Learning Pragmatics

The readings this week focused on pragmatic differences in language between young children and adults. More specifically, it looked at scalar implicature and its relationship to these pragmatic differences. Both readings focus on studies done to explore these differences, mainly looking at the effects of the words some and are.

The first article, the Stiller paper, explored identification using assumptions based off of the difference between all and some. People generally made the assumption that when talking about someone with glasses that meant the face that had only glasses as opposed to glasses and a hat.  However, when other factors were introduced so that each face had multiple features, as opposed to none, some, or all, this became much more difficult to find the target face. However, given context on the rarity of certain characteristics, this identification became simpler again.

The second article explored similar concepts, but this time looking at the impact of both the word only, and context specific information on whether children evaluate sentences with scalar factors as true or false. The study found that the children generally differed in responses when the information was both context-specific and strengthened with only or all.  Otherwise, with neither of these factors, or just one, the impact was not significant.

I found it particularly interesting that children oftentimes understand scalar implications when using numbers, like one and five, but don’t have the same intuition or understanding with similar scales that are not numbered, like none, some, and all. I also think that this ties into some of the earlier readings we had about innate language. While it seems as though some parts of language are less learned, and more instinct, pragmatics, which is primarily based on language and context, seems more socially based, and as a result need to be learned, at least to a certain extent.