Doctoral Dissertation Research: Tracking alternatives: Experimental investigations into focus and scalar inference

博士论文研究：跟踪替代方案：焦点和标量推理的实验研究

• 批准号: 2041312
• 负责人: Ming Xiang
• 金额: $ 1.38万
• 依托单位: University of Chicago
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-01-15 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2041312&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Tracking; alternatives

In human communication, conversational participants not only use language based on their knowledge of sound patterns, word meanings, and grammar, but they also reason about and draw inferences from their interlocutors’ language use. That is, speakers communicate more than just the literal content of the words they say; and conversely, listeners make inferences beyond what is literally said by their interlocutor. There exist multiple well-known linguistic phenomena in which the meaning conveyed by a sentence depends on things that are relevant, but were not explicitly mentioned. These relevant things that were left unsaid are called alternatives. This project will investigate how alternative-sensitive phenomena are understood by hearers, and how they are processed in real time by the human mind.The current project investigates alternatives evoked in semantic computation (e.g. in the lexical semantics of focus-sensitive expressions such as only) and pragmatic reasoning (e.g. in scalar inference). The first research goal is to develop experimental paradigms to track the alternatives that are evoked in these two empirical domains. To do so, the project will utilize the psycholinguistic reflexes of alternatives and alternative-sensitive expressions – building on paradigms used in existing work on focus and focus alternatives. Second, it is an open question how and to what extent context constrains the space of relevant alternatives. This project will therefore also investigate the effect of context on the activation of focus and scalar alternatives. A series of experiments using offline behavioral judgments tasks, cross-modal semantic priming, and visual world eye-tracking will be conducted. The general logic of the experiments will be to track the activation of (focus or scalar) alternatives upon encountering a target: a focused element or weaker scalar term. In both empirical domains, we will first look at the effect of local context (i.e. sentence-level properties), and then at the effect of broader discourse context.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在人类交流中，对话参与者不仅根据声音模式、词义和语法知识来使用语言，而且还从对话者的语言使用中进行推理和推论，也就是说，说话者交流的不仅仅是字面内容。存在多种众所周知的语言现象，其中句子所传达的含义取决于相关但未明确提及的事物。这些未提及的相关事物称为替代项。该项目将研究听众如何理解替代项敏感现象，以及人类大脑如何实时处理它们。当前的项目研究语义计算中引发的替代项（例如，在语义计算中）。第一个研究目标是开发实验范式来跟踪这两个经验领域中引发的替代方案。因此，该项目将利用替代方案和替代方案敏感表达的心理语言反射——建立在现有焦点和焦点替代方案工作中使用的范式的基础上。 其次，上下文如何以及在多大程度上限制相关替代方案的空间，这是一个悬而未决的问题。因此，该项目还将利用离线行为判断任务、跨模态语义启动和视觉世界眼球追踪来研究上下文对焦点和标量替代方案激活的影响。实验将是在遇到目标时跟踪（焦点或标量）替代项的激活：焦点元素或较弱的标量术语在这两个经验领域中，我们将首先查看局部上下文（即句子级属性）的影响，然后查看该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

What could have been said? Alternatives and variability in pragmatic inferences

还能说什么？

• DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2024.104507
• 发表时间: 2024
• 期刊: Journal of Memory and Language
• 影响因子: 4.3
• 作者: Ronai, Eszter;Xiang, Ming
• 通讯作者: Xiang, Ming