From Inference to Meaning: Experimental Study on Reasoning with Quantifiers Some and Most

We report on the results of our reasoning experiments concerning direct inferences with quantifiers: some, most, all. We investigated scalar implicatures of some and most, as well as inferences from all to most, from all to some and from most to some. Based on our results, we propose that scalar implicatures are context-independent and default in this sense that the pragmatic interpretation of the lexical item with which they are connected is preferred in communication. Following Mostowski and Wojtyniak (2004), we observe that meaning of a sentence may be established in two ways: via inference relations in which a sentence stays (inferential meaning) and by investigating how users of the language evaluate the truth-value of the sentence (referential meaning). We treat the pragmatic reading of some and most as their inferential meaning, whereas the logical reading of those quantifiers accounts for the referential meaning. Explaining our results, we attribute the stronger acceptance of inferences from all to most and from most to some when compared to acceptance of inferences from all to some to vagueness of some and most.