Quadruplex Negatio Invertit? The On-Line Processing of Depth Charge Sentences

IF 2 2区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Journal of Semantics Pub Date : 2020-10-15 DOI:10.1093/jos/ffaa009

Paape D, Vasishth S, von der Malsburg T.

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

So-called “depth charge” sentences (No head injury is too trivial to be ignored) are interpreted by the vast majority of speakers to mean the opposite of what their compositional semantics would dictate. The semantic inversion that is observed for sentences of this type is the strongest and most persistent linguistic illusion known to the field ( Wason & Reich, 1979). However, it has recently been argued that the preferred interpretation arises not because of a prevailing failure of the processing system, but rather because the non-compositional meaning is grammaticalized in the form of a stored construction ( Cook & Stevenson, 2010; Fortuin, 2014). In a series of five experiments, we investigate whether the depth charge effect is better explained by processing failure due to memory overload (the overloading hypothesis) or by the existence of an underlying grammaticalized construction with two available meanings (the ambiguity hypothesis). To our knowledge, our experiments are the first to explore the on-line processing profile of depth charge sentences. Overall, the data are consistent with specific variants of the ambiguity and overloading hypotheses while providing evidence against other variants. As an extension of the overloading hypothesis, we suggest two heuristic processes that may ultimately yield the incorrect reading when compositional processing is suspended for strategic reasons.

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四重负反相?深度电荷句的在线处理

摘要所谓的“深度冲击”语句(没有什么脑损伤是微不足道的，不容忽视的)被绝大多数说话者解释为与其构成语义所指示的相反的意思。在这种类型的句子中观察到的语义倒转是该领域已知的最强和最持久的语言错觉(Wason &帝国,1979)。然而，最近有人认为，首选解释的出现并不是因为处理系统的普遍失败，而是因为非构成意义以存储结构的形式被语法化了(Cook &史蒂文森,2010;Fortuin, 2014)。在一系列的五个实验中，我们研究了深度冲击效应是由记忆过载导致的加工失败(超载假说)还是由具有两个可用含义的潜在语法化结构的存在(歧义假说)更好地解释。据我们所知，我们的实验是第一个探索深度炸弹句在线处理概况的实验。总体而言，这些数据与歧义和超载假设的特定变体一致，同时提供了反对其他变体的证据。作为超载假说的延伸，我们提出了两种启发式过程，当由于策略原因暂停作文处理时，它们可能最终产生错误的阅读。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Semantics Multiple-

CiteScore

3.00

自引率

11.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： Journal of Semantics aims to be the premier journal in semantics. It covers all areas in the study of meaning, with a focus on formal and experimental methods. The Journal welcomes submissions on semantics, pragmatics, the syntax/semantics interface, cross-linguistic semantics, experimental studies of meaning (processing, acquisition, neurolinguistics), and semantically informed philosophy of language.