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

1.Ito 2005通过实验研究了说日语的儿童如何从其范围和含义(存在意义和标量意义)方面解释含有SAE‘Even’的句子，并报告说：1)日本儿童不能判断为与上下文不恰当的句子，这一发现与Noveck 2001年的发现部分一致；2)日本儿童对SAE范围的句法限制不敏感，这表现在他们不正确地判断在上下文中不恰当的句子是恰当的，因为SAE附加在错误的NP上。然而，这项研究指出，第一个结果使第二个结果没有定论。本文还考虑了儿童非成人表现的三个看似合理的解释：SAE的特殊性质、儿童缺乏语用知识和加工成本。然而，没有一个证据支持任何一种具体的解释。我的论文(似乎)从两个方面扩展了我2005年的研究范围：它采用了t…更多的是由Chierchia等人发展的实验技术。2001，并检验了他们的加工限制假说。结果表明，尽管儿童对与SAE相关的语用幸福感以及SAE的范围比较敏感，但他们的成绩仅略高于机会水平。这表明，在不对儿童施加加工要求的任务中，信息强度的比较和评估可能是一个问题。Ito 2006年调查了说日语的儿童如何理解所述动词性省略结构中的裸NP论元和被照应自句修饰的NP论元。具体考察的是，当空(限定词)代词和子句都有指称和数量NP先行词时，他们是否能够获得约束变量的解释。结果表明，日本儿童很难将语音显性回指成分与量化先行词联系起来作为约束变量。较少

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