Natural Language Semantics
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-020-09165-9
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Plurality and crosslinguistic variation: an experimental
investigation of the Turkish plural
Agata Renans1 • Yağmur Sağ2 • F. Nihan Ketrez3 • Lyn Tieu4 • George Tsoulas5 •
Raffaella Folli6 • Hana de Vries5 • Jacopo Romoli7
The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In English and many other languages, the interpretation of the plural is
associated with an ‘exclusive’ reading in positive sentences and an ‘inclusive’
reading in negative ones. For example, the plural noun tulips in a sentence such as
Chicken planted tulips suggests that Chicken planted more than one tulip (i.e., a
reading which ‘excludes’ atomic individual tulips). At the same time, however, the
corresponding negative sentence Chicken didn’t plant tulips doesn’t merely convey
that he didn’t plant more than one tulip, but rather that he didn’t plant any tulip (i.e.,
& Agata Renans
agata.renans@rub.de
Yağmur Sağ
yagmursag@gmail.com
F. Nihan Ketrez
nihan.ketrez@bilgi.edu.tr
Lyn Tieu
lyn.tieu@gmail.com
George Tsoulas
george.tsoulas@york.ac.uk
Raffaella Folli
r.folli@ulster.ac.uk
Hana de Vries
hanna.devries@york.ac.uk
Jacopo Romoli
jacopo.romoli@gmail.com
1
Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
2
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
3
Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey
4
Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia
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A. Renans et al.
‘including’ atomic individual tulips). Different approaches to the meaning contribution of the English plural vary in how they account for this alternation across the
polarities, but converge on assuming that (at least one of) the denotation(s) of the
plural should include atomic individuals. Turkish, on the other hand, is cited as one
of the few known languages in which the plural only receives an exclusive interpretation (e.g., Bale et al. Cross-linguistic representations of numerals and number
marking. in: Li, Lutz (eds) Semantics and linguistic theory (SALT) 20, CLC
Publications, Ithaca, pp 582–598, 2010). More recent proposals have, however,
argued that the Turkish plural should in fact be analysed more like the English
plural (e.g., Sağ, The semantics of number marking: reference to kinds, counting,
and optional classifiers, PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, 2019). We report two
experiments investigating Turkish-speaking adults’ and preschool-aged children’s
interpretation of positive and negative sentences containing plural nouns. The
results provide clear evidence for inclusive interpretations of the plural in Turkish,
supporting accounts that treat the Turkish and English plurals alike. We briefly
discuss how an inclusive meaning of the Turkish plural can be integrated within a
theory of the Turkish number system which captures some idiosyncratic properties
of the singular and the agreement between number and number numerals.
Keywords Plural Experimental studies Implicatures Turkish
1 Introduction
As is well known, the plural in English (and many other languages) is associated
with more than one possible interpretation. For example, a plural noun like tulips in
a sentence such as (1) suggests that Chicken planted multiple tulips (i.e., a reading
which ‘excludes’ atomic individual tulips). At the same time, however, when the
same noun appears in a negative sentence such as (2), it doesn’t merely convey that
Chicken didn’t plant multiple tulips, but rather that he didn’t plant any tulip (i.e.,
‘including’ atomic individual tulips; Krifka 1989; Sauerland et al. 2005; among
others). The first reading is generally referred to as the exclusive reading, and the
latter the inclusive one.
(1) Chicken planted tulips.
[ Chicken planted multiple tulips
(2) Chicken didn’t plant tulips.
[ Chicken didn’t plant any tulip
EXCLUSIVE READING
INCLUSIVE READING
The main approaches to the semantics of the English plural differ in how they
account for this alternation across the polarities, but they all converge on the
5
University of York, York, UK
6
Ulster University, Newtownabbey, UK
7
University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
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Plurality and crosslinguistic variation
assumption that (at least one of) the denotation(s) of the plural should include
atomic individuals (Sauerland et al. 2005; Spector 2007; Mayr 2015; Ivlieva 2013;
Zweig 2009; Martı́ 2020a; Grimm 2013; Farkas and de Swart 2010; Križ
2015, 2017).
By contrast, Turkish, together with a few other languages, such as Western
Armenian and Korean, is often cited as one of the few known languages in which
the plural only receives an exclusive interpretation (Bale et al. 2010; Bale and
Khanjian 2014; Görgülü 2012), suggesting that the denotation of the plural can
never include atomic individuals. Recent accounts, however, have argued against
this claim and have proposed instead that the plural in Turkish be analysed more
like the plural in English, giving rise to the same alternation of readings (Kan 2010;
Sağ 2018, 2019). It is therefore controversial whether the plural in Turkish should
be assigned an exclusive denotation or whether an inclusive denotation is also
possible.
In this paper, we report two experiments designed to investigate this question.
We tested Turkish-speaking adults’ and preschool-aged children’s interpretation of
plurals in positive and negative sentences. The results provide clear evidence for an
inclusive interpretation of the plural in Turkish, supporting the approach which
argues that it should be analysed like the plural in English in this respect (Kan 2010;
Sağ 2018, 2019).1 We discuss the three main existing accounts of the inclusive–
exclusive alternation and how they fare with respect to our results in Turkish. We
also briefly discuss, with reference to recent proposals by Sağ (2018, 2019) and
Martı́ (2020a), how an inclusive meaning of the Turkish plural can be integrated
within a theory of the Turkish number system in general which covers well-known
idiosyncratic properties of the singular and agreement between number and
numerals.
Whether Turkish is a language with an exclusive-only plural or not is an
important question not only for our understanding of the properties of the Turkish
plural, but also as a means to gain a better understanding of the different meanings
that the plural can obtain across languages, thereby constraining crosslinguistically
adequate theories of the semantics of number marking.
The rest of the paper is organised as follows. In Sect. 2, we discuss the exclusive
versus inclusive interpretations of the plural in English and the three main existing
theoretical proposals. We then move to the case of Turkish, outlining the differences
between English and Turkish and their accounts in the literature. The predictions of
the different approaches are discussed in detail in Sect. 3. Subsequently, we report
on our experimental study in Sect. 4 and its follow-up in Sect. 5. In Sect. 5.3 we
discuss the results. We briefly outline in Sect. 6 how an inclusive interpretation of
the plural can be integrated within a general theory of the number-marking system
in Turkish. Section 7 concludes the paper.
1
For a similar investigation and conclusion for the plural in Buryat, see Bylinina and Podobryaev (2020).
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A. Renans et al.
2 Background
2.1 The plural in English
2.1.1 The empirical picture
As already discussed above, a sentence like (3) in English suggests that Chicken
planted multiple tulips, giving rise to the so-called exclusive interpretation of the
plural; this is not an interpretation that is associated with the corresponding singular
sentence in (4).
(3) Chicken planted tulips.
[ Chicken planted more than one tulip
EXCLUSIVE READING
(4) Chicken planted a tulip.
Chicken planted more than one tulip
However, this exclusive reading generally disappears when the plural noun appears
in a downward-entailing context, as in (5). That is, (5) typically does not merely
convey that Chicken didn’t plant multiple tulips, but rather that he didn’t plant any
tulip at all.
(5) Chicken didn’t plant tulips.
[ Chicken didn’t plant any tulip
INCLUSIVE READING
The same holds for other downward-entailing contexts, such as the restrictor of
universal quantifiers and questions, as shown below:2
(6) Every chicken who planted tulips will be rewarded.
[ Every chicken who planted one or more tulips will be rewarded
INCLUSIVE READING
(7) Did Chicken plant tulips?
[ Did Chicken plant one or more tulips?
INCLUSIVE READING
Sentences like (5) can also obtain the weaker exclusive reading that Chicken didn’t
plant multiple tulips, but this has to be forced by the context—for example, by a
continuation that is incompatible with the inclusive reading, as illustrated in (8)
(which is typically pronounced with stress on the plural noun).
(8) Chicken didn’t plant
2
TULIPS
…he planted only one!
It is controversial whether questions are downward-entailing contexts. What is relevant for us, however,
is that they pattern with other downward-entailing contexts with respect to the interpretation of plural
nouns.
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A theory of the plural in English therefore has to account for the alternation between
the exclusive and inclusive readings, while also allowing for the exclusive
interpretation to re-emerge as a dispreferred option in cases like (8).
There are three main accounts of the English plural in the literature: the
implicature approach (e.g., Sauerland et al. 2005; Spector 2007; Zweig 2009;
Ivlieva 2013; Mayr 2015), the ambiguity approach (Farkas and de Swart 2010;
Grimm 2013; Martı́ 2020a), and the homogeneity approach (Križ 2015, 2017).
While different, all of these approaches have in common the assumption that (at
least one of) the denotation(s) of the plural should include atomic individuals. That
is, one denotation is inclusive. For this reason we will call this approach the
inclusive approach.3 For instance, in a context in which the relevant tulips are a, b,
and c, the literal meaning of the plural noun tulips would include the atomic
individual tulips and the sets thereof, as in (9) (cf. Schwarzschild 1996).
(9) ½½tulips ¼ fa; b; c; fa; bg; fa; cg; fb; cg; fa; b; cgg
INCLUSIVE MEANING
The meaning in (9), combined with the rest of the sentence in (3), thus gives rise to
an inclusive reading, which can be paraphrased as in (10).
(10) Chicken planted one or more tulips.
