Do you get what I mean? Contrastive Inference and Comprehension in Children

Abstract

Children by five years of age are able to form and comprehend sentences in almost adult like ways, however what we mean often requires enrichment through what isn’t said. These pragmatic effects are a result of contrastive inference and exhaustification processes that are reliant on whether or not children can reliably access propositional alternatives. Scalar implicatures, adjectives, and it-clefts show evidence that accessibility of alternatives facilitates children’s success in these cases. However, it is unclear how 4 to 7 year old children will utilize contrastive inference and exhaustification when the context is ambiguous as to whether one should generate pragmatic enrichment. We found that children appear, in some cases, to be extra pragmatic compared to adults. This shows that children, when they are given access to alternatives are pragmatically competent and utilize contrastive inference and exhaustification even when the context is ambiguous. This research highlights the importance of informative contexts and contributes to the discussion around context-dependency and implicatures.