=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2265/paper5
|storemode=property
|title=Investigating Cross-linguistic Differences in the Pragmatics of Scalar Terms
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2265/paper5.pdf
|volume=Vol-2265
|authors=Izabella Skończeń,Aleksander Smywiński-Pohl
}}
==Investigating Cross-linguistic Differences in the Pragmatics of Scalar Terms==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2265/paper5.pdf
Investigating cross-linguistic differences in the
pragmatics of scalar terms1
Izabela Skoczeń1 and Aleksander Smywiński-Pohl2
1
Department of Legal Theory, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland
2
WIET AGH University of Technology in Cracow, Poland
izabela.skoczen@uj.edu.pl
Abstract. N. Goodman and A. Stuhlmüller made an experiment to empirically
confirm a model that predicted the probability of implicature formation in con-
texts where speaker and hearer do not have full knowledge of the situation.
However, there remained the question whether the effects were cross-linguistic
or rather confined to the semantics of the English language. In our paper we
present the replication of the above-described experiment in the Polish lan-
guage. The data depicts differences that may point out to differences in the
pragmatics of the Polish word for some, namely ‘niektóre’, since the scalar im-
plicature is not cancelled in incomplete knowledge contexts.
Keywords: scalar implicature, incomplete knowledge, rational speech act mod-
el.
1 Introduction
The aim of the present paper is to answer two main questions. Firstly, we investi-
gate whether the rational Speech Act model is cross-linguistic. Secondly, we investi-
gate whether pragmatic behavior, namely cancelling scalar implicatures in incomplete
knowledge situations occurs cross-linguistically.
1.1 Scalar implicatures
In 1975, Paul Grice, a British philosopher, introduced in his article ‘Logic
and Conversation’ the notion of implicature (Grice, 1975). Grice noticed that through
uttering sentences in context, people convey more than just the meaning of the words
they use. Consider the following example:
A: Are you hungry?
B: I have had breakfast.
Imagine that this conversation takes place before noon. Although, literally taken, B’s
reply has not much in common with A’s question, the conversation is perfectly under-
standable. This is because it is possible to infer from B’s reply that she is not hungry.
1
The research was funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, Preludium grant nr
2015/19/N/HS5/00029. The Authors would like to thank Leon Bergen, Daniel Lassiter, Ka-
tarzyna Kijania-Placek and Krzysztof Kasparek for very helpful comments on data analysis.
Thus, the implicature carried by B’s answer will be that ‘B is not hungry’. Moreover,
the speaker can cancel implicatures explicitly. Consider the following example:
(I.) A: Are you hungry?
(II.) B: I have had breakfast, but a very modest one.
The second part of B’s reply is an explicit cancellation of the implicature formed
on the basis of the first part of the sentence, namely that ‘B is not hungry’.
Scalar implicatures are special because they are based on conventional meanings
attributed to words with the use of lexical scales (Horn, 2006). If you hear ‘some of
the students have passed the exam’ you will infer that not all of them have passed.
The reason for which the ‘not all; part of ‘some’ is pragmatic rather than semantic
is that if you compare two utterances:
(III.) ‘Some of the students have passed the exam’, (while in fact all of
them have)
(IV.) ‘All of the students have passed the exam’, (while in fact some of
them have)
The utterer of (IV) is more likely to be accused of lying than the utterer of (III).
Note that this is a contextual intuition: if you say ‘some of the accused were sen-
tenced’, while in fact all of them have been sentenced, your intuition might change.
For this reason, the ‘not all’ part of some seems contextual rather than semantic.
A lexical scale is defined as a ‘totally ordered set of lexical items which vary
along a single dimension’. (Bergen et al, 2015, p. 10) Placing a word in a definite
position on a scale enables the speakers to attribute it a definite meaning that does not
have to be consistent with the lexical meaning of the word. The most discussed exam-
ple in the literature is the quantifier term “some” that can mean either ‘at least some’
or ‘some but not all’. In ordinary conversation, ‘some’ is understood as ‘some but not
all’. Thus, we take ‘at least some or some but not all’ to be the lexical meaning of
some. An analogous phenomenon is observed in the Polish language. The quantifier
‘niektóre’ (some) can mean either ‘przynajmniej niektóre’ (at least some) or ‘tylko
niektóre’ (some but not all). Moreover, in an ordinary conversation ‘niektóre’ (some)
is understood as ‘tylko niektóre’ (some but not all).