As is easy to see, positing the inclusive meaning of the plural in (9) makes the right
prediction for cases like (5), which can simply be analysed as the negation of (10),
as in (11), conveying that Chicken didn’t plant any tulip.
(11) Chicken didn’t plant one or more tulips.
What remains to be explained, of course, is how the exclusive meaning arises in
cases like (3). The three main accounts differ in how they derive this interpretation.
We next briefly discuss each of these in turn.
2.1.2 Existing Theories
The three inclusive accounts of the English plural, i.e., the ambiguity account, the
implicature account, and the homogeneity account, share the following properties:
(i) they assume that the plural can have an inclusive meaning as in (9), (ii) they
predict the alternation between inclusive and exclusive readings discussed above,
albeit in different ways, and (iii) they allow for the exclusive reading to emerge as a
marked option for cases like (8).
The ambiguity account The ambiguity account, defended mainly in Farkas and de
Swart (2010), Martı́ (2020a), and Grimm (2013), posits that the plural is ambiguous
between the inclusive meaning in (9) and the exclusive one in (12). When (12) is combined
with the rest of the sentence in (3), the reading it gives rise to is the exclusive one in (13).
3
This denotation is sometimes also referred to as number-neutral or semantically unmarked. We will use
the more neutral inclusive and exclusive terminology throughout the paper.
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A. Renans et al.
(12) ½½tulips ¼ ffa; bg; fa; cg; fb; cg; fa; b; cgg
EXCLUSIVE MEANING
(13) Chicken planted more than one tulip.
In addition, this approach assumes that the choice between the exclusive and the
inclusive meaning of the plural is regulated by a pragmatic principle favouring the
strongest possible interpretation whenever possible in the context, as formulated in
(14).
(14) The Strongest Meaning Hypothesis for plurals:
For a sentence involving a plural nominal, prefer that interpretation of the plural
which leads to the stronger overall interpretation for the sentence as a whole,
unless this interpretation conflicts with the context of utterance.
This predicts that in a positive context like (3), the exclusive reading in (13) will be
favoured, as it is stronger than the corresponding inclusive one in (10). Under
negation, on the other hand, entailment relations reverse, so it is the inclusive
reading in (11) which will be favoured over the corresponding exclusive one in (15).
(15) Chicken didn’t plant more than one tulip.
Finally, the principle in (14) is formulated in such a way as to allow for a weak
interpretation if the stronger one is in conflict in some way with the context of
utterance. This predicts that in a case like (8) the weak exclusive interpretation is
possible, because the stronger inclusive one would contradict the continuation of the
sentence.
In sum, the ambiguity approach predicts the alternation between exclusive and
inclusive readings by positing an ambiguous meaning for the plural and a pragmatic
principle regulating the choice between the two possible meanings based on logical
strength.
The implicature account A different take on the inclusive–exclusive alternation
of the English plural is the implicature account developed in Sauerland (2003),
Sauerland et al. (2005), Spector (2007), Zweig (2009), Ivlieva (2013), and Mayr
(2015), among others. There are three main ingredients to this account: an inclusive
literal meaning for plural nouns, an assumption about competition between the
singular and the plural, and a theory of implicatures. The first ingredient is common
to all accounts within the inclusive approach. Given the assumption that the literal
meaning of plural nouns is inclusive, (16a) can be paraphrased as in (16b):
(16) a. Chicken planted tulips.
b. & Chicken planted one or more tulips
LITERAL MEANING
As for the second ingredient, an assumption regarding the competition between the
singular and the plural is that the plural in (16a), whose literal meaning is the
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Plurality and crosslinguistic variation
inclusive one in (16b), competes with an alternative sentence which we can
paraphrase as in (17):4
(17) Chicken planted exactly one tulip.
The third ingredient is a theory of implicatures. The standard approach treats scalar
implicatures as arising from the hearer’s reasoning about what the speaker actually said as
compared to what she could have said instead, assuming she was being cooperative for the
purposes of the conversation (see Grice 1975 and much subsequent work). Without going
into details: in the case of (16a) the hearer assumes that the speaker will convey the strongest
relevant piece of information she believes to be true. Therefore, upon hearing (16) the hearer
will assume that the stronger alternative in (17) must be false. But then, if (16) is true and
(17) is false, this leads to the exclusive reading that Chicken planted more than one tulip.
(18) Chicken planted tulips (=Chicken planted one or more tulips), and it is not
true that Chicken planted exactly one tulip.
= Chicken planted more than one tulip
EXCLUSIVE READING
As for the negative case, negation reverses the entailment relation and therefore (20)
is now weaker than (19). Thus, upon hearing (19) the listener will not draw any
inference from it.
(19) Chicken didn’t plant tulips.
(20) Chicken didn’t plant exactly one tulip.
As noted, sentences like (19) can sometimes obtain an additional marked reading as in (8).
For the implicature approach, this would be a case in which the implicature is computed
locally, under negation. That is, the implicature is first computed, giving rise to the
meaning that Chicken planted more than one tulip; this meaning is then negated, giving
rise to the meaning that Chicken didn’t plant more than one tulip (he planted only one).
The homogeneity account Križ (2015, 2017) proposes an alternative approach to
the multiplicity inference in terms of homogeneity. The main idea is that most
predicates are undefined under certain conditions when they apply to pluralities. As
Križ (2017) shows, when a (homogeneous) predicate appears in an episodic
sentence such as (21), it gives rise to the following trivalent truth conditions: it is
true when both (22a) and (22b) are true, false when both are false, and undefined
otherwise. This gives us the intuitively correct reading of the sentence in (21),
namely that it’s true if and only if Chicken planted more than one tulip.
(21) Chicken planted tulips.
(22) a. Chicken planted one or more tulips.
b. Chicken planted multiple tulips.
4
The different implicature approaches to the exclusive reading vary in how they derive the alternative in
(17); see Tieu and Romoli (2019) for an overview.
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A. Renans et al.
When (21) is negated, as in (23), the undefinedness is unaffected by negation, so
that the conditions for (23) are as follows: (23) is true when both (24a) and (24b) are
true, false when both are false, and undefined otherwise. These appear to be the
correct conditions for (23); in particular, they capture the intuition that the sentence
is true if and only if Chicken didn’t plant any tulip.
(23) Chicken didn’t plant tulips.
(24) a. Chicken didn’t plant one or more tulips.
b. Chicken didn’t plant multiple tulips.
In sum, the homogeneity approach can account for the alternation between positive
and negative cases.
For the marked case in (8), Križ (2017) appeals to a pragmatic principle for
dealing with undefinedness, which allows the use of a sentence even if it is
undefined in the context, as long as the actual situation that makes the sentence
undefined is equivalent to a situation that would make the sentence true.5 For
instance, in (5), the prediction is that it can be used felicitously to the extent that we
can accommodate in the context that the distinction between Chicken planting just
one tulip and her planting no tulip is not relevant (i.e., it only matters whether she
planted more than one tulip, not whether she planted tulips at all).
Summary The plural in English (and many other languages) gives rise to
inclusive and exclusive readings in different contexts. The main theoretical accounts
in the literature agree on the assumption that the plural can have an inclusive
meaning, but derive the exclusive reading in different ways. In the next subsection,
we turn to discuss the case of Turkish, which has been argued to work quite
differently from English in this respect. In particular, Turkish has been argued to be
a language in which the plural can only be interpreted exclusively.
2.2 The plural in Turkish
2.2.1 The empirical picture
Basic cases Turkish plural nouns also give rise to exclusive readings. As with its
English counterpart, a sentence like (25) with a (non-case-marked) plural noun in
object position conveys the meaning that Chicken planted more than one tulip.6 We
5
This principle is summarised in (i).
(i)
An undefined sentence can be used when the situation described in the context is, for current
purposes, equivalent to the situation in which the sentence is true (Križ 2017).
6
Accusative-marked nouns in object position convey a specific/definite interpretation. For this reason,
we focus on unmarked bare plurals throughout the paper.
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Plurality and crosslinguistic variation
have added the modifier ‘with blue petals’ as this improves the felicity of the
sentence for most speakers.7
(25) Tavuk
(mavi
yaprak-lı)
lale-ler
dik-ti.
chicken
blue
petal-with
tulip-PL
plant-PAST
‘Chicken planted tulips (with blue petals).’
[ Chicken planted more than one tulip (with blue petals)
EXCLUSIVE READING
What is more controversial is the question of whether inclusive readings are
possible in Turkish. In fact, as already mentioned, Turkish is often cited as one of
the few known languages in which the plural can only be interpreted exclusively.
Recently, however, the question of whether Turkish is a language with an
exclusive-only plural has become a subject of controversy. On the one hand, Bale
and Khanjian (2014) and Bale et al. (2010) argue that the plural in Turkish is never
interpreted inclusively. The main focus of their papers is Western Armenian, but
they argue that their account extends to Turkish. As Bale and Khanjian (2014: fn:
15) propose: ‘‘The theory advanced […] can also account for the distribution of
singular and plural in Turkish, a language that has many of the same properties as
Western Armenian.’’ They provide examples (26) and (27) as evidence that the
plural in Western Armenian is interpreted only exclusively both in upward- and
downward-entailing contexts. That is, in (27), the plural noun receives an exclusive
interpretation, despite appearing in a downward-entailing context, unlike the
corresponding cases in English discussed above.8
(26) WESTERN ARMENIAN
DEgha-ner
vaze-ts-in.
boy-PL
run-PST-3PL
‘Two or more boys ran.’
