On the PROCESSING of “ might ”

Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36 On the PROCESSING of “might” PLC 36 Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz & John Trueswell University of Pennsylvania

Literal vs. Pragmatically enriched meaning • Did Mary eat the cookies? (1) Mary ate some of the cookies a. Mary ate some, but not all of the cookies b. In fact, Mary ate all of them • (Grice, 1975): speakers are expected to be as informative as necessary, but no more than that (quantity maxim). Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

Implicatures and scales • Mary ate some of the cookies • Some and possibly all (literal) • Some but not all (pragmatically enriched) • Would you happen to know where Mary is? (2) Mary might be in her office Certainty Quantity might must all none some Gadzar (1979) and Horn (1972 Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

Visual world paradigm Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

Previous psycholinguistics work: evidence for delayed implicatures • Huang & Snedeker (2011) : Evidence for delayed implicature processing (600ms) Some Two target target distractor distractor three all target target distractor distractor Point to the girl that has [some/two/all/three] of the ice cream sandwiches. Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

Previous psycholinguistics work: evidence for immediate implicatures • Grodner et al. (2010): some is processed immediately. • Degen& Tanenhaus2012: speed of computing some impl. depends on naturalness of some and its lexical alternatives Late summa condition Early summa condition summa target summa target no way to identify target prior to phonological disambiguation. Click on the girl who has summa the balls/ alla the balloons/nunna the items. Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

More work on implicatures: Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

Present study: • Compares might to must instead of some to all • Instead of using prerecorded stimuli incorporates target utterances within a natural conversation with a confederate Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

Agame of guessing with a confederate • Subject and confederate take turns guessing shapes on a screen (Building on a design by Brown-Schmidt et al., 2008; Brown-Schmidt, 2009) • Guesser: each time sees only part of the display and has to guess whatever is hidden • Verifier: sees entire display, including whatever is hidden for the verifier, and has to mark guesses as “correct” or “incorrect” • Part I: subject guesses; Part 2: confederate guesses • Target sentences incorporated as part of the confederate’s “guesses”. Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

The game-rules: Row: all different shapes • 4 types of shapes • 4 possible colors • In each row either all shapes are of the same type or all are different • In each column either all items have same color or all have different color Col: all different colors Col: all same colors Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

Example of a target trial Two conditions for every scene: confederate utters (1) followed by (2a) or (2b) 1. Hmm…in the upper left there is a red square. 2a.There must be a red square located in the upper right. 2b. There might be a red square located in the bottom left. Competitor Target Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

Example of an “incorrect guess” • ½ target items had guesses for “might” that happened to be incorrect (but consistent with rules) There must bea green square located in the upper right. There might be a green square located in the bottom left. (but in reality it’s a green heart) Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

Procedure • 14 subjects, all native English speakers and undergraduates at UPenn participated for course credit (2 were taken out due to high track loss) • Stimuli presented in Experiment Builder • Eye tracking data collected in Eyelink 1k eye tracker • Sampling rate: 1 kHz, re-sampled offline to 100Hz Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

Results: Target Advantage for entire sentence (500ms prior to modal onset until 2 sec after onset of right/left) Target Advantage: looks to target- Looks to competitor. Target= shape that can be guessed with certainty (must) Competitor= shape that cannot be guessed with certainty (might) Avg. disambiguation time Modal onset 1s after mo There must be a red square located in the upper right might bottom left Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

Results (continued): Correct Guesses, Ambiguity period • Ambiguity period: from modal onset (marked as 0) until 200ms after disambiguation (onset of upper right/ bottom left) Significant interaction between condition and time window : by item p <.01; by subject p <.05 Interpretation: Implicature processing is delayed by 800ms Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36 A B

Conclusion • Evidence for delayed processing times of scalar implicatures (800ms) • Comparable to previous results on all vs some (Huang & Snedeker) • Evidence based on • different implicature triggers (must &might) • using natural discourse context Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

Thank You! And many thanks to our confederates, Aviad Eilam and David Faber! Dimka Atanassov, Florian Schwarz and John Trueswell, UPenn PLC 36

On the PROCESSING of “ might ”