AUTHOR=Etxeberria Urtzi , Irurtzun Aritz 

TITLE=The emergence of scalar meanings

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=6

YEAR=2015

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00141

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00141

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>This paper analyzes the emergence of scalar additive meanings. We show that in Basque the same particle <italic>ere</italic> can obtain both the “simple additive” reading (akin to English <italic>too</italic>) and the “scalar additive” reading (akin to English <italic>even</italic>) but we argue that we do not have to distinguish two types of <italic>ere</italic>. We provide evidence, by means of a production and a perception experiment, that the reading is disambiguated by means of prosody (the placement of nuclear stress), which is a correlate of focus. We argue that the scalarity effect is generated by the combination of two presuppositions (a focus-induced one and a lexical one) and the assertion of the sentence.</p>