Anton Benz
Biographic Data
| ID | 3850947 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anton Benz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anton |
| FAMILY NAME | Benz |
| SIGNATURE | BENZ A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1128-6636 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Disjunction across polarities
This study investigates the sources of the possible interpretations of negative disjunctive statements (e.g. Girafa nu a cules ghiocelul sau trandafirul ‘The giraffe did not pick the snowdrop or the rose’) in Romanian children and adults. Previous research highlights cross-linguistic variation among adults: English-speaking adults allow both neither nor and not both interpretations, while Japanese-speaking adults only allow the not both interpret…
Reasoning with epistemic adverbs in child Romanian
Our study experimentally investigates the comprehension of epistemic adverbs (poate ‘maybe’, sigur ‘certainly’) in child Romanian, an important undertaking as previous experimental acquisition studies have focused on epistemic modal verbs, and rarely on Romanian. Children were found to be non-adult-like in comprehending epistemic modal verbs, but this could be due to struggles with modal verb meaning rather than due to failure with epistemic reas…
Children interpret some disjunctions conjunctively
Studies show that adults interpret simple forms of disjunction (The mouse carried an apple or an orange) inclusively (The mouse carried one, possibly both) or exclusively (The mouse carried one but not both), while they generally interpret complex disjunction (e.g. either...or) exclusively (Tieu et al. 2017; Nicolae et al. 2025). Children, however, who tend to interpret simple forms of disjunction inclusively or conjunctively (The mouse carried b…
Does hearing “and” help children understand “or”? Insights into scales and relevance from the acquisition of disjunction in child Romanian
Children are known to derive more implicatures when the required alternative is made salient through contrast or when it is made contextually relevant through a story or a Question Under Discussion. We investigated the exclusivity implicature of three disjunctions ( sau “or”, sau... sau , and fie...fie “either...or”) in child Romanian, an understudied language in the previous literature. Three experiments reveal that the mere presence of the stro…
Certainly but not certain
This paper investigates the interpretation of the epistemic modal adjectives possible, certain and their adverbial counterparts possibly, certainly, taking the perspective that the former express objective modality, whereas the latter express subjective modality. In support of this view, we report on two experiments that assess speakers’ acceptance of possible, certain, possibly, certainly in different contexts. Our results extend those of Lassit…
Epistemic Perspectives and Communicative Acts
Searle (Speech Acts, 1969) introduced his famous distinction between constitutive and regulative rules that together define felicity conditions of speech acts. Regulative rules are normative rules, whereas constitutive rules define what counts as a performance of a speech act. In this paper we demonstrate with the example of assertions and referential uses of definite description that simple regulative rules can be given to speech acts that hold …
Embedded implicature
Previous research on scalar implicature has primarily relied on meta-linguistic judgment tasks and found varying rates of such inferences depending on the nature of the task and contextual manipulations. This paper introduces a novel interactive paradigm involving both a production and a comprehension side and a precise conversational goal. The main research question is what is reliably communicated by some in this communicative setting, both whe…
Scalar bounds and expected values of comparatively modified numerals
Speakers routinely employ world knowledge to draw scalar implicatures in numerals. For instance, in the context of ‘an exceptionally hot summer’, speakers will use their knowledge of average summer temperatures and record temperatures to construct a range of potential values. However, it is not clear how they do so when they do not have strong expectations or context is less informative. 1270 adult American English native speakers were shown shor…
Scalar diversity and negative strengthening
In recent years, experimental research has demontrated great variability in the ratesof scalar inferences across different triggering expressions (Doran et al. 2009, 2012, van Tielet al. 2016). These studies have been taken as evidence against the so-called uniformity assumption,which posits that scalar implicature is triggered by a single mechanism and that thebehaviour of one scale should generalize to the whole family of scales. In the followi…
Embedded implicature in a new interactive paradigm
Previous research on scalar implicature has primarily relied on metalinguistic judgmenttasks and found varying rates of such inferences depending on the nature of the task andcontextual manipulations. This paper introduces a novel interactive paradigm involving both aproduction and a comprehension component, thereby fixing a precise conversational context.The main research question is what is reliably communicated by some in this communicativeset…
Game-Theoretic Approaches to Pragmatics
We present an overview and comparison of different game-theoretic approaches to Gricean pragmatics, including games of partial information, optimal answer models, error models, iterated best response models, and rational speech act models. We address phenomena of disambiguation, scalar implicature, and relevance implicature
Questions Under Discussion
Questions under discussion (QUD) is an analytic tool that has recently become more and more popular among linguists and language philosophers as a way to characterize how a sentence fits in its con
On Bayesian pragmatics and categorical predictions
Implicature and discourse structure
Language, Games, and Evolution
Papers on pragmasemantics
Optimality theory as used in linguistics (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004; Smolensky & Legendre, 2006) and cognitive psychology (Gigerenzer & Selten, 2001) is a theoretical framework that aims to integrate constraint based knowledge representation systems, generative grammar, cognitive skills, and aspects of neural network processing. In the last years considerable progress was made to overcome the artificial separation between the disciplines of l…
Outline of the foundations for a theory of implicatures
In this paper, we outline the foundations of a theory of implicatures. It divides into two parts. The first part contains the base model. It introduces signalling games, optimal answer models, and a general definition of implicatures in terms of natural information. The second part contains a refinement in which we consider noisy communication with efficient clarification requests. Throughout, we assume a fully cooperative speaker who knows the i…
Questions Under Discussion
Questions under discussion (QUD) is an analytic tool that has recently become more and more popular among linguists and language philosophers as a way to characterize how a sentence fits in its con
Game-Theoretic Approaches to Pragmatics
