Abstract
We present the results of three experiments investigating the interpretation of comparative constructions involving pronominal reference in which binding Principle C is violated. We show that both children and adults retrieve interpretations that are not predicted. On the one hand, children appear to represent elided pronominal material functionally instead of in a strict identity relation with a pronoun on the surface, generating interpretations that are entirely unexpected from the perspective of the adult grammar. On the other, adult participants often appear to ignore Principle C, being influenced by factors such as prosodic focus, the type of comparative (subject v. object), and structural position of the pronoun. We propose that the way in which the sentence processor is deployed in the incremental processing of such comparative constructions gives rise to so-called acceptable ungrammaticality.
We have included this paper in Roger’s festschrift for two reasons. The first is that Roger served on the second author’s qualifying paper committee with the first author as chair, where the research for Experiment 3 was originally conducted and presented. We approached him with the puzzling data and a stab at an interpretation appealing to functions but mostly scratching our heads in bafflement at the unexpected responses from children. As is typical when one has conversations with Roger about perplexing data, we returned from our meeting with pages of notes on formalism and references to theoretical approaches to pronominal references to pursue. The second is that it is in large part due to Roger’s influential research on degree constructions and his open, humorous, and engaging style of teaching (particularly during his 2005 LSA Summer Institute course on degrees) that the first author was drawn to do research in this area of linguistics, despite the inherently daunting nature of comparatives. Becoming a colleague with Roger at Rutgers University, later on, was just icing on the cake. On a more practical note, we enthusiastically acknowledge the contributions of the research assistants in the Rutgers Laboratory for the Developmental Language Studies in helping to design stimuli, run experiments, and code data. We are also grateful for discussions with the following colleagues, whose insight and suggestions have improved this work and made clearer the possible path for future investigations: Ken Safir, Mark Baker, John F. Bailyn, Miloje Despić, Roumi Pancheva, Maria Polinsky, Irina Sekerina, and Susi Wurmbrand. Versions of this research were presented at BUCLD 2014, NELS 2016, and the 2017 LSA Annual Meeting.
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Notes
- 1.
This sentence is, of course, ambiguous, allowing for interpretations where Olivia’s mother is either the subject or the object in the standard clause. The experimental scenario made very clear that the King and the Mother had the toy lizards and were the ones doing the distributing to the little girls. Each of the adults told the girls about their lizards (which were placed next to them), and wore special bows around their necks, which corresponded to the color of their respective lizards (which they noted to the girls). Finally, in the scenario, the experimenter’s lead-in sentence stated that both the King and Olivia’s mother were giving out their lizards. The open question was who received them.
- 2.
A reviewer suggests that when ellipsis is resolved, another pronoun would be copied in, allowing for different pronominal reference. We would like very much for this to be the case to parsimoniously explain the child data, but if this were a possibility, then adults should allow for disjoint reference between the surface and elided pronouns, but they do not. The reviewer suggests appealing to deletion of the pronoun as radical deaccenting and invoking a principle that says that for such cases in contexts of parallelism, one would need to place contrastive focus on the pronoun to license disjoint reference. If indeed this is an option, then additional research focusing on why adults do not typically allow for such interpretations is called for, and that is beyond the scope of this paper.
- 3.
Early ideas leading to this proposal were fleshed out in meetings with Roger Schwarzschild.
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Appendix
Appendix
Target Sentences for Experiments 1, 2
Object Comparatives
Subject Comparatives
Target Sentences for Experiment 3a
Target Sentences for Experiment 3b
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Syrett, K., Gor, V. (2019). The Perils of Interpreting Comparatives with Pronouns for Children and Adults. In: Altshuler, D., Rett, J. (eds) The Semantics of Plurals, Focus, Degrees, and Times. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04438-1_10
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