‘Still’ True – On the Acquisition of Different Presupposition Triggers

In recent years, a number of different classifications of presupposition triggers have been proposed and experimentally investigated. In this collaborative project with Emma Nguyen, we compare two types of triggers – still as a trigger which has been argued to be independent of the assertion and continue as one that contains both presupposed and asserted content – and test both children’s and adult’s comprehension of them. The hypothesis we want to test is whether children are more likely to ignore a presupposition failure than adults, and whether they do more so for still than for continue assuming that the former is independent of the assertion.

Output:

Nguyen, E. & A. Göbel (2018). Still true? How do children deal with presupposition failures across triggers. Talk at Language Acquisition Workshop in New England (LAWNE) @UConn, May 2018.