Generalized Implicatures in Spanish: An experimental approach

Abstract

Generalized conversational implicatures (GCIS) are a type of pragmatic inference characterized by a derivation following certain regularities and is relative independent from the context (Grice, 1989). There are two processing models on this phenomenon, from a cognitive perspective (Noveck & Reboul, 2008): 1) the default processing model (Levinson, 2000) states that the pragmatic meaning of GCIS is processed automatically and that contextual assumptions are used in later stages; 2) the guided-by-context model (Sperber & Wilson, 1995) stems from that contextual assumptions are integrated in early stages to prompt the derivation process. Several experimental studies have tested the hypotheses of these models (Bezuidenhout & Cutting, 2002; Breheny, Katsos & Williams, 2006). Nevertheless, they have arrived to opposite results using the same methodologies. This paper reports the results of an acceptability judgment experiment that uses the scalar implicature triggered by the existential quantifier algunos (closely related to some in English) (Horn, 1984). The results suggest that the context that precedes the implicature is integrated to the derivation process in a later stage, in line with the predictions of the default model.