergel; group; gure; meaning; order; participants; phase; remus; results cache: elm-5329.pdf plain text: elm-5329.txt item: #30 of 93 id: elm-5336 author: Krebs, Julia; Malaia, Evie A.; Wilbur, Ronnie B.; Roehm, Dietmar title: Visual boundaries in sign motion: processing with and without lip-reading cues date: 2023 words: 5602 flesch: 52 summary: Event visibility in sign language motion: Evidence from Austrian Sign Language. Strickland et al. (2015) provided an example of action-to-language processing transfer, showing that non-signers are capa- ble of identifying telic/atelic semantics of sign language verbs in the absence of any prior exposure to a sign language. keywords: event; experiment; language; malaia; motion; participants; processing; ronnie; sign; signers; telic; wilbur cache: elm-5336.pdf plain text: elm-5336.txt item: #31 of 93 id: elm-5361 author: Porrini, Anna Teresa; Surian, Luca title: The investigation of quantity implicatures during typical development: a systematic review date: 2023 words: 4355 flesch: 59 summary: It seems that the task used to test children may have a considerable impact on how they perform in implicature tasks. As a matter of fact, several hypotheses have been put forward to explain children’s delay in acquiring lexical quantity implicatures (Barner et al. 2011, Foppolo et al. 2012, Katsos & Bishop 2011, Pouscoulous et al. 2007, Reinhart 2004, Skordos & Papafragou 2016 among others). keywords: age; children; data; development; implicatures; language; quantity; tasks cache: elm-5361.pdf plain text: elm-5361.txt item: #32 of 93 id: elm-5363 author: Harris, Jesse title: The enduring effects of default focus in let alone ellipsis: Evidence from pupillometry. date: 2023 words: 5697 flesch: 54 summary: In particular, I follow Harris & Carlson (2018) and assume that processing clausal ellipsis requires, at a minimum, the processor to engage in the following tasks: (4) Basic tasks of the processor in ellipsis processing: a. Parse the remnant by constructing the appropriate phrase structure for the remnant given the input. The 20 items from Experiment 1 in Harris & Carlson (2018) formed the basis of the 2×2 design, crossing remnant type (ObjectRem vs. SubjectRem) with contrastive pitch accent location on the correlate (ObjectPA vs. SubjectPA). keywords: accent; carlson; ellipsis; focus; harris; jesse; let; object; pitch; processing; pupil; remnant; subject cache: elm-5363.pdf plain text: elm-5363.txt item: #33 of 93 id: elm-5364 author: Rostworowski, Wojciech; Kuś, Katarzyna; Maćkiewicz, Bartosz title: Semantics of Non-Doxastic Attitude Ascriptions from Experimental Perspective date: 2023 words: 5688 flesch: 58 summary: This result indicates that non-doxastic attitude ascriptions are indeed sensitive to the way in which the content of the complement clause is structured, which means that non-doxastic attitude verbs operate on structured contents (rather than, e.g., sets of possible worlds). attitude ascriptions; entailments; non-doxastic attitudes; presuppositions; semantics; truth-value judgements 1. Introduction. keywords: ascriptions; attitude; clause; complex; experiment; truth cache: elm-5364.pdf plain text: elm-5364.txt item: #34 of 93 id: elm-5366 author: Fuchs, Martín; van der Klis, Martijn title: Crosslinguistic differences on the Present Perfect Puzzle: An experimental approach date: 2023 words: 5701 flesch: 62 summary: Parallel corpus work (van der Klis et al. 2022) actually indicates that standard written Peninsular Spanish not only allows its PERFECT to combine with temporal adverbials that locate the event within the day of utterance, but also with deictic adverbials such as este mes ‘this month’, which locate the event within an interval that is calculated from speech time and includes the day of utterance, but can also temporally locate the event before that day (e.g., an event that occurred this month might have happened twelve days ago). There are other properties of past-referring temporal adverbials that seem to play a role in their compatibility with PERFECT markers. keywords: adverbials; chris; marker; past; perfect; present; spanish; time; today cache: elm-5366.pdf plain text: elm-5366.txt item: #35 of 93 id: elm-5369 author: Paape, Dario title: Five degrees of (non)sense: Investigating the connection between bullshit receptivity and susceptibility to semantic illusions date: 2023 words: 6334 flesch: 54 summary: Crucially, bullshit sentences and illusion sentences are not nonsense in the sense that they are random jumbles of words.5 On some level, these sentences look and feel “good enough” to pass inspection. The question is whether someone who gives higher-than-average ratings to bullshit sentences will, for instance, also give higher- than-average ratings to comparative illusion sentences. keywords: bullshit; dario; et al; illusion; meaning; nonsense; paape; participants; pattern; processing; receptivity; sentences; susceptibility cache: elm-5369.pdf plain text: elm-5369.txt item: #36 of 93 id: elm-5370 author: Paape, Dario title: When Transformer models are more compositional than humans: The case of the depth charge illusion date: 2023 words: 8633 flesch: 56 summary: Accounting for agreement phenomena in sentence comprehension with transformer language models: Effects of similarity-based interference on surprisal and attention. The implicit or explicit gold standard against which language models are usually compared and evaluated in terms of their “shallowness” is human performance. keywords: charge; compositional; depth; doi; gpt-3; head; humans; illusion; injury; language; models; paape; processing; sentence; transformer cache: elm-5370.pdf plain text: elm-5370.txt item: #37 of 93 id: elm-5371 author: Ronai, Eszter; Xiang, Ming title: Tracking the activation of scalar alternatives with semantic priming date: 2023 words: 6480 flesch: 55 summary: Here, we test whether stronger scalar alternatives are retrieved and activated in the processing of sentences that lead to SI calculation, and are taken to involve reasoning about alternatives. 