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In this study, we investigate the influence of grammatical gender on people's conceptualizations of objects in the French and German language groups. In particular, we ask whether translation equivalents in French and German that have opposite grammatical gender (e.g., pont – Brücke ‘bridge’) will be associated differentially with more male (vs. female) qualities by native speakers of these two languages, such that speakers of both languages associate grammatically masculine and feminine nouns with typically male and female qualities, respectively. We test the hypothesized grammatical gender effect in French and German by using two tasks: first, a word association task—a group of participants is asked to generate adjectives for gender-marked nouns presented in their native language—and second, a word rating task—another group of participants is asked to rate the generated adjectives as representing typically male or female qualities.

This is a psycholinguistic study about the influence of linguistic structure on people's conceptualizations of objects. The Whorfian hypothesis, or Linguistic Relativity, postulates that linguistic categories influence the way we conceptualize the world. While strong, deterministic, forms of it have been refuted, weaker “Neo-Whorfian” versions are still debated. A specific question that has attracted considerable attention is whether speakers of languages that assign grammatical gender to nouns denoting inanimate objects think of these objects as “more masculine” or “more feminine” depending on the noun’s grammatical gender. Such effects have been reported, but have been put into question by recent replication failures. In this study, we test the hypothesized language effect in French by using two tasks: first, a word association task—a group of French participants is asked to generate adjectives for gender-marked nouns presented in their native language—and second, a word rating task—another group of French participants is asked to rate the generated adjectives as representing typically male or female qualities.

We are interested in the production and interpretation of answers to wh-questions and how they depend on prior beliefs. We will test the predictions of various models in Bayesian pragmatics.

Report on the pre-registered results from April, together with anonymized data and analyses scripts.

We found contradicting results in the production part of the project between the pilot (N=48) and the first study (N=80). A power analysis on the pooled results shows that we need to increase the sample size to ~240 to achieve a statistical power of 80%. We also decided to make some changes to the modeling methods after comparing various options on the original data sets. The report for the first batch of results gives more details.

Questions with quantifiers such as ‘Which book did every student read?’ can receive a pair-list reading, but the availability of this reading depends on the quantifier, as well as the environment of the question (matrix or embedded under various predicates), with possible interactions between these factors. The details of these interactions have been a subject of debate in the literature. We tested the acceptability of pair-list readings with 5 quantifiers (most, two, no, every, and fewer than three) in 4 different environments (matrix, find out, be certain, and wonder). Our results confirm that the availability of pair-list interpretations for questions with quantifiers depends heavily on both the quantifier and the environment in which the question appears, and more specifically that there is a qualitative divide between responsive and rogative predicates, not between intensional and extensional predicates., Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung, Vol 25 (2021): Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 25

Paper abstract. A number of authors, beginning with Alonso-Ovalle (2006), have used conditional antecedents to argue for the presence of alternatives in semantics. In this tradition, recent experimental work from Ciardelli et al. (2018b) and Schulz (2018) uses data from conditional antecedents to investigate the interaction between negation and alternatives. We contribute to this line of inquiry with an experiment to test a number of semantics of conditionals through their predictions on the relationship between alternatives and negation (namely, Fine, 2012; Alonso-Ovalle, 2006; Ciardelli et al., 2018b; Willer, 2018; Schulz, 2018). We find experimental support for a variant of Schulz’s theory and against all other accounts we consider.

Poster presented at the 22nd Amsterdam Colloquium (18-20 December 2019).

Poster presented at the 22nd Amsterdam Colloquium (18-20 December 2019).

Paper abstract. A number of authors, beginning with Alonso-Ovalle (2006), have used conditional antecedents to argue for the presence of alternatives in semantics. In this tradition, recent experimental work from Ciardelli et al. (2018b) and Schulz (2018) uses data from conditional antecedents to investigate the interaction between negation and alternatives. We contribute to this line of inquiry with an experiment to test a number of semantics of conditionals through their predictions on the relationship between alternatives and negation (namely, Fine, 2012; Alonso-Ovalle, 2006; Ciardelli et al., 2018b; Willer, 2018; Schulz, 2018). We find experimental support for a variant of Schulz’s theory and against all other accounts we consider.

Paper abstract. A number of authors, beginning with Alonso-Ovalle (2006), have used conditional antecedents to argue for the presence of alternatives in semantics. In this tradition, recent experimental work from Ciardelli et al. (2018b) and Schulz (2018) uses data from conditional antecedents to investigate the interaction between negation and alternatives. We contribute to this line of inquiry with an experiment to test a number of semantics of conditionals through their predictions on the relationship between alternatives and negation (namely, Fine, 2012; Alonso-Ovalle, 2006; Ciardelli et al., 2018b; Willer, 2018; Schulz, 2018). We find experimental support for a variant of Schulz’s theory and against all other accounts we consider.

