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Optional Illusions

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Variation in the Input

Part of the book series: Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics ((SITP,volume 39))

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Abstract

This chapter reviews recent psycholinguistic studies on adults’ and children’s resolution of scope ambiguities. Against this background, we discuss two different types of optionality that could in principle be found. First, we consider the possibility that children’s behavior, as documented in some experiments, reveals the selection of different grammars on different trials. Second, we focus on stages in which children’s hypothesis space mostly consists of one grammar which licenses an ambiguity. We will offer two claims. First, one can expect optionality when it comes to children’s selection of one grammar out of the ones that are available in the hypothesis space defined by Universal Grammar (UG) (see Yang, Knowledge and Learning in Natural Language, 2003, Yang, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8: 451–456, 2004). Second, optionality is not to be expected when it comes to children’s selection of a specific reading out of the ones that are licensed in the grammar they happen to draw upon to analyze a specific piece of input.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Together with Ladusaw (1979), we assume that some is a positive polarity item in adult English (see also Szabolcsi 2004).

  2. 2.

    Throughout the chapter, we will focus on one of the tasks of the psychological parser, namely ambiguity resolution (see Crain and Steedman 1985).

  3. 3.

    We will speculate on why ambiguity resolution – differently from the selection of one grammar out of the child’s hypothesis space – cannot be assumed to be a random process in the concluding section of the chapter.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Gillian Ramchand for discussion and for directing my attention to Labov’s work. Many thanks also to Charles Yang for many stimulating discussions. Many thanks also to Merete Anderssen, Kristine Bentzen, Luisa Meroni, Michelle St-Amour and Marit Westergaard for comments on previous versions of the paper. This work was supported in part by a Standard Research Grant from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and a VIDI grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and Utrecht University.

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  1. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Andrea Gualmini

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  1. Andrea Gualmini
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Correspondence to Andrea Gualmini .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Advanced Study in, Theoretical Linguistics (CASTL), University of Tromsoe, Tromsoe, 9037, Norway

    Merete Anderssen

  2. Center for Advanced Study in, Theoretical Linguistics (CASTL), University of Tromsoe, Tromsoe, 9037, Norway

    Kristine Bentzen

  3. Center for Advanced Study in, Theoretical Linguistics (CASTL), University of Tromsoe, Tromsoe, 9037, Norway

    Marit Westergaard

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Gualmini, A. (2011). Optional Illusions. In: Anderssen, M., Bentzen, K., Westergaard, M. (eds) Variation in the Input. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 39. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9207-6_2

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