Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Processing Conditional Perfection in Promises and Threats: The Role of Negation, Clause Order and Incentive

  • Published:
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The paper reports on two experiments that investigate whether polarity, clause order and incentive influence derivation of Conditional Perfection in two types of inducements (promises and threats). Both experiments are designed as inference tasks, additionally measuring reaction times to inferences. The paper shows that the derivation of Conditional Perfection is endorsed in both types of inducements. However, the negative consequent bias (i.e. higher rates of Conditional Perfection in conditionals with a negative consequent than in conditionals with an affirmative consequent) and the double negation effect (i.e. slowdown of reaction times to Conditional Perfection with a double negation in a consequent) hold for threats, but not for promises. The paper also reveals a parallel double negation effect (i.e. facilitation of Conditional Perfection in conditionals with negation in both clauses) in threats, but not in promises. Last but not least, the paper demonstrates that the effect of clause order and incentive on the derivation of Conditional Perfection is rather moderate. The paper supports the view that the derivation of Conditional Perfection is not effortful (Van Tiel and Schaeken in Cogn Sci 41:1119–1154, 2016) and has some indirect arguments for treating Conditional Perfection and scalar implicatures as separate phenomena.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
€32.70 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price includes VAT (Finland)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Figures 5

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Atlas, J., & Levinson, S. (1981). If-clefts, informativeness, and logical form. In P. Cole (Ed.), Radical pragmatics (pp. 1–61). Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1–48. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bonnefon, J.-F., Feeney, A., & Villejoubert, G. (2009). When some is actually all: Scalar inferences in face-threatening contexts. Cognition, 112(2), 249–258.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness. Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dieussaert, K., Schaeken, W., & d’Ydewalle, G. (2002). The relative contribution of content and context factors on the interpretation of conditionals. Experimental Psychology, 49, 181–195.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Evans, J., & Handley, S. (1999). The role of negation in conditional inference. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 52(3), 739–769.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Evans, J., & Newstead, S. (1977). Language and reasoning: A study of temporal factors. Cognition, 5, 265–283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Evans, J., & Twyman-Musgrove, J. (1998). Conditional reasoning with inducements and advice. Cognition, 69, B11–B16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Evans, J., Clibbens, J., & Rood, B. (1995). Bias in conditional inference: Implications for mental models and mental logic. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 48, 644–670.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Farr, M.-C. (2011). The presence of Conditional perfection Experimental evidence. In Reich, I., Horch, E., Pauly, D. (Eds). Proceedings of Sinn and Bedeutung, (vol. 15, pp. 225–239). Universaar Saarland University Press.

  • Fillenbaum, S. (1975). If: Some uses. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 37, 245–260.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fillenbaum, S. (1976). Inducements: On the phrasing and logic of conditional promises, threats, and warnings. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 38, 231–250.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fillenbaum, S. (1977). A condition on plausible inducements. Language and Speech, 20(2), 136–141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fillenbaum, S. (1978). How to do some things with IF. In J. W. Cotton & R. L. Klatzky (Eds.), Semantic factors in cognition (pp. 169–214). Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fischer, O., & Nänny, M. (2001). The motivated sign. Iconicity in language and literature. Amsterdam/Philadelphia.

    Google Scholar 

  • Franke, M. (2009). Signal to act: Game theory in pragmatics. Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam.

  • Geis, M., & Zwicky, A. (1971). On invited inferences. Linguistic Inquiry, 2, 561–566.

    Google Scholar 

  • Geurts, B. (2010). Quantity implicatures. Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3 (pp. 43–58). Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herburger, E. (2015). Conditional perfection: The truth and the whole truth. Proceedings of SALT, 25, 615–635.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Horn, L. (2000). From if to iff: Conditional perfection as pragmatic strengthening. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 289–326.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lilje, G. W. (1972). Uninvited inferences. Linguistic Inquiry, 3, 540–542.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matsumoto, Y. (1995). The Conversational Condition on Horn Scales”. Linguistics and Philosophy, 18, 21–60.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moldovan, A. (2013). Denying the antecedent and conditional perfection again. In OSSA Conference Archive (vol. 117).

  • Newstead, S., Ellis, C., Evans, J., & Dennis, I. (1997). Conditional reasoning with realistic material. Thinking and Reasoning, 3, 49–96.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oaksford, M., Chater, N., & Larkin, J. (2000). Probabilities and polarity biases in conditional inference. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26(4), 883–899.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pekelis, O. (2017). Uslovnye pridatočnye [Russian conditionals]. Materialy plja proekta korpusnogo opisanija russkoj grammatiki [Materials for the project of corpus description of the Russian grammar]. Unpublished article. URL: http://rusgram.ru.

  • Pinheiro, J., Bates, D., DebRoy, S., Sarkar, D., and R Core Team (2020). nlme: Linear and nonlinear mixed effects models. R package version 3.1–151, URL: https://CRAN.

  • R Core Team (2020). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria. URL: https://www.R-project.org/.

  • Rubin, J., & Lewicki, R. (1973). A three-factor experimental analysis of promises and threats. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 3(3), 240–257.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schroyens, W., Schaeken, W., Verschueren, N., & D’Ydewalle, G. (1999). Conditional reasoning with negations: Matching bias and implicit versus explicit affirmation or denial. Psychologica Belgica, 39(4), 235–258.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Searle, J. (1979). Expression and meaning. Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Searle, J., & Vanderveken, D. (1985). Foundations of illocutionary logic. Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Canegem-Ardijns, I., & Van Belle, W. (2008). Conditionals and Types of Conditional Perfection. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 349–376.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Tiel, B., & Schaeken, W. (2016). Processing conversational implicatures: Alternatives and counterfactual reasoning. Cognitive Science, 41, 1119–1154.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van der Auwera, J. (1997). Pragmatics in the last quarter century: The case of conditional perfection. Journal of Pragmatics, 27, 261–274.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Verbrugge, S., Dieussaert, K., Schaeken, W., & Van Belle, W. (2004). Promise is debt, threat another matter: The effect of credibility on the interpretation of conditional promises and threats. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58(2), 106–112.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Von Fintel, K. (2001). Conditional strengthening. Unpublished manuscript. MIT.

Download references

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers of the paper, the editors of this special issue and the organizers of the workshop “The Processing of Negation and Polarity” (in particular, to Mingya Liu and Juliane Schwab), to Alex Dainiak, Anastasiya Lopukhina, and Bob van Tiel for all the fruitful discussions and valuable comments upon earlier versions of the paper. This work was supported by the Humanitarian Research Foundation of the Faculty of Humanities, HSE University in 2021–2022, Project “Experiments in linguistic and logic”.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. HSE University, Moscow, Russia

    Natalia Zevakhina & Veronika Prigorkina

Authors
  1. Natalia Zevakhina
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Veronika Prigorkina
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Natalia Zevakhina.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Appendices

Appendix 1

The materials of the first and second experiments (with their English translations) are available via the link: https://zevakhina.github.io/experiments/processing-conditional-perfection--stimuli-and-fillers.pdf.

Appendix 2

The links to the lists of the first and second experiments are given below.

List 1, first experiment – https://spellout.net/ibexexps/PriRoNika/ex1_li1/experiment.html

List 2, first experiment – https://spellout.net/ibexexps/PriRoNika/ex1_li2/experiment.html

List 3, first experiment – https://spellout.net/ibexexps/PriRoNika/ex1_li3/experiment.html

List 4, first experiment – https://spellout.net/ibexexps/PriRoNika/ex1_li4/experiment.html

List 1, second experiment – https://spellout.net/ibexexps/PriRoNika/ex2_li1/experiment.html

List 2, second experiment – https://spellout.net/ibexexps/PriRoNika/ex2_li2/experiment.html

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Zevakhina, N., Prigorkina, V. Processing Conditional Perfection in Promises and Threats: The Role of Negation, Clause Order and Incentive. J Psycholinguist Res 50, 1557–1573 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-021-09794-z

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-021-09794-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation