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What second-language speakers can tell us about pragmatic processing
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modified on 2022-01-30, 13:26 Upon
hearing the phrase Some cats meow, a listener might
pragmatically infer that ‘Some but not all cats meow’. This is known as a scalar implicature and it often
arises when a speaker produces a weak linguistic expression instead
of a stronger one. Several L2 studies
claim that pragmatic inferences are generated by default and their comprehension presents no challenges to L2 learners. However, the evidence obtained from these
studies largely stems from offline-based tasks that provide limited information
about how scalar implicatures are processed. This study investigated scalar implicature
processing among L2 speakers of English and the degree to which differences in
L2 proficiency and Theory of Mind abilities would modulate pragmatic
responding. The experiment used an online sentence verification
paradigm that required participants to judge, among multiple control items, the
veracity of under-informative sentences, such as Some cats are mammals,
and to respond as quickly as possible. A true response to this item is
indicative of a logical some and perhaps all reading and a false
response to a pragmatic some but not all reading. Our results showed evidence that scalar inferences are not generated by
default. The answer linked to the pragmatic reading some
but not all took significantly longer to make relative to the answer that
relies on the logical interpretation some and perhaps all. This
processing slowdown was also significantly larger among participants
with lower English proficiency. Further exploratory
analyses of participants’ Theory of Mind, as measured by the Social Skill
subscale in the Autism Spectrum Quotient, revealed that socially inclined
participants are more likely than the socially disinclined to derive a scalar
inference. These results together provide new empirical
insights into how L2 learners process scalar implicatures and thus implications
for processing theories in experimental pragmatics and second language
acquisition.