Early Implicatures by Children and the Acquisition of Scalar Implicatures

Abstract

Inquiries into the acquisition of scalar implicatures (SIs) have focussed on the question why children calculate SIs less often than adults. To answer this question several hypotheses, such as the Processing Limitation Hypothesis, the Reference-Set Hypothesis and the Pragmatic Delay Hypothesis have been suggested (Chierchia et al. 2005). All of these studies assume that implicatures are a late acquisition phenomenon, because individual types of implicatures are not distinguished. However, one should not treat all kinds of implicatures in the same way. This study shows that some types of implicatures occur very early and it proves that even 5-year-old children calculate implicatures – although different ones than adults. Based on these findings a new hypothesis on the acquisition of SIs is formulated.