Shaped by context: children’s interpretation of Dutch universal quantifiers affected by pragmatics, semantics, and syntax
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2024-08-22
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en
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Universal quantifiers refer to a complete set of members, for instance “all animals”, “each woman”, or “every man”. While these quantifiers differ in some ways, few have studied the common core for their interpretation: their universality. This was investigated in the present study with a truth-value judgement task and an act-out task for Dutch children (3;0 - 5;11). The influence of the pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic context on quantifier interpretation was investigated, as these are components that contribute to the equilibrium that is correct quantifier interpretation. The judgement task appeared to impose a lower threshold for children to correctly interpret the quantifiers than the act-out task. The quantifier 'alle' elicited more correct responses than the other quantifiers, possibly due to its plural noun phrase and its facilitating syntactic position. An influence of age was found on universal interpretation, indicating a learning curve within the age span of this study. These results highlight the value of using multiple experimental assessments to measure quantifier interpretation and encourage researchers to account for the influence of task types on their conclusions concerning children’s quantifier knowledge.
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Faculteit der Letteren