18.688, Sum: English Judgments on the Meaning of 'other'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-18-688. Tue Mar 06 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 18.688, Sum: English Judgments on the Meaning of 'other'

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1)
Date: 26-Jan-2007
From: Oystein Nilsen < oystein.nilsen at let.uu.nl >
Subject: English Judgments on the Meaning of 'other' 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2007 10:23:09
From: Oystein Nilsen < oystein.nilsen at let.uu.nl >
Subject: English Judgments on the Meaning of 'other' 
 


Query for this summary posted in LINGUIST Issue: 18.217                                            
 

This is a summary of the query posted here:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/18/18-217.html#1

We received 74 completed forms, 9 of which we excluded from 
consideration (we excluded forms where sentences 22 and 26 were judged 
'good') thus leaving us with 65 completed forms. This happened within 
about 24 hours after the form appeared on the linguist list.  We are deeply 
grateful to all those who responded, and also quite surprised at how 
effective this way of gathering judgments turned out to be.

There were three conditions, each with two or more variables. First, we 
tested bound readings of 'other' with a variety of different quantifiers as 
binders, i.e. quantifiers headed by 'no,' 'all,' 'every,' 'the,' 'and,' 'two,' and 
'most.' 

Secondly, we tested whether bound readings of 'other' are sensitive to 
syntactic locality. We tested clausmate binding, cases where the binder and 
'other' were separated by a finite clause boundary, a 'small clause' (ECM) 
boundary, or by a factive island. 

Finally, we tested whether there is an effect on the availability of bound 
readings of the presence/absence of a noun following 'other' (i.e. 'the 
others' vs. 'the other students').

A table summarizing all our findings can be downloaded here:
http://www.let.uu.nl/~Oystein.Nilsen/personal/quest.xls.pdf

and the original form (no longer active) can be found here:
http://www.let.uu.nl/~Oystein.Nilsen/personal/judgments.html

Some of the effects turned out not to be significant. For example, sentences 
in the clause mate binding configuration, with 'the' as the head of the 
binder were accepted by 22% when 'other' was not followed by a noun, and 
34% of the time when it was. But this difference was not significant (s=.1). 
We have not completed significance testing of all the pairs we'd like to, but 
when we have, we'll post it where the table can be found now.

If somebody is interested in the raw material, we can email it to them if they 
contact us.

We received several comments, not all of which we can respond to here. One 
recurrent remark was that sentences with 'most' are infelicitous in a context 
that only has three individuals. We are planning a follow-up study where we 
repair this defect. Another frequent remark was that the word ''felicitous'' is 
somewhat unfortunate. In our follow-up study, we will use locutions like 
'make sense' instead. A third point with which we also agree, is that the 
GOOD/BAD dichotomy is too coarse for some of these judgments.  Hence we 
are planning to have more gradients in our follow-up study. This will also 
give us more statistical power, and potentially lead to more significant 
findings.

Best regards,
Jakub Dotlacil and Øystein Nilsen 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics




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