Romanian children are not able not to derive actuality entailments
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2022/13/0008/000550Keywords:
First language, Actuality entailments, Implicatures, Negation, DNAbstract
Actuality entailments (AEs) are inferences from ability readings (“X could/was able to do Y”) to implicative readings (“X did Y”). They have been considered semantic inferences (Mari, Martin, 2007), arising from the speaker’s presupposition, or pragmatic implicatures (Bhatt 1999, Hacquard 2020) interacting with aspect. We investigate experimentally AEs and (double) negation in child Romanian. Like adults, Romanian 5-year-olds derive AEs with affirmative Minnie a putut să coacă o pizza (“Minnie was able to bake a pizza”), which suggests AEs are semantic in nature or pragmatic implicatures different from “some, not all”. Unlike adults, children derive few AEs with double negation in Minnie nu a putut să nu coacă o pizza (“Minnie was not able not to bake a pizza”).
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