An Experimental Approach To The Semantics And Pragmatics Of Chinese Cardinals

The semantics and pragmatics of cardinals have been one of the hottest issues in linguistics since Horn proposed the concept of "entailment scale" in 1972. Horn, Levinson and Kadmon hold that cardinals, similar to the quantifier "some", the logical connective "or", and the modal "possible", are semantically lower-bounded. i.e. "n" means "at least n". While in communication, an upper-bounded implicature "no more than n" is added due to the effects of Cooperative Principle, yielding the bilaterally bounded reading "exactly n". However, Koneig, Breheny, among others, question the lower-bounded semantics with various linguistic evidences. They take the "exactly reading" as the semantics of cardinals, rather than a result of pragmatic derivation. In other words, cardinals do not constitute entailment scale. In addition to the two contrasting views above, there are the "ambiguity view" (cardinals are semantically ambiguous among the "at least reading", "at most reading", and "exactly reading") and the "semantically underdetermined view" (cardinals are semantically incomplete, thus need to be saturated by context). The present dissertation studies Chinese children's understanding of cardinals, aiming to clarify the semantics and pragmatics of cardinals.The dissertation consists of six chapters. Chapter one states the objectives, the significances and the general methodology of this research. An experimental approach to the semantics and pragmatics of cardinals is significant both theoretically and methodologically. It is helpful in clarifying the semantics and pragmatics of cardinals, enriching the theory of language acquisition and understanding the development of pragmatic ability. Besides, the psychological experiment adopted in the dissertation can provide relatively independent motivation for the issue, avoiding the possible problem of the traditional introspective method. In this chapter, we also provide working definitions for several key terms in the paper.Chapter two sketches the theoretical debate on the semantics and pragmatics of cardinals. The most influential view on this issue is the lower-bounded semantics put forward by the Neo-Gricean scholars. The view is based on the theory of scalar implicature (SI), which reflects the "Modified Occam's Razor" of the Gricean tradition-to minimize the semantics and explain the ambiguity of words through pragmatics. However, linguistic evidences reveal that cardinals are different from other scalar predicates. They are at least not a good test bed for the SI theory. Thus some scholars abandon the "cardinals as scales" view. Up to now, opinions differ as to what do cardinals mean semantically. The main cause of the present situation is that the research method adopted in the past is theoretically biased. Therefore, the issue of methodology is discussed in detail. The logic and the design of the research are presented in Chapter three. Language acquisition researches reveal that children are insensitive to SIs. They tend to understand scalar predicates like "some", "or", and "possible" in the logical way. Therefore, we propose that if the "exactly reading" of cardinals is due to the production of SI, then children should be not easy to grasp this implicated meaning. They will incline to accept the lower-bounded reading. Three research questions are put forward on the basis of the above research logic:(1) Are Chinese children different from adults in their understanding of typical scalar predicates?(2) Is Chinese children's understanding of cardinals different from their understanding of typical scalar predicates?(3) Do Chinese children prefer the lower-bounded reading for cardinals in those contexts where SI is usually suppressed?In order to answer these questions, three studies (including six experiments) are designed. A framework which reflects the logical relation among these experiments is presented at the end of this chapter.Chapter four reports the procedure and results of the three studies. Study one, consisting of three experiments, establishes the fact that Chinese children, distinct from adults, are insensitive to the SIs of "some", "or" and "possible". The results of study two reveal that Chinese children's understanding of cardinals is significantly different from their understanding of quantifiers. Though they generally interpret "some" as "some or even all", they take cardinals as representing exact numerosity. Study three verifies the results of study two. It is found that both children and adults insist on the "exactly reading" of cardinals even in the Si-suppressing contexts like monotone decreasing context.Chapter five discusses the theoretical implications of the findings. The results suggest that cardinals are not semantically lower-bounded as Neo-Gricean scholars proposed. The fact that children insist on the "exactly reading" indicates that cardinals do not constitute entailment scale. Rather, they represent exact numerosity. Cardinals are in fact a type of rank orders; therefore they behave similarly to scalar predicates in some cases. The "Quantifier Bootstrapping Hypothesis" of children's number acquisition, which argues that children treat numbers and quantifiers similarly in acquisition, is not supported by the results. We take the results to indicate that language acquisition system handle cardinals and quantifiers in different ways. At the very beginning of their learning, children know that cardinals represent exact numerosity.Chapter six presents a cross-chapter summary and identifies the problems that have remained hitherto unresolved and therefore need further exploration.