Disjunction Under Deontic Modals: Experimental Data

摘要

The meaning components of may/or and must/or sentences have been discussed intensively by a number of theoretical accounts. The debates are concerned with whether free choice inferences are part of logical meaning or scalar implicatures, and additionally, whether exhaustive inferences and exclusive or inferences are derived for may/or versus must/or. In this study, two experiments were conducted for the purpose of evaluating the assumptions of three representative accounts, namely, Fox, Geurts and Simons. Each experiment separately examined the availability and processing time-course of the three types of inferences associated with may/or versus must/or sentences. The experimental results fit Simons's analysis to a large extent.