5.1. If stronger scalar alternatives like excellent are reasoned about and retrieved during SI calculation, then we should see shorter RTs in the related condition than in the unrelated condition. keywords: alternatives; condition; excellent; experiment; focus; good; prime; priming; word cache: elm-5371.pdf plain text: elm-5371.txt item: #38 of 93 id: elm-5372 author: Bleotu, Adina Camelia; Benz, Anton; Pătrunjel, Roxana title: You must worry! The interpretation of mustn’t varies with context and verbal complement date: 2023 words: 7426 flesch: 60 summary: For instance, (1a) exemplifies a lack of necessity context: it is not necessary to eat the bread today, since it will be good to eat tomorrow as well. (lack of necessity context) keywords: context; lack; necessity; necessity contexts; participants; physical; sentences; verbs cache: elm-5372.pdf plain text: elm-5372.txt item: #39 of 93 id: elm-5375 author: Tsvilodub, Polina; van Tiel, Bob; Franke, Michael title: The role of relevance, competence, and priors for scalar inferences date: 2023 words: 5667 flesch: 55 summary: This process is typically explained as an instance of scalar inference. scalar inference; relevance; competence; prior probability; disjunction 1. keywords: alternative; competence; effect; inferences; participants; prior; relevance; speaker; tiel cache: elm-5375.pdf plain text: elm-5375.txt item: #40 of 93 id: elm-5376 author: Attali, Noa; Pearl, Lisa S.; Scontras, Gregory title: Corpus evidence for the role of world knowledge in ambiguity reduction: Using high positive expectations to inform quantifier scope date: 2023 words: 5456 flesch: 55 summary: On the other hand, experimental studies that directly measure interpretation preference by adult na- tive English speakers find a preference for inverse scope interpretations of every- and all-negation (Carden 1970, Heringer 1970, Carden 1973). Our corpus analysis suggests that a high positive expectation (HPE) expressed directly in the preceding linguistic context can affect scope interpretation preferences for every- negation utterances. keywords: context; corpus; count; hpe; interpretation; inverse; negation; scope; vote cache: elm-5376.pdf plain text: elm-5376.txt item: #41 of 93 id: elm-5377 author: Santorio, Paolo; Wellwood, Alexis title: Nonboolean Conditionals date: 2023 words: 5454 flesch: 66 summary: Probabilities of conditionals and conditional probabilities. We test this prediction by investigating probability judgments about sentences of the form ⌜a → b { and/or } c → d⌝. keywords: conditionals; drop; experiment; ics; participants; probability; square cache: elm-5377.pdf plain text: elm-5377.txt item: #42 of 93 id: elm-5379 author: Soper, Elizabeth; Koenig, Jean-Pierre title: Modeling the Role of Polysemy in Verb Categorization date: 2023 words: 4767 flesch: 54 summary: Previous work using word embeddings to model semantic categorization has treated semantic categorization as categorization of word types, rather than word senses. We evaluate three methods of extracting embeddings from the contextual BERT model: two baseline methods, which create one representation per word form, and a multi-prototype method which generates one representation per word sense. keywords: bert; categories; categorization; embeddings; polysemy; proceedings; sense; verb; word cache: elm-5379.pdf plain text: elm-5379.txt item: #43 of 93 id: elm-5380 author: Zhu, Ziling; Ahn, Dorothy title: Effects of instruction on semantic and pragmatic judgment tasks date: 2023 words: 4039 flesch: 55 summary: Sentence judgment tasks are used often in linguistics studies. Our results highlight the need for language- and study-specific norming procedures in sentence judgment tasks. keywords: english; instruction; judgment; participants; sentence; stimuli; tasks; violations cache: elm-5380.pdf plain text: elm-5380.txt item: #44 of 93 id: elm-5382 author: Jasbi, Masoud; Bermudez, Natalia; Davidson, Kathryn title: Default biases in the interpretation of English negation, conjunction, and disjunction date: 2023 words: 5905 flesch: 50 summary: We created “inclusive disjunction” trials by adding the phrase or both to simple disjunction trials (e.g. has a cat or a dog or both). The model estimated a positive coefficient for inclusive control disjunction trials compared to simple disjunction trials suggesting that simple disjunction was not completely inclusive (� = 12.00, 95%CI = keywords: cat; conjunction; disjunction; dog; interpretation; negation; negative; trials cache: elm-5382.pdf plain text: elm-5382.txt item: #45 of 93 id: elm-5383 author: Cowan, Joe; Katsos, Napoleon title: Investigating a shared mechanism in the priming of manner and quantity implicature date: 2023 words: 6486 flesch: 52 summary: Given the high baseline rates of QI derivation, the free choice between the enriched or unenriched QI presented on the cards self-selects for the image pertaining to the enriched interpretation and therefore acts as a prime without having to push participants to the selection (e.g., as in 1b with the ‘THIS IMAGE!’ caption). Here, given that MI can be primed, if there is a shared derivational mecha- nism between QI and MI, we predict that QI derivation in the preceding prime trials will confer greater MI derivation in the succeeding critical trials. keywords: image; implicature; prime; priming; trials cache: elm-5383.pdf plain text: elm-5383.txt item: #46 of 93 id: elm-5384 author: Levinson, Lisa title: Beyond Surprising: English Event Structure in the Maze date: 2023 words: 5454 flesch: 55 summary: This work is part of a series of replications in this vein to improve our understanding of the relationship between event structure, prediction, and sentence processing. Put together, this work suggests that the best way to currently model the predictions that humans are making during sentence processing is with probabilities extracted from language models and quantified as surprisals. keywords: event; language; levinson; maze; model; participants; processing; result; sentence; structure; surprisal; task; verb; word cache: elm-5384.pdf plain text: elm-5384.txt item: #47 of 93 id: elm-5389 author: Winterstein, Grégoire; Cantin-Savoie, Ghyslain; Laperle, Samuel; Van Dorpe, Josiane; Villeneuve, Nora title: Informational content vs. discourse orientation: experimental and computational perspectives date: 2023 words: 4938 flesch: 52 summary: Each experiment focuses on one kind of population (humans or language models), and one kind of meaning (informational content or discourse orientation). Language models exhibit a less transparent be- havior. keywords: content; discourse; experiment; language; models; orientation; peine; presque cache: elm-5389.pdf plain text: elm-5389.txt item: #48 of 93 id: elm-5390 author: Armenante, Giuliano; Hohaus, Vera; Stolterfoht, Britta title: Transparency in the processing of temporal ambiguity: The case of embedded tense date: 2023 words: 5898 flesch: 52 summary: Transparency in the processing of temporal ambiguity: The case of embedded tense Giuliano Armenante, Vera Hohaus & Britta Stolterfoht* The first two experiments investigated the two hypotheses for the type of configuration from the introduction, the temporal ambiguous interpretation of a clausal Proceedings of ELM 2: 1-12, 2023 Giuliano Armenante, Vera Hohaus and Britta Stolterfoht: Transparency in the processing of temporal ambiguity: The case of embedded tense. keywords: ambiguity; experiment; interpretation; past; processing; reading; sim; tense cache: elm-5390.pdf plain text: elm-5390.txt item: #49 of 93 id: elm-5391 author: Zhang, Yuhan; Chen, Wenqi; Zhang, Ruihan; Zhang, Xiajie title: Representing affect information in word embeddings date: 2023 words: 5702 flesch: 51 summary: Representing affect information in word embeddings Yuhan Zhang, Wenqi Chen, Ruihan Zhang & Xiajie Zhang We used the human-labeled dataset (Mohammad 2018) as the ground truth and performed various correlational and classi- fication tests on four types of word embeddings. keywords: affect; bert; embeddings; emotion; human; information; language; linguistics; proceedings; vad; word; word embeddings; zhang cache: elm-5391.pdf plain text: elm-5391.txt item: #50 of 93 id: elm-5392 author: Schlotterbeck, Fabian; Augurzky, Petra title: Reading times show effects of contextual complexity and uncertainty in comprehension of German universal quantifiers date: 2023 words: 7265 flesch: 52 summary: We also observed RT effects that seemed to depend on a combination of these two factors (e.g. the effect of matching vs. mismatching colors at the preposition in Exp. 3). Secondly, PRAGMATIC EXPEC- TATIONS predicted RT effects already on the adjective, which is the position where the potential for true continuations is decided. keywords: color; complexity; contexts; effects; exp; inside; outside; preposition; set cache: elm-5392.pdf plain text: elm-5392.txt item: #51 of 93 id: elm-5394 author: Kaiser, Elsi title: Proportions vs. cardinalities: Comparative ambiguities and the COVID pandemic date: 2023 words: 5885 flesch: 49 summary: From a processing point-of-view, it seems that a dispreference for proportional readings would not be unexpected, due to their greater complexity: Proportional readings depend on both the numerator and the denominator, whereas cardinal readers essentially only make reference to the numerator. For example, for the display and the sen- tence in Figure 1 (There are more COVID cases in ___ than ___ ), putting Teakley County in the first blank and Hawkton County in the second blank indicates a cardinal interpretation, whereas putting Hawkton County in the first blank and Teakley County in the second blank indicates a proportional interpretation. keywords: cardinal; cases; comparatives; covid; level; noun; people; readings cache: elm-5394.pdf plain text: elm-5394.txt item: #52 of 93 id: elm-5395 author: Göbel, Alexander; Wagner, Michael title: On a concessive reading of the rise-fall-rise contour: contextual and semantic factors date: 2023 words: 5870 flesch: 58 summary: Experiment 1 substantiated a contrast between the acceptability of the RFR in positive replies to negative statements and negative replies to positive statements, as argued by Göbel (2019), Proceedings of ELM 2: 83-94, 2023 Alexander Göbel and Michael Wagner: (= those alternatives whose truth-value is not yet known) cannot be safely claimed, formalized as in (3) as a conventional implicature.2 Wagner proposes a similar analysis, with the difference that (i) relevant alternatives are speech acts rather than propositions and (ii) that there is an alternative speech act that could have been made, rather than focusing on what alternatives are not claimable, see (4).3 (3) JRFR ϕKci = ∀p ∈ JϕKf s.t. p is assertable in C: the speaker cannot safely claim p. (4) JRFRK = λS. ∃S’ in JSKga, S ↛ S’ and performing S’ might be justified: S These two accounts capture the distribution of the RFR in quantifier scales as in (5), where the RFR is felicitous with the middle value some but infelicitous with the extreme values none or all. keywords: concessive; experiment; göbel; intonation; match; rfr; rise; valence cache: elm-5395.pdf plain text: elm-5395.txt item: #53 of 93 id: elm-5398 author: Kaiser, Elsi; Storbeck, Jesse title: Real-time processing of indexical and generic expressions: Insights from, and implications for, COVID-related public health messages date: 2023 words: 5788 flesch: 54 summary: According to the Indexicality Hypothesis, linguistic expressions that could, in principle, be indexical (i.e., refer directly to individuals salient in the speech situation; speaker and/or address- ee, e.g. you, we) are easier to process than non-indexical forms like people, even in contexts where the forms are used non-indexically. This study is a preliminary foray into the real-time processing of non- anaphoric pronouns and generic expressions, and focuses on the use of you, we and people in COVID-19 health messages. keywords: