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The de re/de dicto ambiguity centers on the referential and/or attributive properties of noun phrases within the scope of intentional operators, such as belief reports. For instance, in the belief report "Julie believes Elizabeth’s poem will win the competition," a de re reading of the embedded referential noun phrase "Elizabeth’s poem" entails that the referential association between this noun phrase and the target poem is true from the speaker's perspective but may not be recognized as such in the belief holder’s (i.e., Julie’s) mind. In contrast, a de dicto reading describes Julie’s beliefs as she understands the referential association in her mind. While both de re and de dicto readings of definite noun phrases are considered acceptable, given different supporting contexts, we show that the acceptability of de re readings is vulnerable to contextual and pragmatic manipulations. One such case involves a context in which the belief holder, Julie, holds a mistaken belief about the identity of the poem, such as thinking that it was written by Nicole when, in reality, it was written by Elizabeth. This mistaken identity context introduces a de dicto reading of a competing noun phrase, "Nicole’s poem," in "Julie believes Nicole’s poem will win the competition." In this context, the speaker-oriented de re reading of "Elizabeth’s poem" has a roughly bimodal acceptability distribution, while the de dicto noun phrase was overall preferred. Our study is the first to systematically lay out the empirical landscape of de re/de dicto readings of definite noun phrases and highlights the vulnerability of the de re reading. This investigation solidifies the foundation for further theory development and endorses the practice of collecting reliable empirical judgment data for nuanced semantic phenomena.

Languages have constructions that convey the logical concepts of negation, conjunction, and disjunction. These constructions are often logically ambiguous. A disjunction can be exclusive (XOR) or inclusive (IOR), and a negative conjunction/disjunction can be an alternative denial (NAND) or joint denial (NOR). Previous studies have suggested that there is substantial crosslinguistic variation in the interpretation of logical constructions and that languages fall into two groups. The first group including English interprets a negative conjunction as alternative denial (NAND) and a negative disjunction as joint denial (NOR). The second group including Hungarian and Chinese has the opposite interpretation pattern. However, there have been few crosslinguistic studies on the adult interpretation of logical constructions. Using an card selection task, we tested speakers of English, Hungarian, Spanish, and Chinese on different logical constructions. We found that speakers of these languages showed consistency in their interpretations of these constructions in the question environment.

Classical quantifiers (like "all," "some," and "none") express relationships between two sets, allowing us to make generalizations (like "no elephants fly"). Devices like these appear to be universal in human languages. Is the ubiquity of quantification due to a universal property of the human mind or is it attributable to more gradual convergence through cultural evolution? We investigated whether classical quantifiers are present in a new language emerging in isolation from other languages, Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL). An observational study of historical data collected in the 1990s found evidence of potential quantifier forms. To confirm the quantificational meaning of these signs, we designed a production study that elicited, from three age cohorts of NSL signers (N = 17), three types of quantifiers: universal (all), existential (some), and negative (none). We find evidence for these classical quantifiers in the very first generation of signers, suggesting they may reflect a universal property of human cognition or a very rapid construction process.

During acquisition, children must learn both the meanings of words and how to interpret them in context. For example, children must learn the logical semantics of the scalar quantifier "some" and its pragmatically enriched meaning: 'some but not all'. Some studies have shown that 'scalar implicature' -- that "some" implies 'some but not all' -- poses a challenge even to nine-year-olds, while others find success by age three. We asked whether reports of children's successes might be due to the computation of exclusion inferences (like contrast or mutual exclusivity) rather than scalar implicatures. We found that young children (N = 214; ages 4;0-7;11) sometimes compute symmetrical exclusion inferences rather than asymmetric scalar inferences. These data suggest that a stronger burden of evidence is required in studies of implicature; before concluding that children compute implicatures, researchers should first show that children exhibit sensitivity to asymmetric entailment in the task.

Language acquisition involves learning not only grammatical rules and a lexicon, but also what someone is intending to convey with their utterance: the semantic/pragmatic component of language. In this paper we separate the contributions of linguistic development and cognitive maturity to the acquisition of the semantic/pragmatic component of language by comparing deaf adults who had either early or late first exposure to their first language (ASL). We focus on the particular type of meaning at the semantic/pragmatic interface called scalar implicature, for which preschool-age children typically differ from adults. Children's behavior has been attributed to either their not knowing appropriate linguistic alternatives to consider or to cognitive developmental differences between children and adults. Unlike children, deaf adults with late language exposure are cognitively mature, although they never fully acquire some complex linguistic structures, and thus serve as a test for the role of language in such interpretations. Our results indicate an overall high performance by late learners, especially when implicatures are not based on conventionalized items. However, compared to early language learners, late language learners compute fewer implicatures when conventionalized linguistic alternatives are involved (e.g. ). We conclude that (i) in general, Gricean pragmatic reasoning does not seem to be impacted by delayed first language acquisition and can account for multiple quantity implicatures, but (ii) the creation of a scale based on lexical items can lead to ease in alternative creation that may be advantageously learned early in life, and that this may be one of several factors contributing to differences between adults and children on scalar implicature tasks.

Morquio A syndrome (mucopolysaccharidosis IVA) is an autosomal recessive disorder that results from deficient activity of the enzyme N-acetylgalactosamine-6-sulfatase (GALNS) due to alterations in the GALNS gene, which causes major skeletal and connective tissue abnormalities and effects on multiple organ systems. The GALNS alterations associated with Morquio A are numerous and heterogeneous, and new alterations are continuously identified. To aid detection and interpretation of GALNS alterations, from previously published research, we provide a comprehensive and up-to-date listing of 277 unique GALNS alterations associated with Morquio A identified from 1,091 published GALNS alleles. In agreement with previous findings, most reported GALNS alterations are missense changes and even the most frequent alterations are relatively uncommon. We found that 48% of patients are assessed as homozygous for a GALNS alteration, 39% are assessed as heterozygous for two identified GALNS alterations, and in 13% of patients only one GALNS alteration is detected. We report here the creation of a locus-specific database for the GALNS gene (http://galns.mutdb.org/) that catalogs all reported alterations in GALNS to date. We highlight the challenges both in alteration detection and genotype-phenotype interpretation caused in part by the heterogeneity of GALNS alterations and provide recommendations for molecular testing of GALNS.

Language acquisition involves learning not only grammatical rules and a lexicon but also what people are intending to convey with their utterances: the semantic/pragmatic component of language. In this article we separate the contributions of linguistic development and cognitive maturity to the acquisition of the semantic/pragmatic component of language by comparing deaf adults who had either early or late first exposure to their first language (ASL). We focus on the particular type of meaning at the semantic/pragmatic interface called "scalar implicature", for which preschool-age children typically differ from adults. Children's behavior has been attributed to either their not knowing appropriate linguistic alternatives to consider or to cognitive developmental differences between children and adults. Unlike children, deaf adults with late language exposure are cognitively mature, although they never fully acquire some complex linguistic structures and thus serve as a test for the role of language in such interpretations. Our results indicate an overall high performance by late learners, especially when implicatures are not based on conventionalized items. However, compared to early language learners, late language learners compute fewer implicatures when conventionalized linguistic alternatives are involved (e.g., ). We conclude that (i) in general, Gricean pragmatic reasoning does not seem to be impacted by delayed first language acquisition and can account for multiple quantity implicatures, but (ii) the creation of a scale based on lexical items can lead to ease in alternative creation that may be advantageously learned early in life and that this may be one of several factors contributing to differences between adults and children on scalar implicature tasks.