AUTHOR=Marty Paul P., Chemla Emmanuel 

TITLE=Scalar implicatures: working memory and a comparison with only

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=4

YEAR=2013

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00403

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00403

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>A Scalar Implicature (SI) arises when the use of a relatively weak sentence (e.g., <italic><bold>some</bold> politicians are corrupt</italic>) implies the denial of an alternative, stronger sentence (e.g., <italic>not <bold>all</bold> politicians are corrupt</italic>). The cognitive effort associated with the processing of SIs involves central memory resources (De Neys and Schaeken, <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B22">2007</xref>; Dieussaert et al., <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B25">2011</xref>; Marty et al., <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B50">2013</xref>). The goal of this study is to locate this previous result within the current psycholinguistic debate, and to understand at which level of SI processing these resources are specifically involved. Using a dual-task approach, we show that (1) tapping participant's memory resources interferes with the derivation of SIs, whereas (2) it does <italic>not</italic> affect the interpretation of sentences involving similar competition mechanisms between a sentence and potential alternatives through the use of <italic>only</italic> (e.g., <italic><bold>only some</bold> politicians are corrupt</italic>). We explain how these findings suggest that the central memory resources are not involved in the core process at the source of SIs, and discuss how this difference between SIs and <italic>only</italic> bears on recent linguistic debates on the division of labor between grammar and pragmatics.</p>