We present an overview and comparison of different game-theoretic approaches to Gricean pragmatics, including games of partial information, optimal answer models, error models, iterated best response models, and rational speech act models. We address phenomena of disambiguation, scalar implicature, and relevance implicature
Implicature and discourse structure
Papers on pragmasemantics
Optimality theory as used in linguistics (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004; Smolensky & Legendre, 2006) and cognitive psychology (Gigerenzer & Selten, 2001) is a theoretical framework that aims to integrate constraint based knowledge representation systems, generative grammar, cognitive skills, and aspects of neural network processing. In the last years considerable progress was made to overcome the artificial separation between the disciplines of l…
Outline of the foundations for a theory of implicatures
In this paper, we outline the foundations of a theory of implicatures. It divides into two parts. The first part contains the base model. It introduces signalling games, optimal answer models, and a general definition of implicatures in terms of natural information. The second part contains a refinement in which we consider noisy communication with efficient clarification requests. Throughout, we assume a fully cooperative speaker who knows the i…
Language, Games, and Evolution
Implicature and discourse structure
On Bayesian pragmatics and categorical predictions
Game-Theoretic Approaches to Pragmatics
We present an overview and comparison of different game-theoretic approaches to Gricean pragmatics, including games of partial information, optimal answer models, error models, iterated best response models, and rational speech act models. We address phenomena of disambiguation, scalar implicature, and relevance implicature
Questions Under Discussion
Questions under discussion (QUD) is an analytic tool that has recently become more and more popular among linguists and language philosophers as a way to characterize how a sentence fits in its con
Scalar diversity and negative strengthening
In recent years, experimental research has demontrated great variability in the ratesof scalar inferences across different triggering expressions (Doran et al. 2009, 2012, van Tielet al. 2016). These studies have been taken as evidence against the so-called uniformity assumption,which posits that scalar implicature is triggered by a single mechanism and that thebehaviour of one scale should generalize to the whole family of scales. In the followi…
Embedded implicature in a new interactive paradigm
Previous research on scalar implicature has primarily relied on metalinguistic judgmenttasks and found varying rates of such inferences depending on the nature of the task andcontextual manipulations. This paper introduces a novel interactive paradigm involving both aproduction and a comprehension component, thereby fixing a precise conversational context.The main research question is what is reliably communicated by some in this communicativeset…
Scalar bounds and expected values of comparatively modified numerals
Speakers routinely employ world knowledge to draw scalar implicatures in numerals. For instance, in the context of ‘an exceptionally hot summer’, speakers will use their knowledge of average summer temperatures and record temperatures to construct a range of potential values. However, it is not clear how they do so when they do not have strong expectations or context is less informative. 1270 adult American English native speakers were shown shor…
Epistemic Perspectives and Communicative Acts
Searle (Speech Acts, 1969) introduced his famous distinction between constitutive and regulative rules that together define felicity conditions of speech acts. Regulative rules are normative rules, whereas constitutive rules define what counts as a performance of a speech act. In this paper we demonstrate with the example of assertions and referential uses of definite description that simple regulative rules can be given to speech acts that hold …
Embedded implicature
Previous research on scalar implicature has primarily relied on meta-linguistic judgment tasks and found varying rates of such inferences depending on the nature of the task and contextual manipulations. This paper introduces a novel interactive paradigm involving both a production and a comprehension side and a precise conversational goal. The main research question is what is reliably communicated by some in this communicative setting, both whe…
Certainly but not certain
This paper investigates the interpretation of the epistemic modal adjectives possible, certain and their adverbial counterparts possibly, certainly, taking the perspective that the former express objective modality, whereas the latter express subjective modality. In support of this view, we report on two experiments that assess speakers’ acceptance of possible, certain, possibly, certainly in different contexts. Our results extend those of Lassit…
Children interpret some disjunctions conjunctively
Studies show that adults interpret simple forms of disjunction (The mouse carried an apple or an orange) inclusively (The mouse carried one, possibly both) or exclusively (The mouse carried one but not both), while they generally interpret complex disjunction (e.g. either...or) exclusively (Tieu et al. 2017; Nicolae et al. 2025). Children, however, who tend to interpret simple forms of disjunction inclusively or conjunctively (The mouse carried b…
Does hearing “and” help children understand “or”? Insights into scales and relevance from the acquisition of disjunction in child Romanian
Children are known to derive more implicatures when the required alternative is made salient through contrast or when it is made contextually relevant through a story or a Question Under Discussion. We investigated the exclusivity implicature of three disjunctions ( sau “or”, sau... sau , and fie...fie “either...or”) in child Romanian, an understudied language in the previous literature. Three experiments reveal that the mere presence of the stro…
Disjunction across polarities
This study investigates the sources of the possible interpretations of negative disjunctive statements (e.g. Girafa nu a cules ghiocelul sau trandafirul ‘The giraffe did not pick the snowdrop or the rose’) in Romanian children and adults. Previous research highlights cross-linguistic variation among adults: English-speaking adults allow both neither nor and not both interpretations, while Japanese-speaking adults only allow the not both interpret…
Reasoning with epistemic adverbs in child Romanian
Our study experimentally investigates the comprehension of epistemic adverbs (poate ‘maybe’, sigur ‘certainly’) in child Romanian, an important undertaking as previous experimental acquisition studies have focused on epistemic modal verbs, and rarely on Romanian. Children were found to be non-adult-like in comprehending epistemic modal verbs, but this could be due to struggles with modal verb meaning rather than due to failure with epistemic reas…
Linguistics (14 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Artificial Intelligence (10 works) · Pragmatics (9 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (9 works) · Implicature (6 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (5 works) · Mathematics (5 works)