The truth shall make you slow: Superlative Quantifiers as speech act modifiers Aviya Hacohen, Dana Kozlowski & Ariel Cohen Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Experimental Pragmatics Conference Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, 2–4 June 2011 This study is supported by the Israeli Science Foundation, grant # 376/09

BACKGROUND

The classical theory of speech acts Stenius (1967), Searle (1969): Speech acts are not propositions; they are communicative acts Speech acts cannot be embedded under propositional operators (e.g. quantifiers)

An alternative theory of speech acts Krifka (2001; to appear) can Speech acts can sometimes be embedded

Which is correct? In this talk: Superlative quantifiers as a test case

The meaning of superlative quantifiers Superlative quantifiers (SQs): Superlative quantifiers (SQs): at least, at most Commonly assumed to have the same truth-conditions as comparative quantifiers at least three (1)John petted at least three rabbits  more than two  John petted more than two rabbits at most three (2)John petted at most three rabbits  fewer than four  John petted fewer than four rabbits But this is wrong (Guerts & Nouwen 2007)…

Theories of Superlative Quantifiers

Guerts & Nouwen (2007) SQs are complex epistemic operators at least three (1) John petted at least three rabbits = necessary possible ‘It is epistemically necessary that John petted three rabbits, and it is epistemically possible that he petted more.’  x(RABBITS(x)  |x|=3  pet(j,x)) x(RABBITS(x)  |x|>3  pet(j,x))

Büring (2007), Cummins & Katsos (2010) SQs are disjunctions at least three (1) John petted at least three rabbits = exactly three or more than three ‘John petted exactly three rabbits or John petted more than three rabbits.’ |RABBITSx.pet(j,x)|=3  |RABBITSx.pet(j,x)|>3

Cohen & Krifka (to appear) SQs are illocutionary operators embedded under quantification

at least three (1)John Petted at least three rabbits = (A)`The minimal n for which the speaker does not deny that John petted exactly n rabbits is n=3’ (B) ‘For all n<3, the speaker denies that John petted exactly n rabbits.’ ∀ n(n<3 → ASSERT(|RABBITS∩λx.pet(j,x)|  n) If John petted one rabbit  (1) is false. Indeed, one of the assertions in (B) is false. If John petted four rabbits  (1) is true. All of the assertions in (B) are true. But how do we know that the speaker does not also deny that John petted 4 rabbits? This would still be compatible with (A)!

Therefore, we need (C) as well (C) ‘For all n3, the speaker does not deny that John petted exactly n rabbits.’ ∀ n(n  3 → ~ASSERT(|RABBITS∩λx.pet(j,x)|  n) Crucially, (C) does not follow semantically from (A) However, (C) does follow from (A) pragmatically, by implicature: If the speaker wanted to deny that John petted exactly n rabbits for some value of n3, she should have said so. falsitytruth Hence, falsity is determined semantically, but truth is determined pragmatically

TESTING THE THEORIES: PREDICTIONS FOR PROCESSING (for linguistic predictions, see Cohen & Krifka to appear)

Prediction common to all theories Prediction 1 Processing of superlative quantifiers will take longer than comparative quantifiers This prediction has been borne out by Geurts et al. (2010) and Cummins & Katsos (2010)

Unique prediction Cohen & Krifka (to appear): true scalar implicature 1) Judgments of true SQ sentences require calculation of scalar implicature false not 2) Judgments of false SQ sentences do not 3) Computing scalar implicatures takes time (see, e.g., Bott & Noveck, 2004) Prediction 2 True SQ sentences will take longer to process than false ones Competing theories: no such prediction

METHODS

Frequency effects At least is much more frequent than at most To control for frequency effects, we chose Hebrew as the language of the stimuli Hebrew has two forms (lexol hapaxot ‘at least’ and lexol hayoter ‘at most’) with roughly the same (low) frequency For completeness, we also added the much more frequent form lefaxot ‘at least’

Experimental design 5 experimental conditions: Superlative quantifiers lefaxot 1) lefaxot ‘at least’ lexolhapaxot 2) lexol hapaxot ‘at least’ lexol hayoter 3) lexol hayoter ‘at most’ Comparative quantifiers yoter me- 1) yoter me- ‘more than’ paxot me- 2) paxot me- ‘less than’ X 12 items

Procedure Experiment A Sentence verification task: the participant judges if a written sentence truthfully describes an accompanying picture I see Q N Xs Experimental structure: I see Q N Xs Q Q = superlative/comparative quantifier N N = 3, 4, 5 X X = everyday object Stimuli presented and reaction time data recorded using E-Prime

לכל הפחות אני רואה לכל הפחות 4 צלחות בתמונה at least I see at least 4 plates in the picture Example item from lexol hapaxot ‘at least’ condition

לכל היותר אני רואה לכל היותר 3 כוסות בתמונה at most I see at most 3 glasses in the picture Example item from lexol hayoter ‘at most’ condition

Participants 28 adults, native speakers of Hebrew Aged (Mean 27) 17 female, 11 male

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

RTs for superlative vs. comparative conditions P < 0.01

borne out Prediction 1: borne out, replicating previous findings ( Geurts et al. 2010; Katsos & Cummins 2010)

RTs for true vs. false superlative quantifiers

RTs for true vs. false comparative quantifiers

borne out Prediction 2: borne out True SQ sentences take longer to process than false ones The interaction between quantifier (lexol hapaxot, lexok hayoter or lefaxot) and truth judgment (true or false) was not significant (p=0.15), indicating that all three SQs demonstrate a similar effect Our results support Cohen and Krifka’s theory

Competing theories make no predictions regarding the difference between true and false SQs Nevertheless, could these findings be made compatible with one of the competing theories? Arguably, there are logical forms that may take longer to evaluate for truth than falsity

For instance: generally, a false conjunction takes fewer steps to evaluate than a true conjunction Maybe, a competing theory could argue that the logical form it proposes is of this type Our findings could then be made compatible with such a theory To control for this possibility, we carried out a second experiment

לפחות אני רואה לפחות 4 צלחות בתמונה at least I see at least 4 plates in the picture Design and procedure experiment B Same as before, except sentence precedes picture by 2 seconds

Rationale and predictions This delay should allow subjects to compute the required implicature (Bott & Noveck 2004) Cohen & Krifka’s prediction: the RT difference between true and false judgments should disappear Competing theories: processing of logical forms should not be affected by the delay

Participants 27 adults, native speakers of Hebrew Aged (Mean 28) 17 female, 10 male

P = 0.38 RTs for true vs. false superlative quantifiers (experiment B)

Discussion The delay allows subjects to compute the implicature   Support for Cohen and Krifka’s theory In contrast, logical form can only be evaluated once the picture is seen   If the results of exp. A were not due to implicature but to verification of logical form, the delay should not have made a difference

General discussion The results support Cohen and Krifka’s theory Crucially, this theory proposes that illocutionary operators are embedded under quantifiers   Speech acts, while not propositions, are full- fledged participants in the semantic game

THANK YOU! References Büring, D. (2007), ‘The least "at least" can do’. In C.B. Chang and H.J. Haynie (eds.), Proceedings of WCCFL 26. Cascadilla Press. Somerville, MA. 114–20. Cohen, A. and M. Krifka, `Superlative quantifiers as meta- speech acts.' To appear in The Baltic International Year-book of Cognition, Logic and Communication. Cummins, C. and N. Katsos, (2010), `Comparative and Superlative Quantifiers: Pragmatic Effects of Comparison Type’ Journal of Semantics 27: Geurts, B., and R. Nouwen, (2007). `At Least et al.: The semantics of scalar modifiers’. Language 83: