Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T05:43:45.009Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Semantics of ‘unless’ Conditionals: Evidence from ‘unless’ and Disjunctive Inferences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2013

Juan A. García-Madruga ,
Nuria Carriedo  and
Sergio Moreno-Ríos
Juan A. García-Madruga*
Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spain)
Nuria Carriedo
Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spain)
Sergio Moreno-Ríos
Affiliation:
Universidad de Granada (Spain)
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Juan. A. García Madruga. Departamento de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, UNED – 28040, Madrid. (Spain). Phone: +34-913986259. Fax: +34-913987951. E-mail: jmadruga@psi.uned.es
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We report the results of an experiment investigating conditional inferences from conditional assertions such as ‘Juan won't go to León unless Nuria goes to Madrid’ and ‘Either Nuria goes to Madrid or Juan won't go to León’. This experiment addresses Dancygier's claims about the semantics of ‘unless’ by examining inferential endorsements of ‘not-A unless B’ and ‘Either B or not-A’ in the canonical order, presenting the categorical premise after the conditional assertions, and in the inverse order, presenting the categorical premise before the conditional assertions. The results of the experiment confirm that the representation of ‘unless’ includes two possibilities, although as Dancygier holds one of the possibilities may not be complete. The implications of the results are discussed in the context of the strategic nature of conditional reasoning and recent convergent theories of linguistic processing.

Se presentan los resultados de un experimento en el que se investigaron las inferencias realizadas a partir de enunciados condicionales como ‘Juan no irá a León a menos que Nuria vaya Madrid’ y ‘O Nuria va a Madrid o Juan no irá a León’. En este experimento se abordan las concepciones de Dancygier sobre la semántica de ‘a menos que’ mediante el estudio de las inferencias que se extraen de ‘no-A a menos que B’ y de ‘o B o no-A’, en el orden canónico, al presentar la premisa categórica después de la afirmación condicional; y en el orden inverso, presentando la premisa categórica antes que la afirmación condicional. Los resultados confirman que la representación de ‘a menos que’ incluye dos posibilidades aunque, como Dancygier sostiene, una de las posibilidades puede no ser completa. Las implicaciones de los resultados se discuten en el contexto de la naturaleza estratégica del razonamiento condicional y de las teorías convergentes recientes sobre el procesamiento lingüístico.