(Bale and Khanjian 2014)
(27) WESTERN ARMENIAN
?Amen mart
vor bEdig-ner uner vodk-i gajne-tsav.
all
person that child-PL had foot-DAT stand.up-PST
‘Everyone that had two or more children stood up.’
(Bale and Khanjian 2014, p.4)
More recent work by Kan (2010) and Sağ (2018, 2019), on the other hand, has
argued that the Turkish plural does give rise to the same exclusive vs. inclusive
alternation as in English, as demonstrated for instance in (28) vs. (29) (from Sağ
2018).
7
In the two experiments reported below, we tested plural nouns with and without a modifier.
8
Bale and Khanjian (2014) note that Armenian native speakers prefer a singular noun in (27), but if they
are asked to interpret the sentence, they interpret the plural exclusively.
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A. Renans et al.
(28) Çocuk-lar
sokak-ta
top
oynu-yor.
child-PL
street-LOC
ball play-PROG
‘Children are playing ball on the street.’
[ More than one child is playing ball on the street
(29) Çocuk-lar
sokak-ta
top
oyna-mı-yor.
child-PL
street-LOC
ball play-NEG-PROG
‘Children aren’t playing ball on the street.’
[ No child is playing ball on the street
EXCLUSIVE
INCLUSIVE
In addition, the inclusive reading appears to extend beyond negation, as the
examples below from Sağ (2018) show. That is, (30) intuitively would be answered
in the affirmative if just one bear was encountered; (31) suggests that cheating by
just one man is enough for joining; and similarly for (32).9
(30) Orman-da ayı-lar-la
karşılaş-tı-nız
mı?
forest-LOC bear-PL-COM come.across-PAST-2PL QUEST
‘Did you come across bears in the forest?’
(31) Eğer
erkek-ler tarafından aldat-ıl-dı-y-sa-n,
sen de
if
man-PL
by
cheat-PASS-PAST-COP-COND-2SG you also
biz-e
katıl-abil-ir-sin
we-DAT join-ABIL-AOR-2SG
‘If you have been cheated by men, you can join us.’
(32) Erkek-ler tarafından aldat-ıl-an
herkes
biz-e
katıl-abil-ir.
man-PL
by
cheat-PASS-REL everybody we-DAT join-ABIL-AOR
‘Everyone who has been cheated by men can join us.’
In sum, contra previous claims by Bale et al. (2010), Bale and Khanjian (2014),
and others, the data from Sağ (2018) show that the Turkish plural can receive a
genuine inclusive denotation in addition to the exclusive one, unlike Western
Armenian.10 Given the controversial nature of these claims in the literature, we
9
Bale and Khanjian (2009) suggest that negation would not be a good downward-entailing context to test
the interpretation of the plural. Their argument is that in Western Armenian, negation patterns differently
from other downward-entailing contexts, such as the restrictor of the universal quantifier. They argue that
in all of these environments bare plurals only have an exclusive reading, but in negated sentences, an
inclusive reading seems to re-emerge. We tested only negation in our experiments, so we acknowledge
that further experimental work is required to determine whether there really is a distinction between
negation and other downward-entailing environments in Turkish. Note, however, that the above examples
from Sağ (2018) of Turkish bare plurals in questions and other downward-entailing contexts suggest that
the plural in Turkish does have an inclusive reading in these contexts as well.
10
Though note that all Western Armenian examples we are aware of that exhibit exclusive denotations
contain the predicate uni ‘have’. This is one place where bare singulars have an inclusive denotation (see
Sigler 1996). We suggest that the availability of the inclusive reading of bare singulars with the ‘have’
predicate might be the reason for the seemingly exclusive reading of bare plurals. While we think this
should be tested experimentally, some initial fieldwork conducted by some of us with eight native
speakers of Western Armenian suggests that once we move away from the predicate ‘have’, the inclusive
123
Plurality and crosslinguistic variation
believe a systematic experimental investigation is crucial to provide further insight
on this question.
Other properties of the Turkish plural Before we sketch more systematically the two
possible approaches to the Turkish plural outlined above (i.e., whether the Turkish plural
is only exclusive or whether it has both an inclusive and an exclusive reading), let us first
mention some other characteristic properties of the Turkish number system which set it
apart from the English system, and which are important for our experimental design.
First, it has long been observed in the literature that the singular in Turkish can
obtain an inclusive interpretation in certain contexts compatible with plural
individuals (Bliss 2004; Bale et al. 2010; Görgülü 2012; Scontras 2014; Sağ
2018, 2019; Martı́ 2020b). That is, while (33) in English suggests that Chicken
planted just one tulip, the corresponding sentence in Turkish is compatible with
Chicken planting more than one tulip.11
(33) Chicken planted a tulip.
(34) Tavuk lale dik-ti.
chicken tulip plant-PAST
‘Chicken planted a tulip.’
It is important to note that this interpretation of the singular is restricted to certain
contexts, but we will come back to this below.
A second property of the Turkish number system which is well known to be
different from that of English is the interaction between number marking and
Footnote 10 continued
reading does arise in downward-entailing contexts. Some of the examples used are the following (see also
Sağ 2019):
gErnas
mer xump-i-n
mijanal.
(i) jete gin-er-e
if
woman-PL-ABL betray-PASS-2SGPAST can.2SGPRES our group-DAT-DEF join.INF
‘If you are betrayed by women, you can join our group.’ (one or more women)
(ii) Context: We go to the forest and see one bear there.
des-ak?
bear-PL
see-2PLPAST
‘Did you see bears?’
a. ayo meg had mE
des-ank
yes one CL
INDEF see-1PLPAST
‘Yes, we saw one.’
(minag) meg had des-ank
b.
no
only
one CL
see-1PLPAST
‘No, we (only) saw one.’
11
Another way to express the meaning that Chicken planted a tulip is with the use of the indefinite/numeral bir:
(i) Tavuk bir lale dik-ti.
chicken INDF tulip plant-PAST
‘Chicken planted a tulip.’
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A. Renans et al.
numerals: while English numerals other than ‘‘one’’ require plural nouns, Turkish
numerals can only combine with the singular (Ionin and Matushansky 2006; Bale
et al. 2010; Sağ 2018, 2019).
(35) Chicken planted two tulip*(s).
(36) Tavuk iki lale-(*ler) dik-ti.
chicken two tulip-PL
plant-PAST
‘Chicken planted two tulips.’
Finally, as discussed in Ketrez (2003) and Görgülü (2012), among others, the Turkish
plural can give rise to a ‘plurality of events’ reading and a ‘plurality of types’ reading,
in addition to the regular ‘plurality of individuals’ one. For instance, (37) can be
interpreted as suggesting that Ayşe engaged in multiple events of book-reading or that
she read different types of books, in addition to the ‘more than one book’ reading.12
(37) Ayşe kitap-lar oku-du.
Ayşe book-PL read-PAST
‘Ayşe read books.’
The multiple-events interpretation is a rather marked interpretation of the plural and
requires a particular context.13 In addition, such readings require an extra prosodic
emphasis on the plural marker (Ketrez 2003).14
What is important for us is that these additional readings of the plural could in
principle be the source of an inclusive interpretation.15 For instance, under the
multiple-events reading, (37) is compatible with there being an event in which only one
book is read by Ayşe, which in turn would give the impression of an inclusive reading,
i.e., that Ayşe read one or more books. Note, however, that this source of ‘inclusivity’
is not predicted to be sensitive to polarity: the same reasoning can be extended to the
corresponding negative sentence in (38) to obtain an inclusive reading in which there is
no event of book reading, not even an event in which only one book is read.
12
As Ketrez (2003) discusses, a way to distinguish between these readings is with examples like (i),
which pragmatically excludes the multiple-individual reading (i.e., there is only one Koran). The reading
suggested by (i) can only be the multiple-events reading: Ayşe read the Koran multiple times.
(i) Ayşe Kuran-lar oku-du.
Ayşe Koran-PL read-PAST
‘Ayşe read the Koran.’
13
For instance, according to the intuitions of the native speakers of Turkish among us, under that
reading, (37) implies that Ayşe wanted to make someone happy by reading a book/books multiple times,
and it is likely to be understood that Ayşe was unsuccessful in her attempt.
14
In the case of the negated verbs, the verb (which happens to be the syllable immediately preceding the
negative morpheme) has to be stressed (e.g., Kabak and Vogel 2001), but this is incompatible with the
extra stress of the plural marker. This could be a reason why the multiple-events reading is not intuitively
possible in negative sentences.
15
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for discussion on this point.
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Plurality and crosslinguistic variation
(38) Ayşe didn’t read books.
In sum, while these other readings of the plural in Turkish could be the source of
apparent inclusivity at least in some cases, they cannot account for sensitivity to
monotonicity. We will return to this in the general discussion.16
2.2.2 Theoretical options
Let us return to the discussion on the existence of the inclusive meaning of the
plural in Turkish. There are two approaches to the plural in Turkish, corresponding
to the two positions in the literature sketched above.
Under the first approach, proposed in Bale et al. (2010) and Bale and Khanjian
(2014), the plural ağaçlar (‘trees’) can only have the exclusive meaning in (39).
Under the second approach, by Sağ (2018, 2019) and others, the plural has the
inclusive meaning in (40), as in English, while the exclusive reading arises in one of
the ways sketched above (i.e., via implicature, ambiguity, or homogeneity).
