What makes pair list answers available: An experimental approach

Asya Achimova (1) , Viviane Deprez (2) , Julien Musolino (1)

1 RuCCS - Department of Linguistics and the Center for Cognitive ScienceRutgers University.
2 L2C2 - Laboratoire sur le langage, le cerveau et la cognition

Question/quantifier interactions have long been assumed texhibit a subject/object asymmetryregarding the availability of pair-list answers(May 1985). However, the precise nature of this asymmetry remains controversial, and individual acceptability judgments reported in the literature vary significantly (Beghelli 1997, Chierchia 1993, Szabolcsi 1997, Agüero-Bautista 2001) .In order to assess the degree of such variability and determine what factors actually contribute to pair-list answeravailability, we ran three psycholinguistic experiments using judgment tasks. Our results provide nuanced confirmation for a structural asymmetry , underscore the importance of the nature of the interacting quantifiers, and call into question the role played by the presuppositional status and the plurality of the question terms. Moreover, we uncovered the existence of a group of individuals who do not appear to exhibit the standard subject/object asymmetry for pair list answers. We discuss the theoretical implications of this finding and suggest that an extension of Beghelli's (1997) account may be used to ca pture this hitherto unreported pattern

Domaines: Linguistique

Asya Achimova, Viviane Deprez, Julien Musolino. What makes pair list answers available: An experimental approach. NELS 41 Proceedings, Oct 2010, University of Pennsylvania, United States. ⟨hal-00929986⟩