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The role of pragmatics in processing of distributivity

Aagten, Feline van (2021) The role of pragmatics in processing of distributivity. Bachelor's Thesis, Artificial Intelligence.

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Abstract

A self-paced reading experiment was conducted to further examine the preference of readers for a collective interpretation compared to a distributive interpretation in ambiguous plural sentences. Specifically the role of pragmatics was examined. Participants were shown items with no disambiguator, the distributive each and the collective all. All items could be combined with either disambiguator, though the items were forced to be distributive due to pragmatics.Our expectation was that if pragmatics has a strong effect on the reading time of a sentence, it would overrule the influence of the collective preference on the reading time. This difference would appear in sentences with the disambiguator all versus sentences without a disambiguator or the disambiguator each, with the former being slower to read. We cannot argue that our hypothesis is correct, as we have not found any significant results. However, our findings do slightly seem to hint towards a difference between each versus all and without disambiguator. There are aspects of the experiment that could be improved, which could have caused the lack of effect found.

Item Type: Thesis (Bachelor's Thesis)
Supervisor name: Spenader, J.K.
Degree programme: Artificial Intelligence
Thesis type: Bachelor's Thesis
Language: English
Date Deposited: 08 Feb 2021 16:32
Last Modified: 08 Feb 2021 16:33
URI: https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/23940

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