(39)
= ffa; bg; fa; cg; fb; cg; fa; b; cgg
EXCLUSIVE MEANING
(40)
= fa; b; c; fa; bg; fa; cg; fb; cg; fa; b; cgg
INCLUSIVE MEANING
As above, we will refer to the latter approach as the inclusive approach, while we
will call the former approach the exclusive approach, with the understanding that
the former predicts both the inclusive and exclusive interpretations, while the latter
only predicts the exclusive one.
How can we distinguish between these two approaches? One main case in which
the predictions of the two approaches diverge is (41). In negative sentences, the
inclusive approach, unlike the exclusive approach, predicts an inclusive reading,
i.e., Chicken didn’t plant any tulips (with blue petals).17
(41) Tavuk mavi yaprak-lı lale-ler dik-me-di.
chicken blue petal-with tulip-PL plant-NEG-PAST
‘Chicken didn’t plant tulips with blue petals.’
We will outline the predictions of the two approaches more systematically below.
Before that, note that the exclusive approach simply predicts one meaning across
polarities and does not need further assumptions, while the inclusive approach
requires us to say something more about the alternation between the two readings in
16
Note also that the plural in Turkish can have an associative reading. That is, as has been noted by
Sebüktekin (1971), Lewis (2000), Göksel and Kerslake (2005), and Görgülü (2011), the Turkish plural
marker also has an associative use when attached to proper names and kinship nouns. For example,
Yağmur-lar refers to the individual named Yağmur and other individuals associated with her, such as her
friends or family. Since this use of the plural marker is restricted to proper names and kinship nouns only,
we do not think this reading is relevant in our experiments.
17
The two approaches also make different predictions in other environments, like the scope of universals
or that of non-monotonic quantifiers (see Spector 2007; Ivlieva 2013, among others, for relevant
discussion). We leave an investigation of these other environments for future research.
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A. Renans et al.
Fig. 1 The different theoretical
options for the analysis of the
Turkish plural
upward- and downward-entailing contexts and can be implemented in the three
main ways discussed above, i.e., via implicature, ambiguity, and homogeneity. In
other words, the theoretical landscape is as in Fig. 1: there is a first choice point
between exclusive and inclusive approaches; if the latter path is taken, the choice is
among the three accounts outlined above. In the following, we focus on the main
predictions regarding the first choice, but we also discuss the predictions and the
results of our experiments in relation to the specific predictions of the different
accounts within the inclusive approach, based on discussion in Tieu et al. (2020) and
Renans et al. (2018). We turn to this in the next section.
3 Predictions
3.1 Main prediction: positive versus negative contexts
As already mentioned, both the exclusive and inclusive approaches predict an
exclusive reading of the plural in positive cases like (42), repeated from above.
This reading simply corresponds to the literal meaning of the plural on the
exclusive approach, while it arises in one of the ways discussed above (i.e., via
implicature, ambiguity, or homogeneity) on the inclusive approach. Either way, both
approaches predict that the sentence in (42) will not be compatible with a context in
which Chicken planted only one tulip with blue petals, as depicted in Fig. 2.
(42) Tavuk
mavi
yaprak-lı
lale-ler
dik-ti.
chicken
blue
petal-with
tulip-PL
plant-PAST
‘Chicken planted tulips with blue petals.’
[ Chicken planted more than one tulip with blue petals
The two approaches make divergent predictions for plural nouns in negative
sentences like (43):
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Fig. 2 Context for the
sentences in (42) and (43) in
which Chicken planted only one
tulip with blue petals
(43) Tavuk mavi yaprak-lı lale-ler dik-me-di.
chicken blue petal-with tulip-PL plant-NEG-PAST
‘Chicken didn’t plant tulips with blue petals.’
The exclusive approach only allows for exclusive readings of the plural; the only
predicted reading of (43), then, is one we can paraphrase as Chicken didn’t plant
more than one tulip with blue petals. The exclusive approach therefore predicts (43)
to be true in the context depicted in Fig. 2. By contrast, the inclusive approach
makes more nuanced predictions for (43). First, as we discussed, the most prominent
reading predicted for (43) is an inclusive reading which can be paraphrased as
Chicken did not plant any tulips with blue petals, which is not compatible with the
context depicted in Fig. 2. In addition, the inclusive approach also allows for a
marked reading that corresponds to the negation of the exclusive reading (the same
reading as predicted by the exclusive approach), which is compatible with the
context depicted in Fig. 2.
A summary of the predictions of the exclusive and inclusive approaches for
positive and negative sentences is outlined in Table 1. These predictions will be the
main focus of our experimental study.
3.2 Additional predictions of the inclusive approach
In this subsection, we further discuss the inclusive approach by considering the
predictions of the different accounts within this kind of approach. If the inclusive
approach is on the right track, these predictions will allow us to further distinguish
among the three main accounts within the inclusive camp outlined above. We focus
on two predictions in particular, having to do with the comparison between children
and adults with respect to plurals and a corresponding implicature case.
Plurals The three accounts differ in the predictions they make for the acquisition
of the plural and how children might differ from adults at a certain stage in their
development (see Renans et al. 2018; Tieu and Romoli 2019; Tieu et al. 2020, for
similar discussion).
Under the implicature approach, children are expected to behave roughly as they
do with implicatures more generally. As has been reported in much previous
developmental literature, 4–6-year-old children differ from adults in their computation of scalar implicatures (e.g., Noveck 2001; Papafragou and Musolino 2003;
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Table 1 Predictions of the exclusive and inclusive approaches regarding acceptance of the sentences
Chicken planted tulips and Chicken didn’t plant tulips in a context in which Chicken planted only one
tulip
Exclusive approach
Inclusive approach
Chicken planted tulips.
9
9
Chicken didn’t plant tulips.
4
9/(4)
‘9’ means that the sentence is predicted to be rejected in the given context and ‘4’ means that the
sentence is predicted to be accepted
Chierchia et al. 2001; among many others). Therefore, all else being equal, we
expect a similar difference between the two groups when it comes to the exclusive
reading of the plural as well, with children exhibiting fewer exclusive interpretations than adults.
Under the ambiguity approach, the predictions for children’s acquisition of the
plural depend on what assumptions are made about the acquisition of the proposed
meanings for the plural and the Strongest Meaning Principle. That is, to be adult-like,
children need to have acquired the two proposed meanings of the plural and the
Strongest Meaning Principle to choose between them. There are, in particular, three
main scenarios in which children might not be adult-like under this approach. They
might go through a developmental stage where they have only acquired one of the
two meanings of the plural (either the inclusive or the exclusive), or they might go
through a stage where they have acquired both meanings for the plural but are not yet
able to use the Strongest Meaning Principle in an adult-like way. These three possible
scenarios are associated with different predictions for how children will respond to
plural sentences, compared to adults. If children have only acquired the exclusive
meaning of the plural, they should appear adult-like on the plural in positive
sentences but not in negative ones; if they have only acquired the inclusive meaning
of the plural, they should only appear adult-like in negative contexts. On the other
hand, if they have acquired both meanings of the plural but cannot yet make use of a
Strongest Meaning Principle in selecting a reading, they might not be guided by the
relative strength of the two meanings of the plural in the same way that adults are.
Finally, in the case of the homogeneity approach, adult-like behaviour is
dependent on children having acquired the homogeneity principle and the pragmatic
principle for dealing with undefinedness. If they have acquired both, they should
perform like adults; if they are missing either ingredient, they will not perform like
adults. What is most relevant for us is that, as on the ambiguity approach, there is no
clear way to distinguish between positive and negative contexts in this respect:
either children will be adult-like in both contexts, or they will be non-adult-like in
both of them.
Plurals versus implicatures Finally, let us outline a further prediction of the
implicature-based account. This account argues that the exclusive reading of the
plural arises as a scalar implicature and thus predicts a relationship between this
reading and other kinds of scalar implicatures, especially in the context of the
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comparison between adults and young children. More specifically, as mentioned, it
has been observed that young children typically compute fewer scalar implicatures
than adults. Therefore, everything else being equal, if the exclusive reading of the
plural is a scalar implicature, we expect that children should access this reading less
than adults do. More generally, we expect a uniform pattern across groups when we
compare the exclusive reading of the plural with standard scalar implicatures. The
ambiguity and homogeneity accounts (and the exclusive approach for that matter),
on the other hand, make no particular predictions about the relationship between
implicatures and the inferences of plurals, since they do not relate the two
phenomena.
In sum, while all three accounts of the plural within the inclusive approach make
the same predictions regarding an effect of polarity, there are other areas where their
predictions diverge. In particular, the theories make different predictions when it
comes to the relative performance of children and adults regarding the inference of
plurals. Moreover, the implicature approach makes predictions with respect to the
relationship between the exclusive reading of the plural and standard implicatures.
4 Experiment 1
We tested the predictions discussed above by investigating Turkish speakers’
interpretations of plural nouns in positive and negative sentences and comparing the
plural to the scalar implicature of bazı ‘some’. We employed the methodology used
in the previous studies on English and Greek reported by Tieu et al. (2020) and
Renans et al. (2018). Below, we also discuss how our results relate to theirs.
4.1 Methods
4.1.1 Participants
Forty-five adults and 22 children aged 4–6 years (mean age 5;2), all native speakers
of Turkish, participated in the experiment. We excluded from the analysis any
participant who answered fewer than six of eight control trials correctly, which left
us with a total of 42 adults and 21 children.
