README FOR SCOPE ELICITATION

November 14, 2008

Pictures created by Benjamin Bruening of the University of Delaware, with the assistance of Yaping Tsai, with funding from the NSF (grant number BCS-0518308).  Readme files written by Benjamin Bruening.  The pictures have been tested on Passamaquoddy-Maliseet and Mi'kmaq (Algonquian) and Albanian and English (Indo-European).  The toys are Playmobil (http://www.playmobil.com/index.html); I have not yet inquired about whether permission is necessary to publish these pictures.

These particular pictures were created for Passamaquoddy-Maliseet, an Algonquian language that makes an important animate-inanimate distinction.  Hence some of the pictures will be redundant in some other languages (bottles are animate but lanterns are inanimate in Passamaquoddy).

The pictures are meant to test primarily for distributive versus non-distributive readings.  For instance, in the "sharks-attack-people" folder, three pictures depict sharks attacking people: four sharks attack a single person; each of four sharks attacks a different person; and a single shark attacks three people.  The idea is to test, first, whether a sentence like "Every shark/all sharks is/are attacking someone/a person," can be distributive, with the subject quantifier distributing over the object.  Once it has been established whether a given quantifier can distribute, then the grammatical roles can be reversed: "A shark is attacking every person/all (the) people."

Note that the pictures can be described in various different ways, depending on what the researcher wants to investigate.  Actives versus passives can be tested, for instance, with the exact same pictures.  Here are some contrasts that are meant to be tested:

---Eventives versus statives: sharks attacking and people catching fish, versus people sitting or holding things;

---Arguments versus adjuncts (or direct/indirect objects versus PPs): people holding things versus birds perching in trees or lanterns hanging in trees;

---Ditransitive constructions: the folder "people-fish-sharks" has people feeding fish to sharks, or handing sharks fish; 

---Symmetrical readings: for instance, in the folder "people-holding-bottles," the picture "TwoHold4Bottles.JPG" has all the bottles held, but not every person is holding a bottle.  Some subjects will reject a sentence like "A man is holding every bottle" as an accurate description of this picture, because there is a person not holding a bottle. 

---Scope of negation: the folder "story-man-fishing" has its own readme file to explain this.

Note that most of the pictures are meant to test universal quantifiers (all, each, every) interacting with indefinites or existential quantifiers. 

Suggestions for methodology:

---The task here is a truth-value judgment task, in which a sentence is judged as true or false of a given picture.  Speakers are generally quite able and willing to do this task.  

---A few pictures are thrown in to elicit negative responses.  For instance, in the folder "people-holding-lanterns," the picture "NotAllHoldLantern.JPG" has three people holding lanterns, and one holding something else.  Just to verify that speakers are willing to say no, you can give the sentence "Every person is holding a lantern," and the answer should be "no" or "false."

---You can also present a sentence and ask the speaker to pick which picture fits it best.  For instance, "A man is holding every bottle," for "OneHoldAllBs.JPG" or "EachHoldBottle.JPG."  (But this does not always determine whether a given interpretation is grammatical, just what interpretation is most salient.  However, many speakers are quite willing to say things like, "No, that sentence only describes this picture, not that one.")

---I always present each picture first and ask the speaker to describe it.  Typically this will produce something like "I see four men holding bottles."  You can then alter the sentence they produced to elicit judgments on the quantifiers you are interested in.

---In English, it is a well-established finding that not every speaker will assent to inverse scope readings of sentences like "A man is holding every bottle," although around 70 percent of respondents will.  It is a good idea to get data from as many speakers as possible.


Some other comments:

---At the time these pictures were created, the only toys of people I had were pirates, who are all male.  I have now acquired many more toys with men, women, and children of all different time periods and costumes, but have not yet created pictures with them.

---The animals and tools here are ones that are relevant to people living on the coast.  I have also acquired many more toys of different kinds of animals and objects, but again have not yet had time to create pictures from them.  If you have a specific request, please let me know.

---So far I have published two papers reporting findings from these materials:

Bruening, Benjamin (2008).  "Quantification in Passamaquoddy."  In Lisa Matthewson (ed.), *Quantification: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective*.  Emerald: 67--103.

Bruening, Benjamin (to appear).  "Algonquian Languages Have A-Movement and A-Agreement."  To appear in *Linguistic Inquiry*.  Can be downloaded from http://www.ling.udel.edu/bruening/home/AgainstABarAgr2.pdf


Questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome and should be addressed to Benjamin Bruening at bruening@udel.edu.  I hope to set up a website soon for distribution of these materials and discussion, as well as postings of findings by users.  Please email me for updates.