Paper abstract. A number of authors, beginning with Alonso-Ovalle (2006), have used conditional antecedents to argue for the presence of alternatives in semantics. In this tradition, recent experimental work from Ciardelli et al. (2018b) and Schulz (2018) uses data from conditional antecedents to investigate the interaction between negation and alternatives. We contribute to this line of inquiry with an experiment to test a number of semantics of conditionals through their predictions on the relationship between alternatives and negation (namely, Fine, 2012; Alonso-Ovalle, 2006; Ciardelli et al., 2018b; Willer, 2018; Schulz, 2018). We find experimental support for a variant of Schulz’s theory and against all other accounts we consider.

Paper abstract. A number of authors, beginning with Alonso-Ovalle (2006), have used conditional antecedents to argue for the presence of alternatives in semantics. In this tradition, recent experimental work from Ciardelli et al. (2018b) and Schulz (2018) uses data from conditional antecedents to investigate the interaction between negation and alternatives. We contribute to this line of inquiry with an experiment to test a number of semantics of conditionals through their predictions on the relationship between alternatives and negation (namely, Fine, 2012; Alonso-Ovalle, 2006; Ciardelli et al., 2018b; Willer, 2018; Schulz, 2018). We find experimental support for a variant of Schulz’s theory and against all other accounts we consider.

Sadrzadeh et al (2013) present a compositional distributional analysis of relative clauses in English in terms of the Frobenius algebraic structure of finite dimensional vector spaces. The analysis relies on distinct type assignments and lexical recipes for subject vs object relativisation. The situation for Dutch is different: because of the verb final nature of Dutch, relative clauses are ambiguous between a subject vs object relativisation reading. Using an extended version of Lambek calculus, we present a compositional distributional framework that accounts for this derivational ambiguity, and that allows us to give a single meaning recipe for the relative pronoun reconciling the Frobenius semantics with the demands of Dutch derivational syntax.

Two important questions arise from the recent literature on embedded questions.First, Heim (1994) proposed that embedded questions are ambiguous betweena weakly and strongly exhaustive reading. Spector (2005) recently proposedan intermediate exhaustive reading as well. Second, adverbs of quantity such as’mostly’ can quantify over answers to an embedded questions (Berman, 1991). Ananalysis of this phenomena reveals an analogy between embedded questions andplural determiner phrases, and suggests a fine-grained structures for the denotationof questions (Lahiri, 2002).The first part of the dissertation consist of three psycholinguistic studies on theexhaustive readings of questions under ‘know’ in English, the acquisition of thesereadings under ‘savoir’ by French 5-to-6-ear-olds, and the properties of emotivefactivepredicates such as ‘surprise’. The second part presents a theory of embeddedquestions built on Klinedinst and Rothschild’s (2011) proposal to derive exhaustivereadings as implicatures, although it differs in the fine-grained structureit adopts for questions denotations in order to account for plurality effects as well.The theory solves problem raised by B. R. George (2013) and makes predictions fora larger range of sentences.; Suivant la proposition de Tarski (1936), la sémantique vériconditionnelle associeà une phrase déclarative des conditions de vérité. Ainsi, comprendre le sens dela phrase “Il pleut”, c’est pouvoir dire après avoir regardé par la fenêtre si elle estvraie ou fausse. Toutefois, ceci ne permet de rendre compte que des phrases déclaratives,et pas des questions puisqu’aucune situation ne rendra jamais la question“Qui a appelé ce matin ?” vraie ou fausse. Hamblin (1973) propose la premièrethéorie des questions dans le cadre de la sémantique véri-conditionnelle, et proposede leur associer des conditions de résolutions, c’est-à-dire des ensembles deréponses. Comprendre le sens de la question “Qui a appelé ce matin ?” c’est alorssavoir que “Jean a appelé” est une réponse possible, tandis que “il pleuvait” n’enest pas une.Très rapidement, l’étude de la sémantique des questions s’est tournée versles questions enchâssées dans des phrases déclaratives (questions indirectes). Eneffet, il est beaucoup plus aisé de juger des conditions de vérité d’une phrasesdéclarative que des conditions de résolution d’une question. Or moyennant deshypothèses sur la sémantique des verbes enchâssant des questions (‘savoir’, ‘oublier’.. . ), on peut relier les conditions de vérité d’une phrase déclarative au sensde la question qu’elle enchâsse. Cette approche, proposée par Karttunen (1977), adonné lieu à une littérature théorique très riche.