4.1.2 Procedure
At the beginning of the experiment, participants were introduced to a puppet with
whom they would interact throughout the experiment via webcam. The appearances
of the puppet in this set-up consisted of pre-recorded videoclips. Subsequently, the
participants were presented with a series of short stories in a PowerPoint
presentation. After each story, the experimenter posed a question to the puppet
and the puppet replied with one of the test sentences. The participants’ task was to
judge the puppet’s utterances by rewarding her with one, two, or three strawberries,
depending on her performance (Katsos and Bishop 2011; Tieu et al. 2019a, b; Tieu
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et al. 2020). Participants were clearly instructed about the meaning of each reward:
they were supposed to give the puppet one strawberry if they thought the puppet
didn’t answer well, three strawberries if they thought she answered well, and two
strawberries if the puppet’s answer was somewhere in the middle—not perfect, but
somewhat okay.
4.1.3 Materials
Three factors were manipulated in the experiment: Group (child vs. adult), Sentence
Type (Plural sentence vs. Scalar Implicature sentence), and Polarity (positive
vs. negative) within the Plural condition. The materials for the Scalar Implicature
condition and controls were translated to Turkish from the previous studies in
English and Greek (reported in Tieu et al. 2020; Renans et al. 2018), while the
materials for the Plural sentence condition were designed to be similar to these other
conditions. The Plural and Scalar Implicature conditions were presented in blocks
with the order counterbalanced across participants. Examples of positive and
negative plural targets are presented in (44), with the corresponding picture in
Fig. 3.18,19
(44) Plural target
Context: Tiger only planted this one tree and no flowers.
EXP: Peki, Ellie, Kaplan çiçek-ler ek-me-di.
Peki,
ağaç?
okay Ellie tiger
flower-PL plant-NEG-PAST what.about tree
‘Okay, Ellie, so Tiger didn’t plant any flowers. What about trees?’
a.
PUPP: Kaplan ağaç-lar ek-ti.
POSITIVE
tiger
tree-PL plant-PAST
‘Tiger planted trees.’
b.
PUPP: Kaplan ağaç-lar ek-me-di.
tiger
tree-PL plant-NEG-PAST
‘Tiger didn’t plant trees.’
NEGATIVE
Turning to the predictions, we note that both the exclusive and inclusive approaches
predict an exclusive reading of the positive targets (i.e., ‘Tiger planted more than
one tree’). Since the exclusive reading was not true in the context, participants were
expected to give the puppet a non-maximal reward, i.e., one or at most two
strawberries.
18
To keep things interesting for the child participants, the characters and objects varied from one item to
the next. The stories for the positive and negative conditions also differed.
19
We should flag right away that, as mentioned, most native speakers find non-case-marked unmodified
bare plurals in object position infelicitous. We nevertheless decided to use them in this experiment, for the
sake of maintaining uniformity with the previous studies on Greek and English. Using control items, we
were able to confirm that participants were nonetheless interpreting the sentences in the expected way.
But we acknowledge this potential issue with Experiment 1, and address it in Experiment 2 by moving to
sentences with modified bare plurals in object position.
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Fig. 3 Left: image for the plural targets in (44); right: image for the scalar implicature target in (45)
As for the negative targets, the exclusive approach predicts that participants
should invariably access the exclusive plural interpretation of the noun (i.e., ‘Tiger
didn’t plant more than one tree’). Given that this interpretation is true in the context,
participants were expected to give the puppet the maximal reward, i.e., three
strawberries. Under the inclusive approach, on the other hand, participants were
expected to predominantly interpret the sentence inclusively (i.e., ‘Tiger didn’t plant
any tree’). Since this interpretation is incompatible with the context, the expected
reward was again one or at most two strawberries. In addition, the inclusive
approach allows for a marked interpretation on which the exclusive reading is
computed in the scope of negation (i.e., ‘Tiger didn’t plant more than one tree’).
This interpretation is compatible with the context, so if participants accessed this
reading, they were expected to give the puppet the maximal reward. In other words,
the inclusive approach, but not the exclusive approach, allows for variability in
participants’ responses to the negative targets.
In the scalar implicature condition, the context made it clear that the action of the
protagonist involved the whole set of objects depicted in the picture. When the
experimenter asked the puppet what had happened in the story, she responded with a
sentence containing the scalar term bazı ‘some’, as illustrated in (45) (the
corresponding picture is provided in Fig. 3):
(45) Scalar Implicature target
Context: Lion carried all of the apples and none of the oranges.
EXP:
Okay, Ellie, so Lion didn’t carry any oranges.
What about apples?
PUPP:
Aslan elma-lar-ın bazı-lar-ı-nı
taşı-dı.
Lion apple-PL-GEN some-PL-POSS.3SG-ACC carry-PAST
‘Lion carried some of the apples.’
If participants interpreted the puppet’s utterance with the scalar implicature of bazı
‘some’, i.e., ‘Lion didn’t carry all of the apples’, they were expected to give the
puppet one or two strawberries as a reward. By contrast, if they interpreted it
literally, then they were expected to give the puppet the maximal reward.
The participants also received eight control trials to ensure that they could give
minimal and maximal rewards where appropriate. Four of them corresponded to
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clearly true plural sentences and were expected to elicit the maximal reward, as in
(46) and (47):
(46) Context: Giraffe did not bake any cakes but she baked four cookies.
EXP: Peki, Ellie, Zürafa kek-ler pişir-me-di.
Peki,
kurabiye?
okay Ellie giraffe cake-PL bake-NEG-PAST what.about cookie
‘Okay, Ellie, so Giraffe didn’t bake any cakes. What about cookies?’
PUPP: Zürafa kurabiye-ler pişir-di.
POSITIVE CONTROL
Giraffe cookie-PL
bake-PAST
‘Giraffe baked cookies.’
(47) Context: Sheep baked four pizzas but no baklavas.
EXP: Peki, Ellie, Koyun pizza-lar pişir-di.
Peki,
baklava?
okay Ellie sheep pizza-PL bake-PAST what.about baklava
‘Okay, Ellie, so Sheep baked pizzas. What about baklavas?’
PUPP: Koyun baklava-lar pişir-me-di.
NEGATIVE CONTROL
Sheep baklava-PL bake-NEG-PAST
‘Sheep didn’t bake baklavas.’
Four other control trials corresponded to clearly true or clearly false negative
sentences that contained a definite noun phrase instead of a bare plural. This allowed us
to ensure that participants could correctly interpret negation independently of the bare
plural. These trials could be associated with either a minimal or a maximal reward
target; the experimenter selected the appropriate version of the trial depending on how
participants responded to the critical target trials, balancing the overall number of
minimal and maximal rewards given across the experiment.
(48) Context: Zebra painted four vases and no bowls.
EXP: Ellie, can you tell us something about the story?
PUPP0 : Zebra kase-ler-i
boya-ma-dı.
Zebra bowl-PL-ACC paint-NEG-PAST
‘Zebra didn’t paint the bowls.’ (maximal reward target)
NEGATION CONTROL
PUPP00 : Zebra vazo-lar-ı
boya-ma-dı.
Zebra vase-PL-ACC paint-NEG-PAST
‘Zebra didn’t paint the vases.’ (minimal reward target)
In sum, each participant received two training items followed by 18 test trials: 6
critical Plural targets (3 positive, 3 negative), 4 Scalar Implicature targets, 4 clearly
true positive and negative Plural controls, and 4 clearly true or clearly false
Negation controls. The Plural and Scalar Implicature targets were presented in
blocks which were counterbalanced across participants; the test and control trials
within the plural block were pseudo-randomised.
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Plurality and crosslinguistic variation
4.2 Results
Figure 4 displays the proportion of 1-, 2-, and 3-strawberry responses to the Plural
Positive, Plural Negative, and Scalar Implicature targets. At this stage, we group the
non-maximal 1- and 2-strawberry responses together, in contrast to the 3-strawberry
responses, mapping the reward types to different readings of the target sentences in
the following way: for the Positive Plural targets, 1- and 2-strawberry responses are
interpreted as a measure of the exclusive reading, while 3-strawberry responses
correspond to an inclusive reading. For the negative Plural targets, the opposite
holds: 3-strawberry rewards are interpreted as consistent with the exclusive reading,
while 1- and 2-strawberry responses correspond to an inclusive reading. Finally, for
the Scalar Implicature targets, 1- and 2-strawberry responses are interpreted as a
measure of the target inference having been computed, whereas 3-strawberry
rewards correspond to a non-implicature reading.
Starting with the positive Plural targets, we observe that adults mostly rejected
the positive sentences in contexts that were incompatible with the exclusive reading.
By contrast, children tended to accept such sentences in the same contexts,
suggesting that they had instead interpreted the sentence under an inclusive reading.
On the negative Plural targets, on the other hand, adults appeared to split between
selecting the maximal and the non-maximal rewards, while children tended to give
minimal rewards only, suggesting that they generally interpreted the plural
inclusively under negation. Finally, in the Scalar Implicature condition, both
groups generally selected non-maximal rewards, indicating that they computed the
implicature of bazı ‘some’.
