2018 Sat Session A 1415

Saturday, November 3, 2018 | Session A, East Balcony | 2:15pm

Won’t somebody think of the children? Beyond maximality with plural definite descriptions
M. Moyer, Z. Husnain, K. Syrett

INTRODUCTION: For decades, two parallel lines of research have yielded robust and replicable observations of plural definite descriptions (PDDs) such as the children. First, semanticists have argued that such descriptions are referential and pick out the maximal element of a set.^[1-2] Thus, if a parent picks up ‘the children’ from school, there is a particular set of children and no child is left behind. Second, developmentalists have demonstrated that young children do not consistently interpret PDDs maximally, instead allowing them to apply to or pick out a proper subset.^[3-7] Thus, children’s semantic representations of PDDs appear to be underdeveloped. However, alternative theoretical accounts suggest that aspects of these interpretations may be adult-like. First, context-dependent implicit domain restriction^[8-9] and salience/familiarity^[10-12] allow PDDs to reference a restricted subset, giving rise to (seemingly) non-maximal interpretations. (The parent need not pick up all of the children at the school.) Second, PDDs also allow for kind or attributive readings^[12-15] PDDs are thus subject to pragmatic enrichment.and the speaker’s intentions and goals are crucial to making the interpretation precise.^[12,17] We present the results of two experiments using a modified TVJT capitalizing on these semantic/pragmatic aspects of PDDs, which (a) demonstrate that children and adults are comparably sensitive to these factors, and (b) may explain some non-maximal responses exhibited by children in previous research.

EXPERIMENT 1: 32 children (3;10-6;9, M:4;10) and 67 adults participated. Each target trial (of 9 targets, 6 controls) had the structure in Figure 1: a salient set of individuals is introduced, and a proper subset is assigned a property then moved to a separate location to highlight its. A puppet then delivers the target sentence (PDD or universal quantifier subject, between subjects), allowing for domain restriction via local presupposition accommodation.^[18] Children (like adults) were overall significantly more likely to accept statements with PDD subjects than universal quantifier subjects (Figure 2), but these responses reflect two distinct groups, depending on the set targeted (e.g., all the bears, or all the bears with treats), and in both, justifications reflect maximality.

EXPERIMENT 2: 43 children (3;9-6;4, M:5;1) and 40 adults participated. Each target trial (of 11 trials) had the structure in Figure 3: while shopping at a supermarket, A asks B about the location of an object kind with an embedded where question with a modal verb (can), which is goal- oriented and licenses ‘mention-some’ responses.^[19-20] B looks in multiple locations, then reports on (a) location(s). A puppet then delivers the target sentence. Again, children mirrored adults: they consistently accepted the target with an exhaustive response, or a mention-some response (although at a decreased rate), but rejected it when there was a false report.

CONCLUSIONS: The combined findings suggest that children are more adult-like than previously suggested. Children in Experiment 1 were less liberal than adults in implicit domain restriction, suggesting a slight preference for maximality. However, children in Experiment 2 did not have difficulty accessing felicitous non-maximal kind readings that supported a speaker’s goal. Thus, we argue that adult-like context-sensitivity may give the appearance of non-adult-like non- maximality.