Consider the following example:
(V.) Some of the guests have gone.
When uttering (V.) the speaker is normally taken as implicating that not all of the
guests have gone. This is because, had the speaker wanted to be understood as impli-
cating ‘at least some of the guests have gone, in fact all of them’ she would have used
the word ‘all’ rather than ‘some’. The above considerations are valid in situations
where the speaker and hearer have full contextual knowledge. This means that the
speaker knows exactly how many of the guests have gone. She knows whether all of
them have gone or only a number of them have gone. Moreover, the hearer knows
that the speaker has this knowledge. Thus, the scale is the following:
Before proceeding further, one last remark concerning the semantics of the Polish
word ‘niektóre’. It is worth noting that although in example (V) the Polish word
would be understood as ‘some but not all’ and the implicature would be cancellable,
there are differences in the remaining possible uses of the English ‘some’. Namely,
the English ‘some’ can be used as a singular or plural indefinite in the following sen-
tences:
(VI.) Would you like some biscuits? Yes, I would like some.
(VII.) Yesterday, I went to the store and I bought some books.
By contrast, the Polish translation of the sentences above could not include the word
‘niektóre’. Polish users would rather employ words such as ‘jakieś’ or ‘pewne’.
1.2 The Rational Speech Act model of scalar implicatures
The scalar inference should not occur when both speaker and hearer do not have full
information about the number of guests that are gone from the party. In such situation,
when the speaker uses the word ‘some’ she should be understood as implicating ‘at
least some’. Thus, the scalar implicature ‘some but not all of the guests are gone’
should be cancelled.
Numerals such as “two” or “twenty” are also scalar notions. This is because, lexi-
cally speaking ‘two’ could mean: ‘exactly two’, ‘at least two’ and ‘not more than
two’. Analogously ‘twenty’ could mean ‘exactly twenty’, ‘at least twenty’ and ‘not
more than twenty’. When the speaker has full knowledge and the hearer knows that
the speaker has full knowledge then through using ‘two’ or ‘twenty’ the speaker will
usually be taken as implicating ‘exactly two’ and ‘exactly twenty’. It is based on the
assumption that if the speaker had meant more or less than ‘twenty’ she would have
used a word that is higher on the scale (for instance ‘twenty-one’) or lower on the
scale (for instance ‘nineteen’). (Horn, 2006) Thus, the scale is this:
By contrast, the implicated exactness should be cancelled when the speaker does
not have full contextual knowledge. (Goodman and Stuhlmüller, 2013) Imagine a
party to which three guests have been invited. The speaker knows that two of the
guests have left the party, yet the speaker does not know whether the third guest has
left the party. The speaker says:
(VIII.) Two of the guests have gone.
If the hearer is aware of the speaker’s partial knowledge, the hearer should cancel
(or not infer) the implicature ‘exactly two’.
Noah Goodman and Andreas Stuhlmüller have created a model based on game
theory and Bayesian decision theory, which aims to predict the probability of (not)
cancelling the scalar implicature, in scenarios where the speaker has partial contextual
knowledge and the hearer knows that the speaker has partial contextual knowledge.
The model is a ‘rational speech act model’. It views ‘language comprehension as a
rational inference based on an intuitive theory of language production (...) the listener
infers the world state, s, given the speaker’s utterance, w, and shared information
about the speaker’s (possibly incomplete) information access, a. By Bayes’ rule:
P!"#$%&%' (s|w,a)∝P!"#$%#& (w|s,a)P(s)
where P(s) captures the listener’s prior beliefs about the world state and Pspeaker
(w⁄s,a) describes the listener’s intuitive theory of how the speaker chooses words.’