Figure 5 displays the results for the positive and negative plural targets, with the
ternary responses recoded in binary terms (1 for exclusive reading, 0 for inclusive
Fig. 4 Percentage of 1-, 2-, and 3-strawberry responses to positive and negative plural targets and scalar
implicature targets
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Fig. 5 Exclusive interpretations of positive and negative Plural targets after recoding of the ternary
responses in binary terms (1 for the exclusive reading, 0 for the inclusive reading). Each dot represents an
individual participant’s mean inference rate for the given target
reading). Logistic regression models fitted to these recoded plural data revealed a
significant effect of Group (X 2 ð1Þ ¼ 29; p\0:001), but no effect of Polarity or
interaction between Group and Polarity; that is, adults gave more exclusive
responses than children did, and this difference between the two groups did not vary
across the two polarities.
4.3 Discussion
Overall the results of Experiment 1 are in line with the predictions of the inclusive
approach: adults gave clear evidence of an inclusive interpretation in negative
contexts by rejecting the target sentence more than half of the time. The results are
challenging for the exclusive approach, however, which predicts invariable
acceptance in those contexts.
With respect to the additional predictions above, we found that children indeed
exhibited fewer exclusive readings than adults did in positive contexts. This is in
line with the general trend in the developmental literature on scalar implicatures,
and hence this result is expected under the implicature account. However, the
finding that children rejected the scalar implicature targets just as adults did is
puzzling from this perspective and thus poses a challenge for the implicature
account.20
As for the ambiguity approach, it is compatible with children behaving
differently on plurals and scalar implicatures, but it cannot account, at least not
20
The challenge is in part mitigated by previous results in the literature revealing that rates of
implicature computation vary widely across different scales (van Tiel et al. 2014). In the present case, this
would mean that the some implicature is stronger than the exclusive reading of the plural in Turkish.
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Plurality and crosslinguistic variation
straightforwardly, for the observed difference in children’s behaviour on the
positive and negative sentences. To illustrate, recall that on the ambiguity approach,
a plural sentence is ambiguous between an exclusive and an inclusive reading, with
the Strongest Meaning Principle determining which is selected. That is, a sentence
like (49a) is ambiguous between the readings in (49b) and (49c), while the sentence
in (50a) is ambiguous between the readings in (50b) and (50c). The Strongest
Meaning Principle is expected to favour the strong reading in (49b) for (49a) and
(50c) for (50a).
(49) a. Chicken planted tulips.
b. Chicken planted more than one tulip.
c. Chicken planted one or more tulips.
STRONG
(50) a. Chicken didn’t plant tulips.
b. Chicken didn’t plant more than one tulip.
c. Chicken didn’t plant one or more tulips.
WEAK
WEAK
STRONG
The challenge for the ambiguity approach is as follows: while children seem to
interpret positive sentences like (49a) on the weak reading in (49c), they preferred the
strong interpretation in (50c) for negative sentences like (50a). It is unclear then how
the ambiguity approach might capture this observed pattern across the polarities.
One possibility would be to assume that children have acquired both readings of
plural sentences but engage with the Strongest Meaning Principle differently from
adults. More precisely, they obey the principle in downward- but not in upwardentailing contexts. Such a scenario, however, appears implausible without further
elaboration or auxiliary assumptions. In particular, while it is possible that children
at a certain age might differ from adults in their use of a pragmatic principle like the
Strongest Meaning Principle, there is no reason why they should be able to apply
such a principle only in certain linguistic contexts. In particular, we can see no
reason why their application of the principle would systematically vary with the
polarity of the context.
Alternatively, under the ambiguity approach, one might hypothesise that children
at a certain age have only acquired one of the two meanings of the plural morpheme.
The scenario in which they have only acquired the strong exclusive meaning of the
plural morpheme would predict the opposite pattern of what we observed in our
experiment. This leaves us then with the scenario in which children in this age range
have only mastered the weak inclusive meaning of plural morphology. This would
indeed account for the pattern of behaviour that we observe, namely that children
end up with a globally weak reading of the positive sentence in (49c) but a globally
strong reading of the negative sentence in (50c) (since the weak interpretation of the
plural morpheme yields the strongest interpretation under negation). This scenario,
however, is also not free from challenges—in particular a learnability challenge. If
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A. Renans et al.
the weak meaning is acquired first, how is the strong meaning then subsequently
acquired without appropriate negative evidence?21,22
The results are also challenging for the homogeneity approach. In particular, it is
unclear how to account for the finding that children were adult-like in response to
the negative sentences but not to the positive ones. Under this approach, we would
expect children to either have acquired the homogeneity principle and the pragmatic
principle for dealing with undefinedness, and therefore to be adult-like in both the
positive and negative conditions, or we would expect them not to have acquired
either one and therefore to be non-adult-like in both conditions. It is not clear how to
account for the observed difference across the two polarities.23
To summarise our discussion thus far, while the adults’ data support the inclusive
approach, the children’s data are not straightforwardly in line with any of the three
main accounts within this approach, and distinguishing among them requires further
investigation.
Finally, the results are comparable to those reported by Tieu et al. (2020) and
Renans et al. (2018) for English and Greek, respectively. There is, however, one key
difference between the Turkish results and the findings from English and Greek,
which lies in the relatively high acceptance rate of the negative targets in the
Turkish experiment. While in the Turkish experiment adult participants accepted the
negative sentence Tiger didn’t plant trees 55% of the time in a context in which
Tiger planted a single tree, in Tieu et al.’s English experiments and Renans et al.’s
Greek experiment, the percentage of acceptance was generally lower (19–42% in
English, and 2% in Greek). We can think of two potential sources of this high
21
This kind of subset problem is a much-discussed topic in the acquisition literature (see, for example,
Berwick 1985; Crain et al. 1994; Gualmini and Schwarz 2009), and on the face of it would appear to pose
a challenge for this choice point of the ambiguity theory.
22
An anonymous reviewer points out that even if children engage differently from adults with the
Strongest Meaning Principle, other principles of word learning or developmental biases regarding lexical
ambiguity might play a role in explaining the observed pattern. We are not aware of any word learning
principles or biases that would predict children to base meaning preferences for ambiguous sentences
(containing lexically ambiguous words) on the monotonicity or other logical properties of the sentence.
On the other hand, child learners are generally reported to prefer one-to-one form-meaning mappings and
to have difficulty with homonyms (Markman 1990; Clark 1993; Backscheider and Gelman 1995), with
some studies showing the ability to detect lexical ambiguity emerging only around the age of 6 years
(Cairns et al. 2004) (though see Kamowski-Shakibai and Cairns 2016 for evidence that kindergarteners
can be trained to detect lexical ambiguities); indeed, a number of studies focus on ambiguity detection in
older, school-aged children, for instance on the role of ambiguity detection in reading abilities (Marmurek
and Rossi 1993; Wankoff and Cairns 2009), or on the role of sentential context in lexical ambiguity
resolution (Khanna and Boland 2010). If children do initially recognise only one of the possible meanings
of the plural (namely the weak, inclusive meaning), this could explain why they prefer the globally weak
reading of the positive sentences but the globally strong reading of the negative sentences. On the other
hand, as we note above, in such a scenario it’s not clear what evidence would eventually trigger the child
to shift from having a weak/inclusive-only meaning for the plural to having both a weak/inclusive
meaning and a strong/exclusive meaning. We agree with the reviewer, however, that the issue of lexical
ambiguity in word learning could be quite relevant in this context and could make the predictions for the
ambiguity approach more nuanced; we leave a more detailed investigation of this for future research.
23
One could, for instance, posit that children differ from adults in how they deal with a sentence that is
undefined in the context. The problem is that, given that the homogeneity approach predicts
undefinedness in both the negative and positive conditions, we would need to assume that children
deal with undefinedness differently for undefined positive sentences and undefined negative sentences.
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acceptance rate in the negative condition. First, it could be due to an interpretation
in which the plural noun takes scope above negation. Second, it could be that the
participants accessed the marked exclusive reading under negation, which is
allowed, albeit dispreferred, under the inclusive approach. We next discuss these
two possibilities in detail, before moving on to Experiment 2, designed to tease
apart these hypotheses.
The scope of the plural Let us first consider the scope possibility. In English, bare
plurals are generally only able to take narrow scope (e.g., Carlson 1977). For
example, it is claimed in the literature that the only possible reading of (51) is one in
which the plural doctors is in the scope of want:
(51) Mary wants to meet doctors.
(Carlson 1977)
& Mary wants to meet some doctors or other (not a specific set of doctors)
(WANT [ DOCTORS)
By contrast, bare plurals have been argued to be able to take wide scope in Turkish
(Bliss 2004; see also Bale and Khanjian 2014). For example, (52) has been claimed
to allow two interpretations, depending on the scopal relation between the bare
plural doktorlar ‘doctors’ and istiyor ‘want’. If ‘doctors’ scopes below ‘want’, then
the predicted reading is the same as in English, i.e., (52a). But when ‘doctors’
scopes above ‘want’, then the predicted reading is as in (52b), that is, Mary wants to
meet a specific set of doctors.
(52) Mary doktor-lar bul-mak isti-yor.
(from Bliss 2004: 51)
Mary doctor-PL meet-INF want-PROG
‘Mary wants to meet doctors.’
a. & Mary wants to meet some doctors or other
(WANT [ PL)
b. & There are some doctors that Mary wants to meet (PL [ WANT)
This suggests that a negative sentence containing a bare plural in Turkish, such as
(53), might also in principle give rise to the two interpretations depending on the
scopal relation between the plural and negation.
