Children’s Interpretation of Conditional Connectives
Previous studies have shown that the uni-conditional marker <i>if</i> can be interpreted biconditionally in some contexts. Similarly, the biconditional marker <i>unless</i> may receive a biconditional interpretation in positive quantificational contexts (e.g., every) and a un...
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
MDPI AG
2024-11-01
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| Series: | Languages |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/9/12/365 |
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| Summary: | Previous studies have shown that the uni-conditional marker <i>if</i> can be interpreted biconditionally in some contexts. Similarly, the biconditional marker <i>unless</i> may receive a biconditional interpretation in positive quantificational contexts (e.g., every) and a uni-conditional reading in negative quantificational contexts (e.g., no). However, exceptive accounts expect <i>unless</i> to yield a biconditional meaning in all contexts. Our aim in this preliminary study is to provide experimental evidence about how children interpret these conditional connectives. A recent study conducted with adult Turkish speakers found that <i>unless</i> was not semantically biconditional in either positive quantificational contexts or negative quantificational contexts (Evcen et al. 2019). We used a similar paradigm with a child-friendly adaptation to test how <i>if (-sA)</i>, <i>if not (değilse)</i>, and <i>unless (-mAdIkçA)</i> would behave with 5-year-old children acquiring Turkish. Our preliminary results indicate that children, unlike adults, disregard the antecedent hosting the conditional connective but focus only on the consequent hosting the quantifier structure. We argue this may be related to the higher syntactic and semantic complexity in these structures incurring heavy working memory demands. |
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| ISSN: | 2226-471X |