expressions; forms; generic; health; hypothesis; messages; people; processing; reading; time cache: elm-5398.pdf plain text: elm-5398.txt item: #54 of 93 id: elm-5400 author: Göbel, Alexander; Schwarz, Florian title: Comparing Global and Local Accommodation: Rating and Response Time Data date: 2023 words: 3985 flesch: 45 summary: The results show that globally accommodating a presupposition led to a larger decrease in acceptance than locally accommodating, and that response times for local accommodation were overall faster. While we take the results to be inconclusive with regard to the question about the underlying mechanism, we conjecture that the contexts tested here were more fa- vorable for local accommodation, and that hence investigating how different contexts affect the relative ease of accommodation type is a promising avenue for future re- search. keywords: accommodation; context; florian; presupposition; response; schwarz; triggers cache: elm-5400.pdf plain text: elm-5400.txt item: #55 of 93 id: elm-5413 author: Grusdt, Britta; Liu, Mingya; Franke, Michael title: Testing the influence of QUDs on the occurrence of Conditional Perfection date: 2023 words: 7306 flesch: 53 summary: 105 https://doi.org/10.3765/elm https://www.elm-conference.net/ Figure 1: Exhaustive and non-exhaustive situations of critical trials in Experiment 2. To test this account, we present two novel behavioral ex- periments with non-text based stimuli that take advantage of participants’ intuitive understanding of physics. keywords: block; conditional; experiment; participants; qud; situation; stimuli; stimulus cache: elm-5413.pdf plain text: elm-5413.txt item: #56 of 93 id: elm-5414 author: Cortez Espinoza, Maya; Fricke, Lea title: On the interpretation of German einige. The effect of tense and cardinality date: 2023 words: 5285 flesch: 59 summary: 54 https://doi.org/10.3765/elm https://www.elm-conference.net/ Figure 2: Percentage of accepted bet by tense and cardinality 3. Bayesian Modelling. Thus, we want to test the hypothesis that statements involving einige will receive higher acceptance when referring to sets with higher cardinalities, relative to the cardinality of the total set, than when referring to sets with smaller cardinalites. keywords: cardinality; einige; experiment; future; german; interpretation; participants; past; prs; tense cache: elm-5414.pdf plain text: elm-5414.txt item: #57 of 93 id: elm-5757 author: Walter, Sebastian; Hinterwimmer, Stefan title: An experimental investigation of perspective alignment in gesture and speech date: 2025 words: 6329 flesch: 54 summary: (2021) seminal study investigating align- ment patterns of perspective in gesture in speech, the study reported in this paper controlled for intervening pragmatic factors which potentially block perspective alignment since in this study only CVGs were compared. An experimental investigation of perspective alignment in gesture and speech Sebastian Walter & Stefan Hinterwimmer* Abstract. keywords: alignment; cvg; gesture; hinterwimmer; perspective; preference; protagonist; speaker; speech; stefan; study; viewpoint cache: elm-5757.pdf plain text: elm-5757.txt item: #58 of 93 id: elm-5768 author: Sostarics, Thomas; Ronai, Eszter; Cole, Jennifer title: Relating Scalar Inference and Alternative Activation: A View from the Rise-Fall-Rise Tune in American English date: 2025 words: 6678 flesch: 51 summary: When describing the various pragmatic accounts for RFR, what stands out across accounts (rhetorically, though not necessarily implemen- tationally) is a persistent invocation of some notion of “higher alternatives.” SI is famously another domain within semantics/pragmatics where higher alternatives play a role. keywords: alternative; condition; eszter; fall; inference; pitch; results; rfr; rise; ronai; tunes cache: elm-5768.pdf plain text: elm-5768.txt item: #59 of 93 id: elm-5796 author: Lacina, Radim; Gotzner, Nicole title: Only the (informationally) stronger survive: A probe recognition study with scale-mates and antonyms date: 2025 words: 6553 flesch: 52 summary: What this research shows is that stronger scalar alternatives are preferentially activated during comprehension in cases where they can support a pragmatic inference and that antonymic mean- ings are activated in that process at the same time. The results of our current probe recognition study showed that strong scalar items (filthy) were more strongly represented in the model when their weaker scale-mates were present in the preceding stimulus as opposed to when the prime was an unrelated word (Experiment 1). keywords: alternatives; antonyms; experiment; gotzner; implicature; lacina; scalar; scale cache: elm-5796.pdf plain text: elm-5796.txt item: #60 of 93 id: elm-5797 author: Lago, Sol; Schulz, Petra; Rinke, Esther; Oltrogge, Elise; Dudschig, Carolin; Kaup, Barbara title: Insensitivity to truth-value in negated sentences: does linear distance matter? date: 2025 words: 4988 flesch: 47 summary: If so, we expected to restore participants’ sensitivity to truth-value in far distance negative sentences (but not in close distance sentences), yielding an interaction between truth-value and the distance between the negator and the predicate. but this facilitation is often reduced or absent in negative sentences, yielding a so-called negation-by-truth-value interaction. keywords: distance; experiment; kaup; negation; negative; negator; predicate; sentences; truth; value cache: elm-5797.pdf plain text: elm-5797.txt item: #61 of 93 id: elm-5798 author: Mognon, Irene; Marree, Amber L. ; Hendriks, Petra title: Are second language speakers more pragmatically tolerant? Explaining the differences in scalar implicature generation between L2 and L1 date: 2025 words: 6969 flesch: 50 summary: In other words, do L2 speakers accept underinformative sentences to a larger degree than adult L1 speakers do, and if so, can this be explained by their higher pragmatic tolerance due to their limited L2 exposure? However, as we clarify