An experimental study on scalar implicatures: Comparing German native speakers and Chinese learners of German

To address the theoretical and empirical controversies on Scalar Implicature (SI), an experiment drawing comparisons between German native and non-native speakers was performed. The main finding shows that non-native speakers computed significantly less SIs by reading logically correct but pragmatically infelicitous sentences, which preferred the Processing Limitation Hypothesis and is therefore more consistent with Relevance Theory. The experiment also proved that numerals are more likely semantically exact, and that nonnative speakers can serve as an important counter group to native speakers in pragmatic research. No significant correlation between judgments and logical thinking skill or learning duration was observed.