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Is it a name or a fact? Disambiguation of reference via exclusivity and pragmatic reasoning
Malone, Stephanie Kalashnikova, Marina Davis, Erin Margaret
Malone, Stephanie
Kalashnikova, Marina
Davis, Erin Margaret
Abstract
Adults reason by exclusivity to identify the meanings of novel words. However, it is debated whether, like children, they extend this strategy to disambiguate other referential expressions (e.g., facts about objects). To further inform this debate, this study tested 41 adults on four conditions of a disambiguation task: label/label, fact/fact, label/fact, and fact/label (Scofield & Behrend, 2007). Participants also provided a verbal explanation for their referent selections to tease apart the underlying processes. Results indicated that adults successfully discerned the target object in the label/label and label/fact condition, yet not the remaining two conditions. Verbal reports indicated that the strategy utilized to disambiguate differed depending upon communicative context. These findings confirm that the tendency to reason by exclusivity becomes restricted to word-learning situations with growing linguistic and communicative experience.
Keywords
disambiguation, pragmatics, language, word learning
Date
2016
Type
Journal article
Journal
Cognitive Science
Book
Volume
40
Issue
Page Range
2095-2107
Article Number
ACU Department
Collections
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
File Access
Controlled