Main content

Date created: | Last Updated:

: DOI | ARK

Creating DOI. Please wait...

Create DOI

Category: Project

Description: Sentences with two scopally interacting quantifiers are ambiguous between a Surface Scope (SS) and an Inverse Scope (IS) reading. Results from experimental studies show that, when presented with such sentences, English speakers tend to favor the SS over the IS reading. Scrambling languages like Bengali have been claimed to show more extreme examples of this preference: speakers of these languages generally favor the reading that is transparently conveyed by the word order of the sentence, expressing scope reversal preferentially by changing the surface order of the quantifiers. Alongside this cross-linguistic preference for surface scope, scope preferences have also been found to vary as a function of the type of quantifiers involved. In English, for instance, the quantifiers each and every tend to take widescope over other quantifiers whereas all doesn’t. How do these two factors affecting scope interpretation, namely, word order and scope preference, interact with each other? In this article, we report on two sets of experiments investigating the extent to which word order, and scrambling in particular modulates speakers’ scope interpretation of universal quantifiers, comparing English to Bengali. Results of these studies show that scope preferences are affected by the type of universal quantifier in a similar way in both languages, irrespective of word order.

License: CC-By Attribution 4.0 International

Files

Loading files...

Citation

Recent Activity

Loading logs...

OSF does not support the use of Internet Explorer. For optimal performance, please switch to another browser.
Accept
This website relies on cookies to help provide a better user experience. By clicking Accept or continuing to use the site, you agree. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and information on cookie use.
Accept
×

Start managing your projects on the OSF today.

Free and easy to use, the Open Science Framework supports the entire research lifecycle: planning, execution, reporting, archiving, and discovery.