(Goodman and Stuhlmüller, 2013, p. 175)
A speaker ‘makes observation o about the true state of the world and selects an ut-
terance w to convey information about the world state to a listener and does so by
soft-max optimizing expected utility’:
P!"#$%#& w|o,a ∝exp(αE! !|#,% [U(w;s)])
‘The speaker’s utility function, U(w;s), captures the value of saying w if the world
is actually s. The expectation is taken over the speaker’s belief state, P(s|o,a), because
the speaker may still be uncertain about the state of the world. The parameter α con-
trols the deviation from optimality.’ (Goodman and Stuhlmüller, 2013, p. 175)
‘To capture a motivation to be informative, utility must be related to the infor-
mation conveyed in the utterance. More specifically, utility is related to the amount of
information that a literal listener would not yet know about state s after hearing it
described by utterance w (the negative surprisal):
U w;s = ln (P!"# (s|w))
where the literal interpretation probability Plex(s|w) is determined by the lexicon
‘(Goodman and Stuhlmüller, 2013, p. 175)
The ‘speaker’s access a is common knowledge of speaker and listener, but the lis-
tener still does not know what observation
.
the speaker made:
P!"#$%#& w|s,a = P!"#$%#& (w|o,a)P(o|a,s)
!
For this reason, the hearer is performing a summing on the possible observations
made by the speaker. (Goodman and Stuhlmüller, 2013, p. 175)
The model remains agnostic on the ‘question under discussion’, which is a re-
striction of the available alternatives, since this concept was introduced later (see for
instance Benz et al, 2017).
This model has been empirically tested and confirmed in the English language in
(Goodman and Stuhlmüller, 2013) During the experiment the speaker saw for exam-
ple three letters. However, he had information concerning whether there are checks in
only two of the letters. The hearer was aware of the speaker’s state of knowledge. The
utterance ‘some of the letters have checks inside’ cancelled the implicature ‘not all’
since hearers inferred a similar probability of two and three letters having checks. If
the speaker saw two out of three letters and said ‘one of the letters has a check inside’,
then the hearer inferred a similar probability of one and two of the letters having
checks inside and a low probability of three letters having checks inside. Thus, the
implicature ‘not more than one’ was cancelled. During the experiment six scenarios
were used and the speaker had a varied access to objects and their features, while the
hearer was aware of the speaker’s state of knowledge.
Each scenario began with a boosting of the probability that all the objects have the
salient property, for example:
Letters to Laura almost always have checks inside. (Goodman and Stuhlmüller,
2013, p. 178)
Next, came information about the number of considered objects and a question
about the prior probability distribution:
Today Laura received three letters. How many of the 3 letters do you think have
checks inside? (Goodman and Stuhlmüller, 2013, p. 178)
The participants had to bet a total of 100 dollars on each of the options, namely zero,
one, two or three objects having the property. After having captured the priors came
the information about the number of objects checked by the speaker:
Laura tells you on the phone: “I have looked at 2 of the 3 letters. Some of the let-
ters have checks inside.” (Goodman and Stuhlmüller, 2013, p. 178)
Finally, the posterior probability distribution as well as a control question followed:
Do you think Laura knows exactly how many of the 3 letters have checks inside?
(Goodman and Stuhlmüller, 2013, p. 178)
The experiment confirmed a fine-grained interaction between the state of
knowledge about the world and pragmatic inference. It also provided a strong argu-
ment against modular theories of mind since the data showed that the language faculty
and the inference about world state were strongly connected. However, there re-
mained the question whether the effects were cross-linguistic or rather confined to the
English language.
Below we present the replication of the above-described experiment in the Polish
language. We translated the same scenarios into Polish. We employed the Polish
words ‘niektóre’ for ‘some’ and ‘wszystkie’ for ‘all’ as well as the numerals ‘jeden,
dwa, trzy’ for ‘one, two, three’ respectively. The data proved to be a replication of
Goodman and Stuhlmüller’s experiment with some differences in the results. Namely,
there was an interaction between the state of knowledge about the world and pragmat-
ic inference conforming to the model predictions. However, the scalar implicature of
the word some, that is ‘not all’ was not cancelled when the speaker had access to two
out of three objects. In the paper, we investigate hypotheses that explain the differ-
ences.
2 Replication results in Polish
Methods
We carried four experiments in Polish: two that tested numerals and two that tested
the quantifier ‘some’. The experiments were an exact methodological replication of
the original experiment. Participants were presented two control questions. In the
numeral-experiment we employed 6 scenarios that appeared in a randomized order. In
the quantifier experiment we also employed 6 scenarios but each participant was pre-
sented with only 3 of them in a randomized order. Each scenario was about an three
objects and a potential property that these objects could have. Each participant dis-
posed of a quantity of 100 units (zlotys) and had to bet on four possibilities: zero of
the objects having the property, one of the objects having the property, two of the
objects having the property and three of the objects having the property.
