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Bias and Modality in Conditionals: Experimental Evidence and Theoretical Implications
The concept of bias is familiar to linguists primarily from the literature on questions. Following the work of Giannakidou and Mari (Truth and Veridicality in Grammar and Thought: Modality, Mood, and Propositional Attitudes, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2021), we assume “nonveridical equili...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Springer US
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8660720/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34724149 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10936-021-09813-z |
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author | Liu, Mingya Rotter, Stephanie Giannakidou, Anastasia |
author_facet | Liu, Mingya Rotter, Stephanie Giannakidou, Anastasia |
author_sort | Liu, Mingya |
collection | PubMed |
description | The concept of bias is familiar to linguists primarily from the literature on questions. Following the work of Giannakidou and Mari (Truth and Veridicality in Grammar and Thought: Modality, Mood, and Propositional Attitudes, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2021), we assume “nonveridical equilibrium” (implying that p and ¬p as equal possibilities) to be the default for epistemic modals, questions and conditionals. The equilibrium of conditionals, as that of questions, can be manipulated to produce bias (i.e., reduced or higher speaker commitment). In this paper, we focus on three kinds of modal elements in German that create bias in conditionals and questions: the adverb wirklich ‘really’, the modal verb sollte ‘should’, and conditional connectives such as falls ‘if/in case’. We conducted two experiments collecting participants’ inference about speaker commitment in different manipulations, Experiment 1 on sollte/wirklich in ob-questions and wenn-conditionals, and Experiment 2 on sollte/wirklich in wenn/falls/V1-conditionals. Our findings are that both ob-questions and falls-conditionals express reduced speaker commitment about the modified (antecedent) proposition in comparison to wenn-conditionals, which did not differ from V1-conditionals. In addition, sollte/wirklich in the antecedent of conditionals both create negative bias about the antecedent proposition. Our studies are among the first that deal with bias in conditionals (in comparison to questions) and contribute to furthering our understanding of bias. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8660720 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Springer US |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-86607202021-12-27 Bias and Modality in Conditionals: Experimental Evidence and Theoretical Implications Liu, Mingya Rotter, Stephanie Giannakidou, Anastasia J Psycholinguist Res Article The concept of bias is familiar to linguists primarily from the literature on questions. Following the work of Giannakidou and Mari (Truth and Veridicality in Grammar and Thought: Modality, Mood, and Propositional Attitudes, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2021), we assume “nonveridical equilibrium” (implying that p and ¬p as equal possibilities) to be the default for epistemic modals, questions and conditionals. The equilibrium of conditionals, as that of questions, can be manipulated to produce bias (i.e., reduced or higher speaker commitment). In this paper, we focus on three kinds of modal elements in German that create bias in conditionals and questions: the adverb wirklich ‘really’, the modal verb sollte ‘should’, and conditional connectives such as falls ‘if/in case’. We conducted two experiments collecting participants’ inference about speaker commitment in different manipulations, Experiment 1 on sollte/wirklich in ob-questions and wenn-conditionals, and Experiment 2 on sollte/wirklich in wenn/falls/V1-conditionals. Our findings are that both ob-questions and falls-conditionals express reduced speaker commitment about the modified (antecedent) proposition in comparison to wenn-conditionals, which did not differ from V1-conditionals. In addition, sollte/wirklich in the antecedent of conditionals both create negative bias about the antecedent proposition. Our studies are among the first that deal with bias in conditionals (in comparison to questions) and contribute to furthering our understanding of bias. Springer US 2021-11-01 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8660720/ /pubmed/34724149 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10936-021-09813-z Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis 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/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Liu, Mingya Rotter, Stephanie Giannakidou, Anastasia Bias and Modality in Conditionals: Experimental Evidence and Theoretical Implications |
title | Bias and Modality in Conditionals: Experimental Evidence and Theoretical Implications |
title_full | Bias and Modality in Conditionals: Experimental Evidence and Theoretical Implications |
title_fullStr | Bias and Modality in Conditionals: Experimental Evidence and Theoretical Implications |
title_full_unstemmed | Bias and Modality in Conditionals: Experimental Evidence and Theoretical Implications |
title_short | Bias and Modality in Conditionals: Experimental Evidence and Theoretical Implications |
title_sort | bias and modality in conditionals: experimental evidence and theoretical implications |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8660720/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34724149 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10936-021-09813-z |
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