below, we believe this account to be potentially relevant for explaining SI generation in adult L2 speakers. keywords: generation; group; language; option; participants; proficiency; sentences; sis; speakers; task cache: elm-5798.pdf plain text: elm-5798.txt item: #62 of 93 id: elm-5800 author: Asami, Daiki; Han, Chao; Burger, Jacob; Dunlop, Deanna; Lu, Yue; Yahya M Morad, Effah; Zhao, Chenyue; Hestvik, Arild title: 'Negation-blind' N400 effect disappears when lexical priming is controlled date: 2025 words: 6545 flesch: 56 summary: We also found the significant main effect of truth value: false sentences were judged more accurately than true sentences (83 vs. 88%; F(1,29) = 11.1, p < 0.01). Specif- ically, they found that false negative sentences elicited a larger N400 than their true versions, when preceded by contextual phrases (e.g., (7b) vs. (7a), where with proper equipment serves as a contextual phrase). keywords: affirmative; effect; erp; et al; n400; negation; negative; priming; processing; sentence; truth cache: elm-5800.pdf plain text: elm-5800.txt item: #63 of 93 id: elm-5806 author: Felton, Casey; Jasbi, Masoud title: Non-Implicature Sources of Exclusivity in Linguistic Disjunction date: 2025 words: 5841 flesch: 48 summary: Traditional accounts of this ambiguity focus on scalar implicature as the source of disjunction exclusivity, a process whereby Gricean reasoning over Horn scales strengthens the baseline inclu- sive reading to an implied exclusive reading (Grice, 1978; Horn, 1972; Gazdar, 1980). Even though a large portion of the variance in disjunction exclusivity was explained by variance in prior beliefs about disjunct compatibility, there remained a large amount of variance attributable to other factors, such as pragmatic scalar exclusivity implicatures. keywords: compatibility; disjunction; disjuncts; exclusivity; experiment; implicature; items; participants cache: elm-5806.pdf plain text: elm-5806.txt item: #64 of 93 id: elm-5807 author: Qiu, Zhuang; Felton, Casey; Houghton, Zachary; Jasbi, Masoud title: Experimental Paradigms on Scalar Implicature Estimation date: 2025 words: 5872 flesch: 59 summary: We found that the estimated rate of scalar implicature computation varied noticeably between different tasks as well as scales. We conducted three experiments to explore the effect of task variation on the estimated rate of scalar implicature computation. keywords: card; experiment; implicature; participants; pst; scalar; task; trials; tvjt cache: elm-5807.pdf plain text: elm-5807.txt item: #65 of 93 id: elm-5809 author: Solt, Stephanie; Mühlenbernd, Roland; Burbelko, Mariya title: Social meaning and pragmatic reasoning: The case of (im)precision date: 2025 words: 6091 flesch: 45 summary: Consistent with previous work and our predictions, we find that the choice of numerical precision level carries social meaning: precise speakers are rated higher on competence- related dimensions than approximate ones, but are also found to be more pedantic. In summary, while Experiment 2 did not provide extremely strong evidence for the role of reasoning about speaker knowledge in the derivation of social infer- ences, neither does it provide compelling evidence against the existence of such an effect. keywords: approximate; form; information; knowledge; meaning; precise; speaker cache: elm-5809.pdf plain text: elm-5809.txt item: #66 of 93 id: elm-5810 author: Strohmaier, David; Wimmer, Simon title: Contrafactives, learnability, and production date: 2025 words: 8335 flesch: 52 summary: Factive attitude ascriptions are true only if mind and world representations correspond, contrafactive attitude ascriptions only if they do not. Factive attitude ascriptions are not true if mind and world representations do not correspond, whilst contrafactive attitude ascriptions are not true if mind and world representations do correspond. keywords: ascriptions; attitude; contrafactives; experiment; factive; language; learnability; matching; mind; model; non; presupposition; strohmaier; value; wimmer; world cache: elm-5810.pdf plain text: elm-5810.txt item: #67 of 93 id: elm-5811 author: Smeman, Sven ; Smit, Maaike; Hampton, James A.; Winter, Yoad title: Disambiguating quantity judgements: mass/count and extra-grammatical cues date: 2025 words: 6114 flesch: 55 summary: Comparative quantity judgements are a useful probe into the semantics of the mass/count distinction, where count nouns usually trigger cardinal compar- isons (more dogs), and mass nouns trigger non-cardinal measurement (more rice). By contrast, mass nouns (MNs) are in the singular and show an irregular behavior: ‘substance’ MNs (SMNs, e.g. clay) prefer non-cardinal measurement (by volume, weight, etc.) while ‘object’ MNs (OMNs, e.g. baggage, furniture) trigger cardinal comparisons (McCawley 1975). keywords: cns; count; experiment; judgements; mass; measurement; quantity; smn cache: elm-5811.pdf plain text: elm-5811.txt item: #68 of 93 id: elm-5812 author: Muxica, Christian; Harris, Jesse title: Constructing focus alternatives from context and the limits of semantic priming date: 2025 words: 7377 flesch: 49 summary: Constructing focus alternatives from context and the limits of semantic priming Christian Muxica & Jesse A. Harris* Therefore, priming and the generation of focus alternatives can be separated conceptually, as alternatives are constructed immediately in concert with the context. keywords: alternatives; associate; context; focus; harris; model; non; priming; probe; response; stage; word cache: elm-5812.pdf plain text: elm-5812.txt item: #69 of 93 id: elm-5813 author: Ross, Hayley; Kim, Najoung; Davidson, Kathryn title: Fake reefs are sometimes reefs and sometimes not, but are always compositional date: 2025 words: 6132 flesch: 52 summary: Further, we select pairs of high and zero/low frequency bigrams because it is possible that high frequency bigrams might come with more con- ventionalized contexts and/or more fixed meanings and inferences in general, and thus might resist