Are generalised scalar implicatures generated by default? An on-line investigation into the role of context in generating pragmatic inferences

Recent research in semantics and pragmatics has revived the debate about whether there are two cognitively distinct categories of conversational implicatures: generalised and particularised. Generalised conversational implicatures are so-called because they seem to arise more or less independently of contextual support. Particularised implicatures are more context-bound. The Default view is that generalised implicatures are default inferences and that their computation is relatively autonomous--being computed by some default mechanism and only being open to cancellation at a second stage when contextual assumptions are taken into consideration (i.a.). It is at that second stage where contextual assumptions are considered that particularised implications are computed. By contrast, Context-Driven theorists claim that both generalised and particularised implicatures are generated by the same process and only where there is contextual support (Chierchia, 2004; Horn, 1984; Levinson, 2000 i.a.). In this paper, we present three on-line studies of the prototypical cases of generalised implicatures: the scalar implicatures 'some of the Fs' > 'not all the Fs' and 'X or Y' > 'either X or Y but not both'. These studies were designed to test the context-dependence and autonomy of the implicatures. Our results suggest that these scalar implicatures are dependent on the conversational context and that they show none of the autonomy predicted by the Default view. We conclude with a discussion of the degree to which such implicatures are purely context-driven and whether an interactionist default position may also be plausible.     

Social influence on physics and mathematics: local or attributive?

Summary  The article is devoted to the nature of science. To what extent are science and mathematics affected by the society in which they are developed? Philosophy of science has accepted the social influence on science, but limits it only to the context of discovery (a “locational” approach). An opposite “attributive” approach states that any part of science may be so influenced. L. Graham is sure that even the mathematical equations at the core of fundamental physical theories may display social attributes. He has used the investigations of the famous Soviet physicist V. Fock on the General Theory of Relativity which were under the influence of Marxism. The Goal of the article is to demonstrate: 1) Why Soviet science is not an appropriate subject-matter for testing the thesis of social constructivism, 2) That differnt levels of science and different stages in the development of science undergo social influences in different degrees ranging from very significant and unavoidable to absolutely trivial and easy eliminated.     

Contributions of linguistic,quantitative, and spatial attention skills to young children's math versus reading: Same,different, or both?

The study used Bayesian and Frequentist methods to investigate whether the roles of linguistic, quantitative, and spatial attention skills are distinct in children's acquisition of reading and math. A sample of 175 Chinese kindergarteners was tested with measures of linguistic skills (phonological awareness and phonological memory), quantitative knowledge (number line task, symbolic digit comparison, and non-symbolic number estimation), spatial attention skills (visual span, mental rotation, and visual search), word reading, and calculation. After statistically controlling for age and nonverbal intelligence, phonological awareness and digit comparison performance explained unique variance in both math and reading. Moreover, number line estimation was specifically important for math, while phonological memory was specifically essential for reading. These findings highlight the possibility of developing early screening tools with different cognitive measures for children at risk of learning disabilities in reading and/or math.     

Comparing language and religion in normative arguments about linguistic justice

Many of the most influential theorists of linguistic justice make arguments on the basis of comparisons between language and religion. They claim either that (1) language, by contrast with religion, cannot be separated from the state or that (2) unequal official linguistic recognition, just like unequal official religious recognition, is morally problematic. This article argues that careful attention to debates about liberalism and the place of religion in public life invites us to question the two above-mentioned liberal assumptions about religion underlying many arguments concerning linguistic justice based on (dis)analogies between language and religion. The hope is that such critical scrutiny is likely to shed some light on normative questions of linguistic justice, more precisely on questions about the legitimacy of granting more recognition to certain languages, usually those of national native groups (as opposed to groups resulting from more or less recent immigration).     

Immigrant linguistic justice: The lay of the land

Linguistic justice is concerned with the just way of politically regulating linguistic diversity. Today, the linguistic-justice debate may be differentiated into three different domains: interlinguistic justice, intralinguistic justice, and global linguistic justice. Each of these domains has, to a significant extent, attracted different authors and debates, although the normative system underlying them is structurally similar. This introductory piece aims to provide context for our symposium dedicated to linguistic justice and migration by, first, giving an overview of linguistic justice, second, linking linguistic justice to migration, and, finally, providing an overview of the various papers in the symposium, situating them against the background developed in the first two sections.     

The practical ethics of linguistic integration: Three challenges

Public debates on linguistic integration as a socially desired outcome often share a prevailing sentiment that newcomers ought to “learn the language.” But the intensity of that sentiment is rarely accompanied by an equally robust understanding of what, precisely, it means in practice. This results in a notion of linguistic integration with an inbuilt tension between a seemingly pragmatic and commonsensical appearance, on the one hand, and a minimal action-guidance capacity, on the other hand. This paper explores this intriguing tension, and it identifies three moral and practical challenges that this challenge presents to the normative theorizing of the practical ethics of linguistic integration: (1) a predicament of arbitrary treatment; (2) the interpersonal structure of social and linguistic learning; and (3) the affective dimension of linguistic integration.     

Structural linguistic injustice

This paper develops a concept of structural linguistic injustice. By employing the so-called structural-injustice approach, it argues that individuals' seemingly harmless language attitudes and language choices might enable serious harms on a collective level, constituting what one could call a structural linguistic injustice. Section 1 introduces the linguistic-justice debate. By doing so, it establishes linguistic diversity as the context in which phenomena such as individuals' language attitudes, language choice, and language loss occur. Moreover, the paper illustrates why employing the structural-injustice approach might be beneficial for the linguistic-justice debate. Section 2 conceptualizes individuals' (certain types of) language attitudes and language choice as (objectionable) social structures. Section 3 provides a concept of structural linguistic injustice. Section 4 suggests one possible remedy for structural linguistic injustice. Section 5 concludes the paper.     

Mental time travel to the future might be reduced in sleep

We present a quantitative study of mental time travel to the future in sleep. Three independent, blind judges analysed a total of 563 physiology-monitored mentation reports from sleep onset, REM sleep, non-REM sleep, and waking. The linguistic tool for the mentation report analysis is based on established grammatical and cognitive-semantic theories and has been validated in previous studies. Our data indicate that REM and non-REM sleep must be characterized by a reduction in mental time travel to the future, which would support earlier physiological evidence at the level of brain function.     

Zur Theorie Der Lorentztransformationen

On the Theory of the Lorentz transformations. A ReplyThe author defends the notion of absolute time and classical kinematics in special relativity against various objections raised against his theory of the Lorentz transformations.