(53) Kaplan ağaç-lar ek-me-di.
tiger
tree-PL plant-NEG-PAST
‘Tiger didn’t plant trees.’
a. & It’s not true that Tiger planted trees
(NEG [ PL)
b. & There are some trees that Tiger didn’t plant (PL [ NEG)
If indeed the sentence in (53) was sometimes interpreted as in (53b), and since our
contexts were compatible with this interpretation, this could explain the relatively
high proportion of acceptance of the negative targets.
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A. Renans et al.
Favouring the marked interpretation through contrastive focus The second
possible explanation for the high acceptance rate of the negative sentences in
Turkish could be due to some factor facilitating the generally dispreferred exclusive
reading under negation; as we have discussed, this reading is always a possibility
when forced by the context. In particular, the English and Greek experiments
differed from the present Turkish experiment in one potentially important respect: in
both the English and Greek experiments, the experimenter asked the puppet a
question using a bare plural and then the puppet replied using a bare plural noun as
well, as seen in the English example in (54). In the Turkish experiment, however,
the experimenter asked the puppet a question using a morphologically singular noun
and the puppet replied using a bare plural noun, as in (55) (although we used the
plural paraphrases for our English translations in examples (44)–(47)):
(54) EXP: Tiger didn’t plant any flowers. What about trees?
PUPP: Tiger didn’t plant trees.
(55) EXP:
Kaplan çiçek-ler
tiger
flower-PL
‘Tiger didn’t plant
PUPP: Kaplan ağaç-lar
tiger
tree-PL
‘Tiger didn’t plant
ek-me-di.
Peki
aǧaç?
plant-NEG-PAST what.about tree
any flowers. What about tree?’
ek-me-di.
plant-NEG-PAST
trees.’
ENGLISH
TURKISH
This contrast between the singular noun in the question and the plural noun in the
answer could have encouraged a contrastive focus interpretation of the plural and
facilitated the otherwise dispreferred exclusive interpretation of the plural under
negation. That is, ‘‘Tiger didn’t plant trees’’ would be interpreted as ‘Tiger didn’t
plant TREES’ (& Tiger didn’t plant more than one tree). If so, this could account for
the higher acceptance of the negative sentences, as this interpretation was
compatible with the given context.
In order to tease apart these different hypotheses, we conducted a follow-up study
to Experiment 1, which we present in the next section.
5 Experiment 2
The aim of Experiment 2 was two-fold. First, we wanted to investigate in more
detail the finding of greater acceptance of the negative targets in Experiment 1, as
discussed in the last section. Second, we wanted to address the potential issue of the
acceptability of sentences with unmodified bare plurals and replicate the results with
more natural sentences involving modified plurals.
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Plurality and crosslinguistic variation
5.1 Methods
5.1.1 Participants
We tested 40 adult native speakers of Turkish. Two participants were excluded from
the analysis for failing to correctly answer at least six of the eight control items,
leaving a total of 38 participants.
5.1.2 Procedure
The procedure was exactly the same as in Experiment 1.
5.1.3 Materials
The design was different from that of Experiment 1 in three respects. First, we used
target sentences involving modified bare plurals, as in (56).
(56) Tavuk mavi yaprak-lı lale-ler dik-me-di.
chicken blue petal-with tulip-PL plant-NEG-PAST
‘Chicken didn’t plant tulips with blue petals.’
Second, we changed the question that the experimenter asked the puppet so as not to
facilitate a contrastive focus interpretation that could lead to the exclusive reading
under negation. The new type of question was as in (57):
(57) Bize hikaye hakkında birşey-ler
söyle-r mi-sin?
us
story about
something-PL say-AOR QUEST-2SG
‘Can you tell us something about the story?’
Third, we manipulated scope such that half of the negative targets made a widescope interpretation of the plural noun true (Wide-Scope-True contexts) and half
made the wide scope interpretation false (Wide-Scope-False contexts). An example
of a target sentence in a Wide-Scope-True context is provided in (58); the
corresponding image is provided in Fig. 6. In this example, it is true that there are
tulips with blue petals that Chicken didn’t plant.
An example of a target sentence in a Wide-Scope-False context is given in (59);
the corresponding image is provided in Fig. 6. In this example, the wide-scope
interpretation (i.e., ‘There are books with green covers that Tiger didn’t buy’) is
false (assuming that the wide-scope reading would give rise to an exclusive
interpretation, i.e., ‘There is more than one book with a green cover that Tiger didn’t
buy’, as would be expected by any of the approaches, given that the plural would
not be in the scope of negation).
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A. Renans et al.
Fig. 6 Target image for (58) (left) and (59) (right)
(58) Wide-Scope-True target
Context: Chicken only planted this one tulip with blue petals over here.
EXP:
Okay, Ellie, can you tell us something about the story?
PUPP:
Tavuk
mavi
yaprak-lı
lale-ler
dik-me-di.
chicken
blue
petal-with
tulip-PL
plant-NEG-PAST
‘Chicken didn’t plant tulips with blue petals.’
(59) Wide-Scope-False target
Context: Tiger only bought this one book with a green cover over here.
EXP:
Okay, Ellie, can you tell us something about the story?
PUPP:
Kaplan
yeşil
kapak-lı
kitap-lar
al-ma-dı.
Tiger
green
cover-with
book-PL
buy-NEG-PAST
‘Tiger didn’t buy books with green covers.’
As in Experiment 1, participants also received eight control items to ensure that they
could give minimal and maximal rewards where appropriate. Unlike in Experiment
1, however, participants were not presented with scalar implicature targets. To sum
up, each participant received six positive plural targets, six negative plural targets
(three in Wide-Scope-True contexts and three in Wide-Scope-False contexts), and
eight controls.
The predictions of the scope and contrastive focus hypotheses were as follows.
First, if scope played a role in the interpretation of the plural in Experiment 1, we
expected to observe a different response pattern in the Wide-Scope-True and WideScope-False conditions in Experiment 2. Second, if the singular question in
Experiment 1 facilitated an exclusive interpretation under negation, we expected
more rejections of the negative targets in Experiment 2 compared to Experiment 1.
5.2 Results
Figure 7 displays the proportion of 1-, 2-, and 3-strawberry responses to the positive
and negative targets, in Wide-Scope-True and Wide-Scope-False conditions. As in
Experiment 1, the non-maximal 1- and 2-strawberry responses were treated alike, in
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Plurality and crosslinguistic variation
Fig. 7 Proportion of 1-, 2-, and 3-strawberry responses across conditions
contrast to the 3-strawberry responses. As before, for the positive plural targets, 1and 2-strawberry responses were interpreted as a measure of the exclusive reading,
while 3-strawberry responses corresponded to an inclusive reading. For the negative
plural targets, 3-strawberry rewards were interpreted as being compatible with the
exclusive reading, while 1- and 2-strawberry responses corresponded to an inclusive
reading.
As we can see, similarly to Experiment 1, the participants mostly rejected the
positive sentences in contexts that were incompatible with the exclusive reading. On
the plural negative targets, the participants also tended to give the puppet nonmaximal rewards, in this case suggesting access to the inclusive reading. Figure 8
displays the results for the positive and negative plural targets (both Wide-ScopeFalse and Wide-Scope-True targets), with the ternary responses recoded in binary
terms (1 for the exclusive reading, 0 for the inclusive reading). Logistic regression
models fitted to these data revealed a significant effect of Polarity
ðX 2 ð1Þ ¼ 34; p\0:001Þ: the participants gave more exclusive responses to the
positive targets than to the negative targets—an effect that was not observed in
Experiment 1.
Figure 9 presents the results for the Wide-Scope-True and Wide-Scope-False
negative targets, with the ternary responses recoded in binary terms (1 for the
exclusive reading, 0 for the inclusive reading). Logistic regression models fitted to
these data revealed no effect of scope.
5.3 Discussion
The results of Experiment 2 provide further support for the inclusive approach. In
particular, we found no evidence that scope played a role in Experiment 1, in terms
of explaining the relatively high acceptance of the negative plural targets. The
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A. Renans et al.
Fig. 8 Percentage of exclusive responses in positive and negative conditions, after recoding of the
ternary responses in binary terms (1 for the exclusive reading, 0 for the inclusive reading). Each dot
represents an individual participant’s exclusive response rate for the given target
participants in Experiment 2 mostly rejected the sentences in the negative condition,
whether they were presented in Wide-Scope-True or Wide-Scope-False contexts.
In addition, after changing the experimenter’s question to the puppet so that it
would not encourage the otherwise dispreferred exclusive reading under negation,
acceptance of the negative sentences decreased from 55% in Experiment 1 to 33%
in Experiment 2. Experiment 2 revealed an effect of polarity that was absent in
Experiment 1, with more exclusive interpretations in the positive than in the
negative conditions. The difference between Experiment 1 and Experiment 2
suggests that the experimenter’s question containing the singular in Experiment 1
influenced participants’ acceptance of the negative plural targets.