We tested 6 conditions: ‘”One” access 1’ where the speaker had access to infor-
mation concerning the properties of one object out of three and uttered ‘one’. ‘Access
2’ –the speaker has access to information concerning the properties of two objects out
of three and ‘access 3’ – the speaker has access to information concerning the proper-
ties of three objects out of three. The possible utterances were ‘one’, ‘two’ and
‘three’.
The participants were recruited through an online platform ‘Research online’ and
performed the experiment for a small payment. Each of the experiments was made
with the participation of 50 persons – 50% men and 50% women.
Interestingly, we carried a pilot study involving 10 academics and it proved to be a
neat replication of the American results. The bets that the speaker had complete
knowledge in partial-access conditions were: M=18,89 SD=26,07, in complete access
conditions: M=92,59 SD=21,94 compared to the original: M=42, SD=3,4 and M=92,1
SD=1,6.
The graphs present mean participant bet on each world state, varying the word the
speaker used and the speaker’s perceptual access. Error bars are standard error of the
mean. Statistical significance was calculated using the t-student test for dependent or
independent measurement. The confidence interval (CI) was 95%. The effect size
calculations were based in Cohen’s d.
Testing numerals
50 students too part in our first experiment and the results replicated (see Fig 1).
The bets that the speaker had complete knowledge in partial-access conditions were:
M=27,95 SD=33, in complete access conditions: M=91,79 SD=14,94 compared to the
original: M=42 SD=3,4 and M=92,1 SD=1,6.
Fig 1 replication with the participation of 50 students - Mean participant bet on each world
state, varying the word the speaker used and the speaker’s perceptual access. Data have been filtered to
include only trials where the participant’s bet that the speaker had complete knowledge was greater than 70
in the expected direction. Error bars are standard error of the mean. The formulation ‘”One” access 1’
means that the speaker has access to information concerning the properties of one object out of three and
utters ‘one’. ‘Access 2’ –the speaker has access to information concerning the properties of two objects out
of three and ‘access 3’ – the speaker has access to information concerning the properties of three objects
out of three.
In the experiment represented in Fig 2, the sample was modified to 20 people aged
16-29 years (10 men and 10 women), 20 people aged 30-49 (10 men and 10 women),
10 people aged over 50 (5 men and 5 women). Subjects were recruited through an
online survey platform ‘Research online’. Differences appeared in the ‘one access
one’ and ‘two access two’ conditions. The difference in the ‘two access two’ condi-
tions was crucial since in the original experiment the scalar implicature ‘not more
than two’ was cancelled, while in the data we collected the scalar implicature persist-
ed. In other words, the bets on ‘two’ and ‘three’ in the ‘”two” access 2’ condition
were similar in the American experiment, while in the replication in Polish the bets on
‘two’ were significantly higher than the bets on ‘three’. The bets that the speaker had
complete knowledge in partial-access conditions were: M= 48,53 SD= 37,04, in
complete access conditions: M= 86,47 SD= 20,47 compared to the original: M=42
SD=3,4 and M=92,1 SD=1,6.
Fig 2 replication with the participation of 50 subjects from varied age groups
Fig 3 Differences between the original experiment (to the left, reuse license number
4343821165053, source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/tops.12007) and
the replication (to the right) in conditions ‘”One” access 1’ and ‘”Two” access two’.
Testing the quantifier ‘some’
Next, we conducted a replication of the experiment with the use of the quantifier
some (‘niektóre’). The participants had to bet again on zero, one, two and three ob-
jects having the property. In the original experiment, the condition ‘some access 2’
generated higher bets on three objects having the property rather than one object hav-
ing the property. The replicated results provide a reverse trend, which points out to a
lack of cancellation of the scalar implicature ‘not all’. In other words, the implicature
was inferred, while the predictions were that it would not be formed (see Fig 5).