manipulation by provided contexts. This property distinguishes privative adjectives from other types of adjectives, which typically yield an intersective or subsective inference. keywords: adjective; bigrams; compositional; context; experiment; fake; frequency; inferences; noun; privative; reefs; subsective cache: elm-5813.pdf plain text: elm-5813.txt item: #70 of 93 id: elm-5814 author: Qin, Erying; Sun, Chao; Breheny, Richard title: Does ‘a couple’ pattern with scalars or numbers - Insights from inference and ‘so’ tasks date: 2025 words: 4624 flesch: 60 summary: Sun et al. took graded responses to ‘S so not W’ sentences as a measure of ‘liability to strengthen under negation’ and found that this measure can account for previously unexplained variance in rates of target responses in their replication of van Tiel et al’s inference task study. The overall results for the two groups here compared with scales in Sun et al. (2018) are shown in Figure 6. keywords: breheny; couple; inference; numerals; probe; sun; target cache: elm-5814.pdf plain text: elm-5814.txt item: #71 of 93 id: elm-5815 author: Rosina, Emil Eva; Liefke, Kristina title: Experientiality markers in memory reports: A semantics-pragmatics puzzle date: 2025 words: 7104 flesch: 54 summary: GERMAN MAIN STUDY. Additionally, being able to pinpoint specific experientiality markers like German wie is particularly useful for analyzing production data from psychological memory studies that did not themselves create the remembered (and subsequently reported) experience. keywords: blue; evidence; experientiality; german; liefke; memory; red; reports; rosina; semantics; study; wie cache: elm-5815.pdf plain text: elm-5815.txt item: #72 of 93 id: elm-5816 author: Anderson, Carolyn Jane; Kim, Yoolim title: Parenthesized Modifiers in English and Korean: What They (May) Mean date: 2025 words: 7254 flesch: 49 summary: They also argue that the meaning of the parenthesized component and its host are more closely Proceedings of ELM 3: 1-18, 2025 Carolyn Jane Anderson and Yoolim Kim: Parenthesized modifiers in English and Korean: What they (may) mean. Lewen & Anderson (2022) propose that the parentheses in RPPs Proceedings of ELM 3: 1-18, 2025 Carolyn Jane Anderson and Yoolim Kim: Parenthesized modifiers in English and Korean: What they (may) mean. keywords: alternative; anderson; english; korean; modifiers; participants; rpps; scalar cache: elm-5816.pdf plain text: elm-5816.txt item: #73 of 93 id: elm-5817 author: Liu, Mingya; Rotter, Stephanie title: Linguistic and Social Meaning Match: An experiment on modal concord in English date: 2025 words: 5502 flesch: 57 summary: Our results show a strengthening effect by necessity MC and a weakening effect of possibility MC in that significantly higher speaker commitment ratings were received for necessity MC vs. SM constructions (i.e., must certainly vs. must) with the reverse pattern for possibility modal construc- tions (i.e., may possibly vs. may). This paper deals with the phenomenon ‘modal concord’ (MC) and addresses the linguistic and social meaning of MC constructions. keywords: concord; data; english; liu; meaning; modal; poss; ratings; results; rotter cache: elm-5817.pdf plain text: elm-5817.txt item: #74 of 93 id: elm-5818 author: Dieuleveut, Anouk; Noveck, Ira title: Devoir, ou pouvoir, that is the question date: 2025 words: 8288 flesch: 65 summary: Previous acquisition research has shown that English-speaking children have particular difficulty with necessity modals: comprehension experiments show that they tend to accept must or have-to in possibil- ity scenarios (Noveck 2001, Özturk & Papafragou 2015, a.o.); production studies show that they use them less frequently than possibility modals, and when they do, their usage is not always adult-like (Dieuleveut et al. 2022). One challenge is that past studies have focused primarily on English, where necessity modals are much rarer than possibility modals in parental speech, which could suggest that the delay is simply due to less exposure. keywords: adult; children; devoir; dieuleveut; english; experiment; force; french; modals; mother; necessity; possibility; pouvoir; use cache: elm-5818.pdf plain text: elm-5818.txt item: #75 of 93 id: elm-5819 author: Cochard, Antoine; van Hout, Angeliek; Demirdache, Hamida title: Liz can buy a croissant or donut. That’s both together, right? Distinguishing target Free Choice from non-target Modal Conjunction in Child French date: 2025 words: 5602 flesch: 54 summary: The results revealed that free choice inferences are not so early acquired as previously thought. Experiments that investigated the ac- quisition of free choice inferences did so by falsifying one of the two disjuncts. keywords: ^(𝐶; children; choice; condition; conjunction; croissant; donut; modal; target cache: elm-5819.pdf plain text: elm-5819.txt item: #76 of 93 id: elm-5820 author: Cantin-Savoie, Ghyslain; Winterstein, Grégoire; Foucambert, Denis title: Studying the interplay of context and semantic content in the interpretation of adversative conjunctions with eye-tracking date: 2025 words: 6266 flesch: 54 summary: First-gaze duration are said to be influenced by cognitive processes that are not as fast as those influencing first fixation duration (Rayner 1998), and also by plausibility of words in sentence context, which is not the case for first fixation duration (Inhoff 1984). Valence is a categorical variable with two possible values : plus (’more’) or moins (’less’), that represents whether the word following mais (’but’) in item sentences was plus (i.e. a superiority comparative) or moins (i.e. an inferiority comparative). keywords: adversative; context; duration; effect; fixation; interpretation; participants; reading; sentences; winterstein; word cache: elm-5820.pdf plain text: elm-5820.txt item: #77 of 93 id: elm-5821 author: Cao, Angela; White, Aaron; Lassiter, Daniel title: Cause, Make, and Force as Graded Causatives date: 2025 words: 7867 flesch: 62 summary: To support this