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SUMMARY:Presuppositions vs. implicatures: what reaction times really tell 
 us - Dr Jacopo Romoli (University of Ulster)
DTSTART:20141120T160000Z
DTEND:20141120T173000Z
UID:TALK55478@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Theodora Alexopoulou
DESCRIPTION:Scalar implicatures (SIs) and Presuppositions (Ps) have tradit
 ionally been considered very different. Recent accounts have instead argue
 d that at least some presuppositions are scalar implicatures of sort\, the
 reby predicting that\, every- thing being equal\, they should behave unifo
 rmly (Chemla 2009\, Romoli 2014 among others). SIs and Ps have been invest
 igated experimentally more and more recently (Chemla and Singh 2014 for a 
 critical review). And in particular\, reaction time experiments have been 
 taken to challenge the scalar implicature-based account to presuppositions
 \, in that Ps unlike SIs would not give rise to a delay in reaction times.
  I rst discuss the relevant literature on RTs experiments and then I repor
 t on three experiments\, conducted in collaboration with Florian Schwarz a
 nd Cory Bill\, investigating different types of presuppositions and scalar
  implicatures in comparison. As I will argue\, the results of these experi
 ments show that it is actually not clear that there is a difference in RTs
  between Ps and SIs. Therefore the scalar implicature approach to presuppo
 sitions is not challenged by RTs ndings after all. Finally\, I will mentio
 n other differences between Ps and SIs which have instead been found from 
 other ways of looking at the SIs vs Ps comparison\, like language acquisit
 ion and language disorders\, and how these findings constrain importantly 
 the scalar implicature\napproach.\n
LOCATION:Lecture Block\, Room 5\, Sidgwick Site
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