Fig 5 replication with the participation of 50 students
Fig 6 The original experiment in condition ‘”some” access two’. Reuse license number
4343821165053, source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/tops.12007
The means and standard deviations for the first experiment with the quantifier
‘some’ are presented in Figure 7.
Original Replication
Access 1 27.1 39,18
(4,9) (4,9)
Access 2 34,8 46,68
(5,7) (6,1)
Access 3 93,0 89,2
(2,7) (3,3)
Fig 7 Means and standard deviations for the replication with the quantifier ‘some’
Discussion
Our hypothesis was that a quantifier scope ambiguity occurred during the experi-
ment, which is presented in Figure 8.
Fig 8 Hypothesis concerning quantifier scope ambiguity in the condition ‘”Some” ac-
cess two’
Polish participants seemed not to interpret the speaker as indicating that some of all
of the objects have the salient feature. Rather, they seemed to adopt the interpretation
that some of the checked objects (for instance letters) had the salient feature (for in-
stance checks inside). Let us focus on the ‘”Some” access 2’ condition presented in
Figure 5. The difference between the bets on one of the object having the property
and two of the objects having the property are of 7,7%. This is an effect size of only
0,26%. By contrast, the difference between the bets on two of the objects having the
property and three of the objects having the property are of 31,4%. This is an effect
size of 1,12%. Thus, the bets on three are significantly lower than the bets on two,
which supports the hypothesis of Polish speakers interpreting the scenario utterance as
‘some of the checked objects’. We decided to test this hypothesis.
3 The quantifier scope disambiguation experiment
To test our hypothesis, we modified the content of the scenarios by adding ‘some
of all’. Thus, for instance the letter scenario took the following form:
‘Letters to Laura almost always have checks inside.
Today Laura received three letters.
How many of the 3 letters do you think have checks inside?
Laura tells you on the phone: “I have looked at 2 of the 3 letters. Some of all of
the letters have checks inside.”
Now how many of the 3 letters do you think have checks inside?
Do you think Laura knows exactly how many of the 3 letters have checks in-
side?’
The results received (see fig 9) provided an only 7% weaker implicature that how-
ever still persisted since the bets on three objects having the property in questions
were still lower than the bets on one object having the property in question compared
to the previous results without introducing the disambiguation to the scenario (see Fig
5). In other words there was still no cancellation of the scalar implicature.
Fig 9 Comparing the ‘some’ quantifier experiment without disambiguation (B1) and
with disambiguation (B2)
4 General discussion
Thus, the experiment depicted in Figure 9 disproved our hypothesis concerning
quantifier scope ambiguity in experiments employing the quantifier ‘some’. For this
reason, there remained the question on why Polish participants did not cancel the
scalar implicature ‘not all’ in partial knowledge conditions.
Our hypothesis is that Polish people are ‘cache’ing’ the mechanisms of implicature
formation from full-knowledge contexts and are cognitively biased in applying them
to contexts where the knowledge about the situation is incomplete.
What could back this hypothesis is the fact that the participants’ bets while answer-
ing to the question measuring their prior probability distribution was not as predicted.
Participants did not bet as if the relevant objects ‘almost always’ had the property in
question. Thus, they probably ignored the ‘almost always’- experimental manipula-
tion in their answers on prior probability distribution and employed a prior probability
distribution based on their every-day experience.
5 Conclusion
The carried experiments depicted that the RSA model is cross-linguistic as the pat-
terns of interaction between knowledge and linguistic inference replicated. However,
it also depicted differences in pragmatic inferences such as scalar implicatures carried
by English and Polish native speakers.
6 References
1. Bergen L., Levy R., Goodman N., 2015, Pargmatic reasoning through semantic in-
ference, Semantics and Pragmatics 9, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.9.20
2. Benz, A., Jasinskaja K., 2017. Questions Under Discussion: From Sentence to
Discourse, Discourse Processes, 54:3, 177-186, DOI:
10.1080/0163853X.2017.1316038
3. Chierchia, G., 2004. Scalar implicatures, polarity phenomena and the syn-
tax/pragmatics interface, in: Bettelli, A. (Ed.), Structures and beyond: The Cartog-
raphy of Syntactic Structures. Oxford University Press, pp. 39–103.
