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Quantifiers undone: Reversing predictable speech errors in comprehension

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Lyn Frazier  and
Charles Clifton Jr.
Lyn Frazier*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Charles Clifton Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts Amherst
*
Frazier, Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts Amherst Amherst, MA 01003 [lyn@linguist.umass.edu]
Clifton, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Amherst Amherst, MA 01003 [cec@psychology.umass.edu]
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Abstract

Speakers predictably make errors during spontaneous speech. Listeners may identify such errors and repair the input, or their analysis of the input, accordingly. Two written questionnaire studies investigated error compensation mechanisms in sentences with doubled quantifiers such as Many students often turn in their assignments late. Results show a considerable number of undoubled interpretations for all items tested (though fewer for sentences containing doubled negation than for sentences containing many-often, every-always, or few-seldom). This evidence shows that the compositional form-meaning pairing supplied by the grammar is not the only systematic mapping between form and meaning. Implicit knowledge of the workings of the performance systems provides an additional mechanism for pairing sentence form and meaning. Alternate accounts of the data based on either a concord interpretation or an emphatic interpretation of the doubled quantifier do not explain why listeners fail to apprehend the ‘extra meaning’ added by the potentially redundant material only in limited circumstances.

Keywords

speech errorscomprehensionacceptable ungrammaticalityquantificationdoublingblends

Information

Type
Short Report
Information
Language , Volume 87 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 158 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 Linguistic Society of America

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