Poster #54 - Pragmatic Judgement of Negative Sentences by Children: A Case of Child Japanese

• In Event: Poster Session 13

Abstract

Children struggle in negation comprehension, which researchers have attributed to representational complexity. However, recent studies have challenged this proposal. Researchers have demonstrated sensitivity in children to the felicity of negation and have claimed that struggles stem from pragmatic violation. Nordmeyer & Frank (2018) investigated the felicity judgment in children and adults of a true negative sentence like ‘Abby doesn’t have an apple’ by manipulating visual contexts (Figure 1). They revealed that the sentence was rated higher when Abby had nothing (Fig 1a) instead of an alternative object (Fig 1b). It was posited that participants found it more felicitous to use negation in the former context, because the latter could be described by uttering what she really has, like ‘Abby has a cat.’
The current study builds upon these findings by focusing on Japanese children. Japanese utilizes particles to mark grammatical functions of nouns such as Case, Theme, and Contrast. When the particle -wa marking Contrast (“contrastive -wa”) appears in negative sentences, it indicates the direct target of negation (McGloin, 1987).

(1) Inu-wa ringo-wa mottei-nai.
Dog-Theme apple-Contrast have-negation
‘The dog doesn’t have an apple (but it has something else).’

(2) Inu-wa ringo-o mottei-nai.
Dog-Theme apple-Accusative have-negation
‘The dog doesn’t have an apple.’

When contrastive -wa is attached to the object noun ringo ‘apple,’ as in (1), it implicates that ‘it is not an apple that the dog has, but it has something else,’ wherein the scope of negation is designated to the noun ‘apple.’ Without contrastive -wa, the whole predicate is negated as sentential negation, as in (2). Nobuki & Minai (2021), adopting the paradigm of Nordmeyer & Frank (2018) (Figure 2), revealed that Japanese-speaking adults rated (1) higher when the dog had an alternative object (Fig 2b) instead of nothing (Fig 2a). As Nordmeyer & Frank (2018) found in English, (2) was rated higher when the dog had nothing (Fig 2a) rather than an alternative object (Fig 2b). These findings confirmed that Japanese-speaking adults generate the implicature yielded by the contrastive -wa.
The current study investigates whether Japanese-speaking children aged 4-6 also generate such implicature. A remote experiment using Zoom that adopts the same paradigm as Nobuki & Minai (2021) (Fig 2) is currently underway. If children generate the implicature yielded by the contrastive -wa like adults, they should rate (1) higher when the dog has an alternative object (Fig 2b) instead of nothing (Fig 2a). However, they should rate (2) higher when the dog has nothing (Fig 2a) as opposed to an alternative object (Fig 2b). Like Nordmeyer & Frank (2018), we measure the felicity rating of children on a 5-point Likert scale and analyze the mean ratings for sentences (1) and (2).
This study will be one of the first studies to directly investigate the knowledge of Japanese children as to the role of the contrastive -wa and how it affects the felicity of negation. Findings will also contribute to literature on the pragmatics of negation comprehension in children and extend it to Japanese.

Authors

• Ayumi Nobuki, University of Kansas
  Presenting Author

• Megumi Ishikawa, University of Tokyo

• Utako Minai, University of Kansas