A psycholinguistic study concerning the interpretation of quantified expressions--generative grammar theory and language acquisition

1. 伊藤2005年通过实验研究了说日语的儿童如何解释包含“甚至”的句子的范围和含义（存在和标量），并报告说：1)日本儿童无法判断与语境不相关的句子为不恰当的句子，这一发现与Noveck 2001部分一致；2)日本儿童对sae范围的句法限制不敏感，这表现在他们错误地判断上下文中不恰当的句子是恰当的，因为sae附加在一个错误的NP上。然而，该研究指出，第一个结果使得第二个结果不确定。本文还考虑了三种可能的解释：sae的特殊性质、儿童语用知识的缺乏和加工成本。然而，没有证据支持任何一种具体的解释。我的论文（即将发表）从两个方面扩展了我2005年的研究范围：它采用了Chierchia等人2001年开发的实验技术，并检验了他们的加工限制假设。结果表明，儿童的表现虽然表明他们对与sae相关的语用幸福和sae的范围有一定的敏感性，但仅略高于机会水平。这表明，信息强度的比较和评估可能是一个问题，在一个任务中，没有强加给儿童处理要求。Ito（2006）研究了日语儿童对虚NP论证和由反指修饰的NP论证在soo-su vp -省略句结构中的解释。具体考察的是，当空（限定词）代词和自诩词都有指称性和定量NP先行词时，他们是否可以访问空（限定词）代词和自诩词的限定变量解释。结果表明，日本儿童很难将语音上明显的回指元素与定量先行词联系起来。少

1. Ito 2005 examined how Japanese-speaking children interpret sentences containing sae 'even' in terms of its scope and implicatures (existential and scalar) by conducting experiments, and reported that: 1) Japanese children are unable to judge as infelicitous sentences that are infelicitous with context, a finding in partial agreement with Noveck 2001, and 2) Japanese children are insensitive to syntactic restrictions on the scope of sae, as shown by their incorrectly judging as felicitous a sentence infelicitous in context because sae was attached to an incorrect NP. The study, however, states that the first result renders the second inconclusive. This paper also considers three plausible explanations for the children's non-adult performance: the peculiar properties of sae, the children's lack of pragmatic knowledge, and processing cost. However, none of the evidence supports any one specific explanation.My paper (to appear) extends the scope of my 2005 study in two ways: it adopts t … More he experimental technique developed by Chierchia et al. 2001 and it tests their Processing Limitation hypothesis. The results reveal that the children's performance, although it shows that they are somewhat sensitive to pragmatic felicity associated with sae and the scope of sae as well, was nevertheless only slightly above chance level. This shows that the comparison and evaluation of information strength can be a problem in a task which does not impose processing demands on children.2. Ito 2006 investigated how Japanese-speaking children interpret bare NP arguments and NP arguments modified by the anaphor zibun in soo-su VP-ellipsis structures. Specifically examined is that whether or not they can access bound variable interpretations of null (determiner) pronouns and zibun when both have referential and quantificational NP antecedents. The results showed that it is difficult for Japanese children to associate the phonologically overt anaphoric element with quantificational antecedents as a bound variable. Less