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ACQUIRING MEANING: FROM LEXICAL CONTENT TO PRAGMATIC INFERENCE
Anna Papafragou University of Delaware Fri, April 25, 3:30pm, MJH Rm 126 Much research in linguistic theory seeks to uncover how semantic information and pragmatic inference jointly contribute to the way humans interpret utterances in context. Until recently, however, little was known about how the ability to integrate lexically encoded and contextually inferred aspects of meaning develops during language learning. In this talk I begin to address this question focusing on scalar implicatures (SIs), one of the best-studied cases of pragmatic inference (Some circles are blue -> Not all circles are blue). I report the results from a series of experiments which investigated preschoolers' understanding of SIs in environments involving quantifiers ('some'), numerals ('two') and aspectual verbs ('start'). I present an explanation for children's successes and failures with SIs, and discuss implications of this work for the development of the semantics/pragmatics interface. I also argue that asymmetries within the scalar class revealed by the developmental data can bear on current theories of the semantics of scalars in the adult gramamar. 
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