In this work we experimentally examine the interpretation of double-quantifier sentences in Russian, a free word order language and English, a fixed word order language. We experimentally assess the role of information structure, prosody, and word order on the availability of inverse scope in these languages. We also look at the scope availability in Russian double-quantifier sentences for L2 and Heritage speakers of Russian whose L1 is English.
Whereas in English double-quantifier sentences, both surface and inverse scope readings are available (Ionin, Luchkina, Stoops 2014), our data from more than a hundred native speakers of Russian, shows that in Russian, the inverse scope availability is very limited. However, the inverse scope accessibility in Russian is significantly higher in scrambled OVS sentences which feature a (contrastive) pitch accent aligned with the indefinite QP (Ionin & Luchkina 2014). In Luchkina & Ionin (in press) we describe the acoustic-prosodic features which successfully discriminate between the productions disambiguating surface and inverse scope in Russian. We also determine that the role of discourse-level information in inverse scope availability in Russian is secondary to the role played by the supra-segmental cues.
We are now collecting data from L2 and Heritage speakers of Russian, to evaluate the effects of incomplete language acquisition and/or language transfer on scope availability.
More information:
- Ionin, T. and Luchkina, T. Focus on Russian Scope: An Experimental Investigation of the Relationship between Quantifier Scope, Prosody, and Information Structure. Revision requested by Linguistic Inquiry.
- Tatiana Luchkina and Tania Ionin. Accepted. “The effect of prosody on availability of inverse scope in Russian.” In Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics #23: The Berkeley Meeting.
- Tania Ionin and Tatiana Luchkina. In press. “One reading for every word order: revisiting Russian scope.” In Proceedings of the 32nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics.
- Tania Ionin, Tatiana Luchkina and Anastasia Stoops. 2014. “Quantifier scope and scrambling in the second language acquisition of Russian”. In Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition–North America, University of Kansas, pp. 169-180. Cascadilla Proceedings Project.