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Experimental L2 Semantics/Pragmatics of Scalar Implicature: An ERP Study
Poster E48 in Poster Session E, Saturday, October 8, 3:15 - 5:00 pm EDT, Millennium Hall
Myung-Kwan Park1, Euiyon Cho1, Wonil Chung1; 1Univ. of Dongguk
There have been a few studies investigating the processing of scalar implicature using ERPs. Noveck and Posada (2003) found a reduced N400 at the critical word such as ‘ears’ in underinformative sentences such as “Some cats have ears”. Niewland et al. (2010) reported a greater N400 for the underinformative relative to the informative critical word. The present study examined Nineteen Korean English L2ers’ comprehension of scalar implicature of English ‘some’ and ‘no’ to investigate whether they make a distinction between semantic and pragmatic interpretations. In our experiment we adopted a picture-sentence verification design (modelled after Politzer-Ahles et al. (2012)) to compare the neural responses to scalar quantifiers such as some and no. In the experiment 1, Some-type pictures with the four types of picture, (i) some apples in the basket, (ii) no apple in the basket, (iii) all apples in the basket, and (iv) some pineapples in the basket. The quantifier some was used in the experimental condition such as In the picture, being thrown into the basket by the boy was some candies. In the experiment 2, No-type pictures with the four types of picture, (i) no apple in the basket, (ii) some apples in the basket, (iii) all apples in the basket, or (iv) no banana in the basket. The quantifier no was used in the sentence such as In the picture, being thrown into the basket by the boy was no candy. ERPs were measured at the critical phrase (e.g., some candies or no candy). EXP 1 showed (i) a significant anterior P600 in No (semantic violation: SV) condition, (ii) a significant P200 in All (pragmatic violation: PV) condition, and (iii) a significant N400 in lexical violation (like ‘some pineapples’ in the picture) condition, relative to Some condition, respectively. EXP 2 showed (i) a significant N400 in Some (SV) condition, (ii) a marginal P700 in All (PV) condition, and (iii) a significant N400 in lexical violation (like ‘no banana’ in the picture) condition, relative to correct No condition, respectively. These findings suggest that semantic/pragmatic aspects of meaning are processed using different mechanisms, and that different quantifiers may make a distinct contribution in semantics/pragmatics.
Topic Areas: Meaning: Lexical Semantics, Meaning: Discourse and Pragmatics