Experimental Investigations of Verification Procedures for Quantified Statements

诸如每、一些、大多数、超过一半等数量表达在语言的科学研究中起着核心作用，因为它们引入了一些关于组合规则的清单和自然语言中发现的表达能力的最基本的问题。因此，许多人致力于发展解释量词形式性质的理论。相比之下，关于量词意义如何实时处理的研究相对较少，特别是非语言思维系统如何使用它们的真值条件意义，例如在验证任务中。这个项目使用一种名为自定步速计数的新实验范式来研究量化表达的实时处理，该范式允许研究人员收集关于受试者如何在涉及计数或幅度估计的验证任务中逐渐收集信息的细粒度计时信息。该定时信息可以揭示由量化表达式触发的验证策略之间的细微差异。具体地说，由具有不同形态句法结构的语义等价数量限定词触发的验证轮廓可以被系统地证明是不同的。这些发现为量化理论提供了动力，该理论将复杂的量词分解成比标准识别的更小的构件。

Quantificational expressions such as EVERY, SOME, MOST, MORE THAN HALF, etc. play a central role in the scientific study of language because they introduce some of the most fundamental questions about the inventory of combinatorial rules and the expressive power found in natural languages. Consequently, much effort has been devoted to developing theories that explain the formal properties of quantifiers. In contrast, there is relatively little work on how quantifier meanings are processed in real time, specifically how their truth conditional import is used by non-linguistic systems of the mind, for instance in verification tasks. This project investigates real time processing of quantified expressions using a novel experimental paradigm called Self-Paced Counting, which allows researchers to gather fine-grained timing information about how subjects gather information incrementally in verification tasks that involve counting or magnitude estimation. This timing information can reveal subtle differences between verification strategies triggered by quantificational expressions. In particular, verification profiles triggered by semantically equivalent quantificational determiners that have different morphosyntactic structure can be shown to differ systematically. Such findings provide motivation for a theory of quantification that decomposes complex quantifiers into smaller building blocks than is standardly recognized.