Abstract
Referential Effects of Contrast (RECs) involving reference resolution of adjectivally modified NPs (e.g., the tall glass) have been attributed to pragmatic reasoning based on the informativity of modification (Sedivy et al. Cognition, 71(2):109–147, 1999; Sedivy, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32(1):3–23, 2003; Sedivy, Approaches to studying world-situated language use: Bridging the language-as-product and language-as-action traditions, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 345–364, 2004, a.o.). Recently, it has been claimed that informativity alone cannot account for all the attested interactions between adjectival meaning and context and that factors related to efficiency in the search of a referent also play an important role (Rubio-Fernández, Frontiers in Psychology, 7(153), 2016). Building on Aparicio et al. (Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory, vol. 25, 2015), this paper demonstrates that perceived informativity plays an important role in RECs, but lexical semantic properties of different adjective classes are also relevant. We present results from a Visual World eye-tracking study which shows that adjective classes differ in whether they introduce RECs, and results from an offline judgment task which show that this difference correlates to some extent with the perceived informativity of members of these classes. Color adjectives, relative adjectives and maximum standard absolute adjectives were rated as overinformative when used as modifiers in the absence of contrast, and gave rise to RECs; minimum standard absolute adjectives were not rated as overinformative when used as modifiers in the absence of contrast, and did not give rise to RECs. Taken together, our results show that perceived informativity plays an important role in RECs. We also discuss additional differences between the adjective classes which suggest that differences in lexical semantics can further contribute to differences in RECs.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Several linguistic tests diagnose whether an absolute adjective makes use of a maximum versus minimum versus relative standard. For instance, Kennedy (2007) points out that these three classes give rise to different entailment patterns when used in comparatives. In comparatives of the form X is more A than Y, MinAAs entail that X is A (i); MaxAAs entail that B is not A (ii); and (unmarked) RelAs entail neither that X is (not) A nor that Y is (not) A (iii).
The distribution of modifiers like slightly and completely are also often described as tests for MinAA and MaxAA status, respectively, but strictly speaking, these modifiers test for minimum and maximum scalar endpoints, respectively, which are independent of—though generally correlated with—maximum and minimum standards.
- 3.
See supplementary materials to this chapter for a full list of the experimental items used in Experiment 1.
- 4.
See supplementary materials to this chapter for a full list of the experimental items used in Experiment 2.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Aaron Hill, Jackson Lee, Gabriel Aparicio and Katie Franich for their assistance during various stages of the eye-tracking experiment reported in this paper, as well as Michelle Namkoong and Sonia Juan Rubio for help in the creation of part of the visual stimuli. Finally, we would also like to thank the audiences at the workshop on Gradability, Scale Structure, and Vagueness: Experimental Perspectives, and the 22nd AMLaP Conference. This project was supported by a NSF grant (BCS 1227144) to C. Kennedy and M. Xiang.
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Aparicio, H., Kennedy, C., Xiang, M. (2018). Perceived Informativity and Referential Effects of Contrast in Adjectivally Modified NPs. In: Castroviejo, E., McNally, L., Weidman Sassoon, G. (eds) The Semantics of Gradability, Vagueness, and Scale Structure. Language, Cognition, and Mind, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77791-7_8
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