Exactly two things to learn from modeling scope ambiguity resolution: Developmental continuity and numeral semantics

Abstract

Behavioral data suggest that both children and adults struggle to access the inverse interpretation of scopally-ambiguous utterances in certain contexts. To determine whether the causes of both child and adult difficulty are similar, we extend an existing computational model of children’s scope ambiguity resolution in context. We find that the same utterance-disambiguation mechanism is active in both children and adults, supporting the theory of developmental continuity. Moreover, because adult behavior requires an exact semantics for numerals, we also provide empirical support for this theory of linguistic representation.