4. Goodman, N.D., Stuhlmüller, A., 2013. Knowledge and Implicature: Modeling
Language Understanding as Social Cognition. Top. Cogn. Sci. 5, 173–184.
doi:10.1111/tops.12007
5. Grice, P., 1975. Logic and Conversation, in: Cole, P., Morgan, J.. (Eds.), Syntax
and Semantics. Academic Press, New York.
6. Horn, L.R., 2006. Implicature, in: The Handbook of Pragmatics. Blackwell,
Malden, MA; Oxford.
7. Noveck, I.A., Sperber, D., 2004. Experimental pragmatics. Palgrave Macmillan,
Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York.
7 Appendix - vignettes
Link to repository: http://www.apohllo.pl
Below are the scenarios we employed translated into Polish:
1. Nasiona
Nasiona słonecznika prawie zawsze kiełkują w ciągu jednego dnia, gdy umieści się je
w wodzie.
Dwa dni temu botanik Jan umieścił trzy nasiona słonecznika w wodzie.
Jak myślisz, ile ziaren słonecznika spośród trzech wykiełkowało?
Jan informuje Cię przez telefon: “Sprawdziłem dwa spośród trzech nasion.
Dwa nasiona wykiełkowały.”
Jak myślisz, ile spośród trzech nasion wykiełkowało?
Czy uważasz, że Jan wie ile dokładnie spośród trzech nasion wykiełkowało?
2. Losy
Losy na loterii fantowej prawie zawsze wygrywają.
Janusz zakupił trzy losy na loterii fantowej wczoraj.
Jak myślisz, ile spośród tych trzech losów wygrało?
Janusz informuje Cię przez telefon: “Sprawdziłem dwa spośród trzech losów.
Dwa spośród trzech losów wygrały.’
Jak myślisz ile spośród trzech losów wygrało?
Czy uważasz, że Janusz wie ile dokładnie spośród trzech losów wygrało?
3. Egzaminy
Uczestnicy kursu ‘Wprowadzenie do biologii’ prawie zawsze zdają egzamin.
Trzech studentów Marka podeszło wczoraj do egzaminu z ‘Wprowadzenia do bi-
ologii’.
Jak myślisz, ilu spośród tych trzech studentów zdało egzamin?
Marek informuje Cię przez telefon: “Sprawdziłem dwa spośród trzech egzaminów.
Dwóch studentów zdało egzamin.”
Jak myślisz, ilu spośród trzech studentów zdało?
Czy uważasz, że Marek wie ilu dokładnie spośród trzech studentów zdało egzamin?
4. Owoce
Jagody Goi to małe owoce, które prawie zawsze mają we wnętrzu wyschnięty miąższ.
Monika zakupiła trzy jagody Goi wczoraj.
Jak myślisz, ile spośród trzech jagód Goi ma wyschnięty miąższ?
Monika informuje Cię przez telefon: “Sprawdziłam dwa spośród trzech owoców.”
Dwa owoce mają wyschnięty miąższ.
Jak myślisz, ile spośród trzech owoców ma wyschnięty miąższ?
Czy uważasz, że Monika wie ile dokładnie spośród trzech owoców ma wyschnięty
miąższ?
5. Telefony
Zepsute telefony marki Sigo prawie zawsze mają przepalone tranzystory.
Bartosz musi naprawić trzy telefony marki Sigo.
Jak myślisz, ile spośród trzech telefonów marki Sigo ma przepalone tranzystory?
Bartosz informuje Cię przez telefon: “Sprawdziłem dwa spośród trzech telefonów.”
Dwa telefony mają przepalone tranzystory.
Jak myślisz, ile spośród trzech telefonów ma przepalone tranzystory?
Czy uważasz, że Bartosz wie ile dokładnie spośród trzech telefonów ma przepalone
tranzystory?
6. Listy
Listy do Laury prawie zawsze mają czeki w środku. Dzisiaj Laura otrzymała trzy
listy.
Jak myślisz, ile spośród trzech listów ma czeki w środku?
Laura informuje Cię przez telefon: “Sprawdziłam dwa spośród trzech listów.
Dwa listy mają czeki w środku.”
Jak myślisz, ile spośród trzech listów ma czeki w środku?
Czy uważasz, że Laura wie ile dokładnie spośród trzech listów ma czeki w środku?