Keywords

conditionalsmental modelsreasoningcondicionalesmodelos mentalesrazonamiento
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , November 2011 , pp. 569 - 579
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Braine, M. D. S. (1978). On the relation between the natural logic of reasoning and standard logic. Psychological Review, 85, 1–21. doi:10.1037//0033-295X.85.1.1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braine, M. D. S., & O'Brien, D. (1998). Mental logic. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carriedo, N., García-Madruga, J., Gutiérrez, F., & Moreno, S. (1999). How does content affect ‘unless’ conditional reasoning? Proceedings of the European Conference on Cognitive Science (pp. 271–277). Sienna, Italy.Google Scholar
Cheng, P., & Holyoak, K. (1985). Pragmatic reasoning schemas. Cognitive psychology, 17, 391–416. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(85)90014-3Google Scholar
Clark, H. H., & Clark, E. V. (1977). Psychology and language. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Dancygier, B. (1998). Conditionals and prediction. Time, knowledge and causation in conditional constructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dancygier, B. (2002). Mental space embeddings, counterfactuality and the use of unless. English language and linguistics, 6, 347–377. doi:10.1017/S1360674302000278Google Scholar
Dancygier, B., & Sweetser, E. (2005). Mental spaces in grammar. Conditional constructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Declerck, R., & Reed, S. (2000). The semantics and pragmatics of unless. English language and linguistics, 4, 205–241. doi:10.1017/S136067430000023XGoogle Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T. (1993). The mental model theory of conditional reasoning: Critical appraisal and revision. Cognition, 48, 1–20. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(93)90056-2CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Evans, J. St. B. T. (2007). Hypothetical Thinking. Dual processes in reasoning and judgement. Hove UK: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., & Handley, S. J. (1999) The role of negation in conditional inference. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A, 52, 739–769. doi:10.1080/027249899391034Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., Handley, S. J., & Buck, E. (1998). Ordering of information in conditional reasoning. British Journal of Psychology, 89, 383–404. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1998.tb02692.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., Newstead, S. E., & Byrne, R. M. J. (1993). Human reasoning: The psychology of deduction. Hove UK: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., & Over, D. E. (2004). If. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., Over, D. E., & Handley, S. J. (2005). Supposition, extensionality and conditionals: A critique of Johnson-Laird & Byrne (2002). Psychological Review, 112, 1040–1052. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.112.4.1040Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G. (1994). Mental Spaces. (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Originally published (1985) Cambridge: MIT Press].CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferreira, F., Ferraro, V., & Bailey, K. G. D. (2002). Good-enough representations in language comprehension. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 11–15. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.00158Google Scholar
Ferreira, F., & Patson, N. D. (2007). The ‘Good Enough’ approach to language comprehension. Language and Linguistics Compass, 1, 71–83. doi:10.1111/j.1749-818X.2007.00007.xGoogle Scholar
Fiddick, L., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2000). No interpretation without representation: The role of domain-specific representations and inferences in the Wason selection task. Cognition, 77, 1–79. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(00)00085-8CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fillenbaum, S. (1976). Inducements: On phrasing and logic of conditional promises, threats and warnings. Psychological Research, 38, 231–250. doi:10.1007/BF00309774Google Scholar
Fillenbaum, S. (1986). The use of conditionals in inducements and deterrents. In Traugott, E. C., ter Meulen, A, Reilly, J. S., & Ferguson, C. A. (Eds). On conditionals (pp. 179–195). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
García-Madruga, J. A., Moreno, S., Carriedo, N., & Gutiérrez, F. (2000). Task, premise order and strategies in Rips's conjunction-disjunction and conditionals problems. In D'Ydewalle, G., Schaeken, W., Vandierendonk, A., & De Vooght, G. (eds.), Deductive Reasoning and Strategies. (pp. 49–72). Mahwah, NJ: LEAGoogle Scholar
García-Madruga, J. A., Gutiérrez, F., Carriedo, N., Moreno, S., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2002). Mental models in deductive reasoning. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 5, 125–140.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
García-Madruga, J. A., Moreno, S., Carriedo, N., Gutiérrez, F., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2001). Are conjunctive inferences easier than disjunctive inferences? A comparison of rules and models. The Quaterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A, 54, 613–632. doi:10.1080/02724980042000309Google Scholar
García-Madruga, J. A., Gutiérrez, F., Carriedo, N., Luzón, J. M., & Vila, J. O. (2007). Mental Models in Propositional Reasoning and Working Memory's Central Executive. Thinking and Reasoning, 13, 370–393.Google Scholar
García-Madruga, J. A., Carriedo, N., Moreno, S., Gutiérrez, F., & Schaeken, W. (2008). Unless Reasoning. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 11, 386–399.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
García-Madruga, J. A., Moreno, S., Quelhas, C., & Juhos, C. (2008). Reasoning with ‘Unless’, ‘If not’ and ‘Only if’ Counterfactual Conditionals. Psicologica, 30, 215–242.Google Scholar
Geis, M. L. (1973). If and unless. In Kachu, B. B., Lees, R. B., Malkiel, Y., Pietrangeli, A., & Saporta, S. (Eds). Issues in linguistics (pp. 231–253). Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Gibson, E. (1998). Linguistic complexity: Locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition, 68, 1–76. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(98)00034-1CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Girotto, V., Mazzoco, A., & Tasso, A. (1997). The effect of premise order in conditional reasoning: a test of the mental model theory. Cognition, 63, 1–28. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(96)00792-5Google Scholar
Holyoak, K. J., & Cheng, P. (1995). Pragmatic reasoning with a point of view: A response. Thinking & Reasoning, 1, 289–313. doi:10.1080/13546789508251504Google Scholar
Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Bara, B. G. (1984). Syllogistic inference. Cognition, 16, 1–61. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(84)90035-0CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Byrne, R. M. J. (1991). Deduction. Hove, UK: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Byrne, R. M. J. (2002). Conditionals: a theory of meaning, pragmatics, and inference. Psychological Review, 109, 646–678. doi:10.1037//0033-295X.109.4.646CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson-Laird, P. N., Byrne, R., & Schaeken, W. (1992). Propositional reasoning by model. Psychological Review, 99, 418–439. doi:10.1037//0033-295X.99.3.418Google Scholar
Legrenzi, P., Girotto, V., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1993) Focussing in reasoning and decision making. Cognition, 49, 37–66. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(93)90035-TGoogle Scholar
Levy, R. (2008). Expectation-based syntactic comprensión. Cognition, 106, 1126–1177. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2007.05.006Google Scholar
Lewis, R. L., & Vasishth, S. (2005). An activation-based model of sentence processing as skilled memory retrieval. Cognitive Science, 29, 375–419. doi:10.1207/s15516709cog0000_25Google Scholar
Montolío, E. (1999). Las construcciones condicionales. In Bosque, I., & Demonte, V., (Dirs.). Gramática descriptiva de la Lengua Española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. (1972). Methods of logic (3rd Ed.). New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Reichenback, H. (1947). Elements of symbolic logic. New York, NY: Free Press.Google Scholar
Rips, L. J. (1994). The Psychology of proof: Deductive reasoning in human reasoning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanford, A., & Graesser, A. (2006). Introduction: Shallow Processing and Underspecification. Discourse Processes, 42, 99–108. doi:10.1207/s15326950dp4202_1Google Scholar
Traugott, E. C. (1997). UNLESS and BUT conditionals: a historical perspective. In Athanasiadou, A., & Dirven, R. (Eds.). On conditionals again. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
von Fintel, K. (1991). Exceptive conditionals: the meaning of unless. North Eastern Linguistics Society, 22, 135–48.Google Scholar
Wason, P. (1965). The context of plausible denial. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 4, 7–11. doi:10.1016/S0022-5371(65)80060-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, P., & Hull, A. J. (1986). Answering questions about negative conditionals. Journal of Memory and Language, 25, 691–709. doi:10.1016/0749-596X(86)90044-6Google Scholar
Wright, P., & Hull, A. J. (1988). Reading to do: creating contingent action plans. British Journal of Psychology, 79, 187–211. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1988.tb02283.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar