The role of input in discovering presuppositions triggers: Figuring out what everybody already knew

dc.contributor.advisorHacquard, Valentineen_US
dc.contributor.advisorLidz, Jeffreyen_US
dc.contributor.authorDudley, Rachel Elaineen_US
dc.contributor.departmentLinguisticsen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2017-09-14T05:42:06Z
dc.date.available2017-09-14T05:42:06Z
dc.date.issued2017en_US
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation focuses on when and how children learn about the meanings of the propositional attitude verbs "know" and "think". "Know" and "think" both express belief. But they differ in their veridicality: "think" is non-veridical and can report a false belief; but "know" can only report true beliefs because it is a veridical verb. Furthermore, the verbs differ in their factivity: uses of "x knows p", but not uses of "x thinks p", typically presuppose the truth of "p", because "know" is factive and "think" is not. How do children figure out these subtle differences between the verbs, given that they are so similar in the grand scheme of word meaning? Assuming that this consists in figuring out which of an existing store of mental state concepts (such as belief) to map to each word, this dissertation highlights the role of children's linguistic experiences, or input, with the verbs in homing in on an adult-like understanding of them. To address the when question, this dissertation uses behavioral experiments to test children's understanding of factivity and show that some children can figure out the contrast by their third birthday, while other children still have not figured it out by 4.5 years of age. This is earlier than was once thought, but means that there is a lot of individual variation in age of acquisition that must be explained. And it means that children do not just get better at the contrast as they get older, which leaves room for us to ask what role linguistic experiences play, if we can explore how these experiences are related to the variation in when children uncover the contrast. In order to address the how question, the dissertation lays out potential routes to uncovering the contrast via observing direct consequences of it or via syntactic and pragmatic bootstrapping approaches which exploit indirect consequences of the contrast. After laying out these potential routes, the dissertation uses corpus analyses to provide arguments for which routes are most likely, given children's actual experiences with the verbs. In particular, trying to track the direct consequences of the contrast will not get the learner very far. But alternative routes that rely on indirect consequences such as the syntactic distributions of the verbs or their discourse functions, provide clear signal about the underlying contrast. Finally, the dissertation discusses the consequences of this picture for the semantic representation of "know" and "think", as well as the linguistic, conceptual, and socio-pragmatic competence that children must bring to the table in order to uncover the contrast.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/M2SX6496Z
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/19956
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledLinguisticsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledfactivityen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledindirect speech acten_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledlanguage acquisitionen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledpresuppositionen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledsyntactic bootstrappingen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledveridicalityen_US
dc.titleThe role of input in discovering presuppositions triggers: Figuring out what everybody already knewen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Dudley_umd_0117E_18332.pdf
Size:
2.84 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format