TY - JOUR
T1 - The influence of conversational context and the developing lexicon on the calculation of scalar implicatures
T2 - Insights from Spanish-English bilingual children
AU - Syrett, Kristen
AU - Austin, Jennifer
AU - Sanchez, Liliana
AU - Germak, Christina
AU - Lingwall, Anne
AU - Perez-Cortes, Silvia
AU - Arias-Amaya, Anthony
AU - Baker, Hannah
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© John Benjamins Publishing Company.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Although monolingual children do not generally calculate the upper-bounded scalar implicature (SI) associated with 'some' without additional support, monolingual Spanish-speaking children have been reported to do so with algunos ('some'), and further distinguish algunos from unos. Given documented cross-linguistic influence in interface phenomena in bilinguals, we asked whether young Spanish-English bilinguals calculate SIs with algunos, or if there is an effect of acquiring languages with overlapping but diverging lexical entries. Two experiments reveal that not only do bilinguals inconsistently calculate SIs, Spanish monolinguals do not always either. In Experiment 1, bilinguals did not calculate the SI associated with algunos. However, in Experiment 2, which calls upon their awareness of speaker-hearer dynamics, they did. This research highlights the challenges arising from interpreting linguistic phenomena where lexical, semantic, and pragmatic information intersect, and is a call for further investigation with bilinguals in a rapidly growing area where bilingual research is lacking.
AB - Although monolingual children do not generally calculate the upper-bounded scalar implicature (SI) associated with 'some' without additional support, monolingual Spanish-speaking children have been reported to do so with algunos ('some'), and further distinguish algunos from unos. Given documented cross-linguistic influence in interface phenomena in bilinguals, we asked whether young Spanish-English bilinguals calculate SIs with algunos, or if there is an effect of acquiring languages with overlapping but diverging lexical entries. Two experiments reveal that not only do bilinguals inconsistently calculate SIs, Spanish monolinguals do not always either. In Experiment 1, bilinguals did not calculate the SI associated with algunos. However, in Experiment 2, which calls upon their awareness of speaker-hearer dynamics, they did. This research highlights the challenges arising from interpreting linguistic phenomena where lexical, semantic, and pragmatic information intersect, and is a call for further investigation with bilinguals in a rapidly growing area where bilingual research is lacking.
KW - Cross-linguistic influence
KW - Pragmatics
KW - Scalar implicatures
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U2 - 10.1075/lab.14019.syr
DO - 10.1075/lab.14019.syr
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85017340549
VL - 7
SP - 230
EP - 264
JO - Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
JF - Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
SN - 1879-9264
IS - 2
ER -