Date:
Location:
Paloma Jeretič (NYU)
Title: The processing cost of weak modals and consequences for child production and typology
Abstract: In this talk, I argue that there is a higher processing cost associated with weak modal meanings (equivalents of can, need not) than with strong ones (must, must not, cannot). I tie evidence from previous experimental and theoretical literature with novel results from adult reaction times. I also present supporting results of a corpus-based study of spontaneous speech of French and Spanish children, that show both delayed and sparser production of weak modal expressions relative to strong ones. Finally, I discuss how this processing cost could affect the availability of meanings arising from certain syntactic configurations and contribute to typological gaps.