Alternatives and attention in language and reasoning: A reply to Mascarenhas & Picat (2019)
- In this paper, we employ an experimental paradigm using insights from the psychology of reasoning to investigate the question whether certain modals generate and draw attention to alternatives. The article extends and builds on the methodology and findings of Mascarenhas & Picat (2019). Based on experimental results, they argue that the English epistemic modal might raises alternatives. We apply the same methodology to the English modal allowed to to test different hypotheses regarding the involvement of alternatives in deontic modality. We find commonalities and differences between the two modals we tested. We discuss theoretical consequences for existing semantic analyses of these modals, and argue that reasoning tasks can serve as a diagnostic tool to discover which natural language expressions involve alternatives.
Author details: | Nadine BadeORCiDGND, Leo Picat, WooJin Chung, Salvador Mascarenhas |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.2 |
ISSN: | 1937-8912 |
Title of parent work (English): | Semantics and Pragmatics |
Publisher: | Linguistic Society of America |
Place of publishing: | Washington |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2022/01/26 |
Publication year: | 2022 |
Release date: | 2024/05/29 |
Tag: | alternatives; modals; reasoning |
Volume: | 15 |
Article number: | 2 |
Number of pages: | 31 |
Funding institution: | Agence Nationale de la Recherche [ANR-18-CE28-0008, ANR-17-EURE-0017] |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Gold Open-Access |
License (German): | Creative Commons - Namensnennung, 3.0 Deutschland |