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Part of
L1 Acquisition and L2 Learning: The view from Romance
Edited by Larisa Avram, Anca Sevcenco and Veronica Tomescu
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 65] 2021
► pp. 331–354

Chapter 13
Deriving scalar implicatures with quantifiers by Romanian children

| ICUB, University of Bucharest

The present study looks at whether 7–9-year-old Romanian monolingual children generate fewer implicatures than adults (Noveck, 2001) when interpreting two existential plural quantifiers (unii ‘some1’ and cȃţiva ‘some2’). The results reveal that 7-year-olds derive scalar implicatures with existential quantifiers less frequently than 9-year-olds, who, in turn, derive them less frequently than adults. Moreover, subjects behaved the same with unii ‘some1’ and cȃţiva ‘some2’, i.e., the semantic differences between the two existential quantifiers seem to be immaterial to scalarity computation.

Keywords: scalar implicatures, existential quantifiers, L1 Romanian
Article outline
  • 1.Aim
  • 2.Scalar implicatures in communication
    • 2.1Inferring the unsaid
    • 2.2Scalar implicatures in a nutshell
  • 3.The acquisition of quantifiers and scalar implicatures
    • 3.1A brief history
    • 3.2Developmental accounts of scalar implicatures
  • 4.Scalar implicatures in child Romanian: An experimental study
    • 4.1Aim
    • 4.2Existential quantifiers in Romanian: Predictions for acquisition
    • 4.3Method
      • 4.3.1Participants
      • 4.3.2Materials
      • 4.3.3Procedure
      • 4.3.4Results
    • 4.4Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
  • Appendix
  • Legend
Published online: 17 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.65.13ble
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