argument, we pro- vide experimental evidence for a differentiating semantics of three causing verbs using explicitly- defined causal models, which enable us to calculate measures derived from the stimuli. semantics; causatives; causal models; psycholinguistics 1. keywords: alt; cao; causal; cause; force; int; model; player; sufficiency; sufresidalt; verbs cache: elm-5821.pdf plain text: elm-5821.txt item: #78 of 93 id: elm-5822 author: Bleotu, Adina Camelia; Panaitescu, Mara; Benz, Anton; Nicolae, Andreea ; Bîlbîie , Gabriela; Tieu, Lyn title: Coloring disjunction in child Romanian date: 2025 words: 5315 flesch: 55 summary: Children interpret some disjunctions conjunctively: Evidence from child Romanian. A binominal test revealed that the observed proportion of exclusive children (10/34) was significantly different from chance (p<.05). keywords: bleotu; children; coloring; disjunction; like; object; romanian; sau cache: elm-5822.pdf plain text: elm-5822.txt item: #79 of 93 id: elm-5823 author: Barbosa, Jennifer; Pinzón-Henao, Paola; Pasquella , Angelina ; Muentener, Paul; Lakusta, Laura title: Mechanistic Support Language in Colombian Spanish-speakers date: 2025 words: 5362 flesch: 52 summary: These findings shed light on the development of Mechanical Support language in Spanish-speaking children, the influence of context—specifically, visibility of mechanism—on language, as well as the lexicalization patterns for encoding physical support in Spanish more generally. Of note, in English, lexical verbs that encode the mechanism (often denominals) are common in Mechanical Support language (e.g., tape, pin, clip) yet less is known about whether they are used in Spanish. keywords: adults; children; events; language; mechanism; spanish; speakers; support; verbs cache: elm-5823.pdf plain text: elm-5823.txt item: #80 of 93 id: elm-5824 author: Bleotu, Adina Camelia; Nicolae, Andreea ; Panaitescu, Mara; Bîlbîie , Gabriela; Benz, Anton; Tieu, Lyn title: A nonce investigation of a possible conjunctive default for disjunction date: 2025 words: 6216 flesch: 56 summary: The current study explores whether Romanian-speaking children and adults have a default preference for conjunctive interpretations when encountering two items A and B linked by an unknown operator. In our study, we investigate the kinds of meanings children and adults ascribe to a sequence where two nouns are linked by nonce words. keywords: adults; bleotu; children; default; disjunction; fie; interpretation; nonce; tieu cache: elm-5824.pdf plain text: elm-5824.txt item: #81 of 93 id: elm-5825 author: Schlotterbeck, Fabian; Berezovskaya, Polina title: Less-comparatives must be less ambiguous than exactly-differentials, experimental data shows date: 2025 words: 7293 flesch: 53 summary: scope ambiguity; degree semantics; comparatives; modals; acceptability judgments 1. Another related account is that of Beck (2012a) who derives scope ambiguity of less-comparatives using an alternative-semantics along the lines of Rooth (1992), but also uses the proposal of Oda (2008) to explain ambiguity in exactly-differentials. keywords: ambiguity; comparatives; conditions; data; differentials; draft; modal; pages; paper; proceedings; questions; scope cache: elm-5825.pdf plain text: elm-5825.txt item: #82 of 93 id: elm-5826 author: Patel, Premvanti; Syrett, Kristen; Aravind, Athulya title: Using the lower bound set by the universal modal to investigate the status of partial objects and count nouns date: 2025 words: 4850 flesch: 58 summary: These studies provide a good starting point for our experiment, which assesses children’s and adults’ treatment of partial objects and the role of language in mediating how such objects are quantified. Using the lower bound set by the universal modal to investigate the status of partial objects and count nouns Premvanti Patel, Kristen Syrett & Athulya Aravind* Abstract. keywords: adults; children; count; modal; objects; participants; set; trials cache: elm-5826.pdf plain text: elm-5826.txt item: #83 of 93 id: elm-5828 author: Mulligan, Karl; Rawlins, Kyle title: Analyzing naturally-sourced Questions Under Discussion date: 2025 words: 4928 flesch: 52 summary: In Figure 4a, we show a breakdown of answer span syntactic phrasal categories, separated by QUD question type. We consider various analyses designed to address the problem of measuring question similarity. keywords: answer; discourse; discussion; mulligan; qud; quds; questions; rawlins; variability cache: elm-5828.pdf plain text: elm-5828.txt item: #84 of 93 id: elm-5829 author: Benz, Anton; Solstad, Torgrim; Bott, Oliver; Kahnberg, Martin; Schalley, Andrea C. title: A conceptual analysis of verbs of pushing and pulling date: 2025 words: 4603 flesch: 54 summary: It should be noted that the main research goal in this pilot study was to determine the predictors that trigger the production of different verbs and to classify the verbs in semantic verb clusters. However, less progress has been made in the conceptual space of caused motion events involving both an agent and a patient as for verbs like push and pull. keywords: agent; angle; barrel; force; motion; movement; object; pushing; verbs cache: elm-5829.pdf plain text: elm-5829.txt item: #85 of 93 id: elm-5830 author: Erbach, Kurt; Poppe, Magnus; Ebert, Cornelia title: Experimental findings for a cross-modal account of dynamic binding in gesture-speech interaction date: 2025 words: 5637 flesch: 50 summary: 154 https://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/ELM/issue/archive https://www.elm-conference.net/ Figure 1: Number of follow-up acceptances in pronoun experiment; max-n = 180 To understand whether or not there is an effect of pointing in the resolution of pronoun binding with otherwise unspecified discourse referents—i.e. to understand if there is a difference between (1-a)+(1-b) and (1-c)+(1-b)—the results were analyzed with a mixed-effects model with binomial error distribution constructed in R (R Core Team 2015) using the lmerTest package (Kuznetsova et al. 2019). Dev. questionID (Intercept) 1.172 1.083 Table 3: Summary of glmer model for pronoun experiment results if there was no interaction between binding pronouns and gesture. keywords: discourse; ebert; experiment; follow; gesture; pointing; pronoun cache: elm-5830.pdf plain text: elm-5830.txt item: #86 of 93 id: elm-5831 author: Hoeks, Morwenna; Toosarvandani, Maziar; Rysling, Amanda title: How to compute a focus: Evidence from incremental processing date: 2025 words: 7103 flesch: 54 summary: Even if focus slowdowns are due to the general prioritization of focused material, it is conceivable that such slowdowns disappear for SOF, because such foci may not constitute important information. However, since their studies also found suggestive evidence that focus slowdowns do not entirely disappear in the presence of explicit contextual alternatives, it may be that other aspects of interpreting focus, like deducing the location of F-marking (i) or incorporating the alternatives with the sentence meaning (iii), also play a role. keywords: alternatives; book; context; foci; focus; processing; read; sentence; slowdowns; sof cache: elm-5831.pdf plain text: elm-5831.txt item: #87 of 93 id: elm-5835 author: Wu, Yifan; Aparicio, Helena title: Disagreements do not automatically raise the standard of precision date: 2025 words: 6219 flesch: 53 summary: In particular, we ask whether metalinguistic disagreements result in an automatic update of the SoP. In two acceptability judgment experiments, we show that imprecise utterances are not deemed unacceptable when embedded in a disagreement dialogue. This paper investigates the discourse dynamics of imprecision, focusing on whether metalinguistic disagreements affect the acceptability of imprecise utterances. keywords: experiment; figure; imprecise; participants; responses; results; scale; sop; standard; utterance cache: elm-5835.pdf plain text: elm-5835.txt item: #88 of 93 id: elm-5836 author: Lemke, Robin title: Investigating fragment usage with a gamified utterance selection task date: 2025 words: 6660 flesch: 50 summary: Sentence fragments and the notion ‘sentence’. Investigating fragment usage with a gamified utterance selection task Robin Lemke* Abstract. keywords: condition; cost; data; experiment; fragment; lemke; messages; participants; usage; utterance cache: elm-5836.pdf plain text: elm-5836.txt item: #89 of 93 id: elm-5839 author: Eliatamby, André; Tieu, Lyn title: The role of definiteness in ad hoc implicatures date: 2025 words: 3350 flesch: 52 summary: Such an ex- planation is difficult to support, however, if implicatures are only computed at the sentential level, as suggested by Neo-Gricean models of implicature (Sauerland 2004, Geurts 2010). Uniqueness can be a trigger for implicature if implicatures are computed locally (Chierchia et al. 2012, Fox 2007) within the DP: (10) Mary bought EXH the striped sweater Assuming that an alternative to ‘the striped sweater’ is ‘the striped and spotted sweater’, then the enriched DP generated in (10) is ‘the striped and not spotted sweater’. keywords: implicatures; mary; sentences; sweater cache: elm-5839.pdf plain text: elm-5839.txt item: #90 of 93 id: elm-5845 author: Walter, Sebastian title: Indirect discourse as mixed quotation? An experimental investigation date: 2025 words: 6313 flesch: 58 summary: Finally, for ID utterances as in (8b) they hypothesize that self-pointing should not be acceptable when aligned with a third-person pronoun as ID does not involve quotation and therefore the gesture cannot be interpreted as a quoted CVG. For FID utterances (cf. (1c)), an analysis has been proposed treating it as a highly specialized form of mixed quotation where the original thought or utterance of the reported speaker with pronouns and tense markings being systematically unquoted, thus accounting for their shifting behavior (Maier 2015). keywords: discourse; fid; gestures; matrix; perspective; pointing; quotation; self; speaker; speech; subject cache: elm-5845.pdf plain text: elm-5845.txt item: #91 of 93 id: elm-5854 author: Palucci, Jonathan title: Pseudo-scoping out of tensed clauses: cumulation vs. buildups date: 2025 words: 7026 flesch: 52 summary: In this paper, we report experimental results providing evidence that variation readings are not sensitive to buildups. The contrast between (1) and (2) raises the following empirical puzzle: variation readings appear to be predicate sensitive (Barker 2022). keywords: buildup; context; cumulation; predicates; problems; readings; variation cache: elm-5854.pdf plain text: elm-5854.txt item: #92 of 93 id: elm-5857 author: Grove, Julian; White, Aaron Steven title: Modeling the prompt in inference judgment tasks date: 2025 words: 6083 flesch: 53 summary: Meanwhile, we find that confidence scale model performs the best on the dataset containing the prompt in (6a), as expected, while the confidence scale and probability of confidence scale models perform about equally on the dataset containing the prompt in (6b) and better than Grove & White’s original prompt model (the probability scale model). We refer to this model as the probability of confidence scale model. keywords: distribution; factive; grove; inference; models; probability; prompt; scale; semantics; state; white cache: elm-5857.pdf plain text: elm-5857.txt item: #93 of 93 id: elm-5859 author: Coppock, Elizabeth; Beaver, David; Perkins, Wilder; Richardson, Emily title: Is there a superlative rabbit in the ordinal hat? A study of ordinals vs. degree modifiers in nested definites date: 2025 words: 6185 flesch: 52 summary: relative readings; nested definite descriptions; ordinals; superlatives 1. Introduction. In this paper, we show that ordinals resist relative readings to a substantially greater extent than superla- tives (and we find that comparatives easily allow them in our experimental setting). keywords: degree; modifiers; ordinals; position; readings; stair; superlatives; table cache: elm-5859.pdf plain text: elm-5859.txt