(Quantifier) Scope Judgments

Abstract This chapter is an overview of the state-of-the art of how adults and children interpret scopal ambiguities in sentences with a universal and an existential quantifier and in sentences with a quantifier and negation, and of the theoretical considerations raised by these findings. It has been observed that both children and adults sometimes have an overt scope preference and that inverse scope interpretations sometimes come with an extra processing cost. Experimental results are often sensitive to the nature of the task involved and also to the presence or absence of a discourse context. Although the available evidence paints a complex picture, it seems that ultimately, both adults and children have access to both overt and inverse scope readings most of the time. It is conjectured that studying the process of sentence verification, as suggested by for instance Conroy (2008), would further our understanding of how children and adults interpret sentences with scopal ambiguities.