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The influence of polarity items on inferential judgments

Denić, M; Rothschild, D; Homer, V; Chemla, E; (2021) The influence of polarity items on inferential judgments. Cognition , 215 , Article 104791. 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104791. Green open access

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Abstract

Polarity items are linguistic expressions such as any, at all, some, which are acceptable in some linguistic environments but not others. Crucially, whether a polarity item is acceptable in a given environment is argued to depend on the inferences (in the reasoning sense) that this environment allows. We show that the inferential judgments reported for a given environment are modified in the presence of polarity items. Hence, there is a two-way influence between linguistic and reasoning abilities: the linguistic acceptability of polarity items is dependent on reasoning facts and, conversely, reasoning judgments can be altered by the mere addition of seemingly innocuous polarity items.

Type: Article
Title: The influence of polarity items on inferential judgments
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104791
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104791
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: Modularity, Polarity, Monotonicity, Intuitions, Reasoning
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Philosophy
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10129900
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