Context Needed

Both of the readings this week focused on children's struggle with scalar implicature.

To be honest, it took me a bit to understand what scalar implicatures were. Then, as I looked through examples that they used in experiments, I started to get confused myself! I thought how if I were actually told those sentences, in a normal conversation, I would respond with a question to clarify.

I was thinking about how I would define the word some...and it wasn't the most clear initially. And I probably did not learn it through asking what 'some' was. Do we all have a similar idea of these words that are used to be a vague amount could mean? A context I would place this in is asking someone for a share of their food. Could I have 'some'?  'A few. 'A couple.' 'A little.' 'A bit.' Others, I'm sure. If everyone had to rank these types of words from least to most...where would they stack up? I believe there would actually be a lot of variation from person to person.

Maybe how we would place words like these on an actual scale from least to most depends on how those around us, like our families and who we grow up around, used and therefore demonstrated those words to us. Could this serve as priming in a sense? That when we hear one of these words that we are lead to a certain mental representation based on our passed experiences? Or, are some of these phrases interchangeable? Are all of them? Do we have similar ideas for their equivalence as well?

If there is any variance, do these implicatures actually provide for more confusion than shortcuts? Or is this information not crucial, or just more casual, in order for us to understand?

It also was interesting to think of words in a description that have more weight and that can essentially trump others. In addition to a scale from none to all, is there another scale that can rank weight? Or how does weight shift based on the order of words?

Mostly, as I read these articles, I thought, no wonder children are confused! Scalar implicatures are confusing and very ill-defined. Adults have just had more exposure or context to understand these scenarios. Adults may have confusion but be able to rely on context or other processes to help solve that confusion.