Pragmatic competence and pragmatic tolerance in foreign language acquisition – revisiting the case of scalar implicatures

Thesis

Understanding language involves making inferences. One type of inference are scalar implicatures, e.g. understanding that “some X” generally implicates “some but not all X”. Recent research has looked at the derivation of scalar implicatures employing binary sentence judgement tasks investigating differences between native speakers and L2 learners in terms of how they accept some sentences with a weak scalar expression (e.g. “Timothy ate some of the pretzels”) in contexts where the stronger scalar expression would hold true (i.e. where Timothy ate all of the pretzels). Results have been inconclusive, but in part, findings have been taken as evidence that L2 learners are less pragmatically competent than native speakers regarding their scalar implicature derivation abilities. Following evidence from L1 acquisition research, I propose that the binary judgement tasks in L2 research did not measure pragmatic competence, but pragmatic tolerance. Therefore, to measure participants’ pragmatic competence (i.e. sensitivity to underinformativeness) more unambiguously, I introduce into the field of L2 research the use of graded judgement tasks, previously employed in L1 studies. I present data from an experiment with adult English L1 speakers (n=30) and German EFL learners (n=36) judging underinformative some sentences in both binary and quinary sentence judgement tasks. Results with the quinary measure data find no evidence that the German EFL learners and native speakers differ in their pragmatic competence in terms of sensitivity to underinformativeness. Moreover, data with a binary measure task of the type used in previous L2 research also found no evidence for between-group differences in pragmatic tolerance. The findings suggest a reinterpretation of previous L2 scalar implicature research and reinforce the utility of distinguishing ‘Pragmatic Competence’ and ‘Pragmatic Tolerance’ in L2 experimental pragmatics.

Authors: Schulz, JM

• Type of award: MSc taught course
• Level of award: Masters
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: ALSLA; Gorilla online platform; Pragmatic tolerance; Quantitative research; Pragmatics; Second language acquisition; ALSLA2021; Scalar implicatures
• Subjects: Quantitative research; Pragmatics; Second language acquisition; Applied linguistics; English language--Study and teaching--Foreign speakers