Finally, as mentioned above, while the multiple-events/types readings of the
plural could be the source of some of the apparent inclusivity in Turkish, these
readings cannot account for the difference we found between positive and negative
sentences, especially in Experiment 2. Therefore, while we cannot exclude that
some of the observed inclusive interpretations can be traced back to these other
readings, they cannot be the only factor behind these interpretations.24
24
An anonymous reviewer asks whether our data are compatible with a subset of the adult participants
having only an exclusive interpretation of the plural. While we cannot exclude that there was a subgroup
of our adult participants who consistently responded with an exclusive interpretation of the plural, we
would caution against extrapolating from this to a more general claim that these speakers could only
access exclusive interpretations of the plural. In addition, although we show individual dot points in
Figs. 5 and 8, our main arguments (and reported statistical evidence) are based on the group results. We
do not wish to draw strong conclusions based on individual responses, especially as each participant only
received three plural targets of each polarity. On the basis of the group results, the fact that the rate of
exclusive responses is lower in Experiment 2 (Fig. 8) (33%, vs. 55% in Experiment 1) suggests that there
was an effect of the singular in the experimenter’s question in Experiment 1—this is another reason not to
draw strong conclusions about the ‘exclusive-only’ individual response pattern in Experiment 1. Finally,
as seen in Fig. 8, there were far fewer individual participants who only gave exclusive responses in
Experiment 2 compared to Experiment 1, further decreasing the plausibility that there was a group of
speakers who could only access exclusive interpretations of the plural.
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Plurality and crosslinguistic variation
Fig. 9 Proportion of exclusive responses in the Wide-Scope-True and Wide-Scope-False negative
conditions, after recoding of the ternary responses in binary terms (1 for the exclusive reading, 0 for the
inclusive reading)
6 General discussion
The results of our experiments provide support for the inclusive approach to the
interpretation of the plural in Turkish. The findings suggest that, in this respect, the
Turkish plural is not so different from the English (or Greek) plural after all. In
addition, as we discussed, while our results are in line with the inclusive approach,
the children’s behaviour in Experiment 1 was not entirely expected under any of the
accounts within this approach (implicature, homogeneity, or ambiguity). Understanding how to best implement the inclusive approach to account for the Turkish
plural and its acquisition will therefore require further investigation.
The question now is how the inclusive approach to the plural can be integrated
with a more general theory of number in Turkish. As already discussed in Sect. 2.2,
there are two main properties of the Turkish number system that make it different
from that of English. The first has to do with inclusive interpretations of the
singular, while the second has to do with the obligatory agreement between the
singular and numerals. Our main point is that one does not need to assume an
exclusive approach to Turkish to account for the properties of its number system. In
other words, these other properties of the Turkish plural do not force an exclusive
approach and are instead perfectly compatible with the inclusive one. This is
relevant for us for two reasons. First, certain explanations of these phenomena in the
literature (e.g., Bale and Khanjian 2014) rely on a purely exclusive interpretation of
the plural and implicitly suggest that the latter is required to account for the relevant
facts. Second, many versions of the inclusive approach to the plural assume some
form of competition with the singular, associated with a singular non-inclusive
interpretation. As we show below, however, there exist possible accounts of the two
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A. Renans et al.
phenomena of the Turkish number system which are independent from the
assumption about the plural and thus readily compatible with the inclusive
approach.
6.1 Bare singulars
Let us first discuss the observation that Turkish bare singulars can give rise to an
inclusive interpretation when in a non-case-marked direct object position (Bliss
2004; Görgülü 2012; Martı́ 2020a; Sağ 2018, 2019), as in (60). Here we follow Sağ
(2018, 2019) (see also Martı́ 2020b), who argues that the inclusive interpretation of
bare singulars is a simple by-product of pseudo-incorporation, rather than arising
directly from the denotation of the singular (Massam 2001).25 Pseudo-incorporated
nouns differ from canonical arguments, such as definites, quantified expressions,
etc., in that they form a syntactic unit with the verb immediately preceding them and
do not receive case marking (Öztürk 2005; Sağ 2018, 2019).
(60) Ali kitap oku-du.
Ali book read-PAST
‘Ali did book-reading (one or more books).’
Sağ (2019) argues that bare singulars in Turkish are singular terms, denoting sets of
atoms, and that the apparent number neutrality in the case shown above follows
from their singular kind reference. The gist of Sağ’s account is that pseudoincorporated bare singulars are singular kind terms that are incorporated to the verb
via a special thematic function to yield a sub-event type interpretation (cf. Sağ 2018;
Dayal 2011, 2015). For example, in (60), Ali is involved in the book-reading event
as an agent, and the existence of a book-reading event type generates the
interpretation of reading one or more books, the instantiations the singular kind is
associated with.26 Of relevance for our purposes is that this account maintains that
the interpretation of the singular is simply a set of atomic individuals, which is
compatible with an inclusive approach to the plural. That is, the apparent number
neutrality of the singular doesn’t force an exclusive approach to the plural in
Turkish.27
25
See also Sağ (2019) for syntactic and semantic arguments against extending a pseudo-incorporation
analysis from bare singulars to bare plurals in Turkish.
26
Sağ (2018, 2019) follows Dayal (2004) in that singular kinds are impure atomic taxonomic kinds that
do not allow grammatical access to instantiation sets via type-shifting operators like pred. The relation
between a singular kind and its instantiations, therefore, is established at the conceptual level. However,
Sağ (2019) argues that pseudo-incorporation in Turkish establishes this relation in the grammatical
component.
27
Existential copular constructions that are roughly translated into English as ‘have’-predicates are
another place where bare singulars have number-neutral interpretations. Sağ (2019) considers them an
instance of pseudo-incorporation. In addition, the claim made in Bale et al. (2010) is based on the ability
of bare singulars to occur in the predicate position of both singular and plural subject terms. In Sağ
(2018, 2019), this is argued to follow from the fact that they occur as singular kind terms in this position,
rather than from their alleged number neutrality. They participate in kind specification constructions in
which the subject term is associated with a kind it belongs to, regardless of its number.
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Plurality and crosslinguistic variation
6.2 Numerals and number marking
As mentioned, numerals in Turkish, unlike in English, do not combine with bare
plurals but rather with bare singulars, as shown in (61). This disparity is particularly
surprising under the assumption, defended above, that the denotations of singulars
and plurals are the same in both languages.
(61) iki kitap-(*lar)
two book-PL
‘two books’
Bale et al. (2010) give an account of cases like (61) based on their number-neutral
treatment of bare singulars and their exclusive approach to bare plurals. Here again
we want to sketch how alternative proposals to the facts in (61) are compatible with
an inclusive approach to the plural instead. In other words, the idiosyncratic
interaction between numerals and number in Turkish doesn’t necessitate an
exclusive approach to the plural.
We sketch Sağ’s (2018) proposal as an example of an account which is
compatible with the inclusive approach to the plural; see also Martı́ (2020b) and
Scontras (2014) for similar accounts. Sağ’s proposal is based on Ionin and
Matushansky’s (2006) analysis of numerals as modifiers, the lexical complement of
which has to be atomic. Ionin and Matushansky (2006) claim that in languages like
English, numeral constructions exhibit number agreement (semantic concord). That
is, -s in two books would not be a genuine plural marker, but rather the realisation of
number agreement. Importantly, true plurals cannot combine with numerals because
only individuals of the same cardinality can be counted. By contrast, the plural
marker in Turkish (-lar), as in kitaplar, would be a genuine plural marker. Since
kitaplar denotes a set of plural individuals of different cardinalities, it cannot
combine with numerals. On the other hand, as singular nouns would denote sets of
atoms, under this approach they are able to combine with numerals. Again, this
shows that there is a way to account for the numeral facts in Turkish that can be
combined with the inclusive approach to the plural.
7 Conclusions
In English and many other languages, plural nouns are associated with two possible
readings: an exclusive reading in positive contexts and an inclusive reading in negative
ones. By contrast, Turkish is generally cited as a language in which the plural only has
an exclusive interpretation. In this paper, we reported two experiments conducted with
Turkish-speaking adults and 4–6-year-old children, the results of which suggest that the
Turkish plural is in fact similar to the English plural in this respect: it gives rise to the
exclusive interpretation in positive contexts and to the inclusive one in negative
contexts. This result supports an inclusive approach to the plural in Turkish (Sağ
2018, 2019, among others). Notably, however, while our results are in line with the
inclusive approach, the children’s behaviour in Experiment 1 was not entirely expected
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A. Renans et al.
under any of the accounts within this approach (implicature, homogeneity, or
ambiguity). Understanding how best to implement the inclusive approach to account
for the Turkish plural and its acquisition therefore requires further investigation.
We also discussed how this approach to the plural can be integrated into a theory
of the Turkish number system. This is important beyond understanding the
properties of the Turkish number system, as it can tell us more about the different
meanings that the plural can obtain across languages, thereby furthering our
understanding of number marking and its crosslinguistic variation. In particular, the
main question in the background of our study is whether there is any language that
only allows an exclusive interpretation of the plural. Our results suggest that
Turkish is not such a language. We hope our study will pave the way for further
experimental investigation of languages like Western Armenian and Korean, which
are other possible candidates for languages with exclusive-only plurals.
Acknowledgements Open Access funding provided by Projekt DEAL. For helpful feedback and
discussion, we would like to thank Amir Anvari, Julie Gerard, Matt Mandelkern, Luisa Martı́, Christina
Sevdali, and audiences in Potsdam, Belfast, Tübingen, and at the Amsterdam Colloquium 2017. We are
also grateful to Dorothy Ahn for allowing us to use her artwork in our experimental stimuli and to
Istanbul Bilgi University students for participation in the experiments. This work was partially funded by
the Leverhulme Trust Grant RPG-2016-100.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as
you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative
Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this
article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line
to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended
use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain
permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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