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Alternatives and attention in language and reasoning: A reply to Mascarenhas & Picat 2019

Paper · 2022 · Nadine Bade, Léo Picat, WooJin Chung et al.

Summary

The paper asks whether a modal expression introduces alternatives, in the sense of Hamblin or inquisitive semantics, and whether a reasoning experiment can detect this. Mascarenhas & Picat (2019) found that epistemic might triggers illusory inferences similar to those from disjunctions and indefinites. They conjectured that exactly the alternative-generating expressions cause this kind of fallacy. Bade et al. test that conjecture with the deontic modal allowed to, which no current theory treats as an alternative generator. They ran premise–conclusion problems with both modals side by side, alongside valid and invalid controls and baselines. The results for might largely replicate. Allowed to also draws structurally parallel fallacious endorsements, but it departs from might, disjunctions and indefinites on other established signatures of these fallacies. The authors keep the erotetic theory of reasoning. They attribute the deontic fallacies to a separate mechanism, the "package deal" reading from the deontic literature. The paper matters because it shows reasoning tasks can serve as a diagnostic for alternatives in semantics, which helps narrow down theories of possibility modals.

Key points

  • Each target item has the form "X might have / was allowed to do A and B; X did A; therefore X did B". There are 24 targets in total, 12 per modal.
  • There are 12 controls. The valid ones are modus ponens and disjunctive syllogism. The invalid ones pair a conditional or disjunction with an unrelated premise and an unrelated conclusion.
  • There are 12 baselines. The valid ones use conjunction elimination. The invalid ones either add a conjunct ("A ⊢ A and B") or swap one ("A and B ⊢ C and B").
  • Reference rates from earlier work: illusory inferences from disjunction are accepted about 80–85% of the time, and those from indefinites ("Some pilot writes poems; John is a pilot") about 35%.
  • Disjunction fallacies have two possible sources: erotetic question-answer dynamics or scalar-implicature strengthening. Indefinites lack the implicature route, which helps explain their lower endorsement rate.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. Behavioural fallacies can serve as a probe for hidden semantic structure: if an expression invites a predictable invalid inference, that inference reveals what the expression contributes to meaning.
  • I2. Two independent routes can produce the same observable error. Disjunction can mislead through implicature or through question answering, and indefinites only through the second route, so differing error rates help separate the mechanisms.
  • I3. The item design pairs every target with valid and invalid controls and baselines that are structurally similar but lack the critical operator, so any effect is measured against a mistake baseline.
  • I4. Allowed to (A and B) may be read as a "package deal" permission rather than as two separate alternatives. In that case a surface-identical inference pattern comes from a different mechanism than with might.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (frames): Prag could tag modals and indefinites as alternative-raising or not, and test these tags on minimal reasoning pairs instead of assuming them.
  • I2 (answer): When a reader gives an answer, it could record which route licensed the inference (strict entailment, implicature, or alternative resolution), which keeps errors explainable.
  • I3 (learn): Evaluation sets for inference could include operator-free twins of each item as negative controls, so that gains are attributed to the right construction.
  • I4 (world): The world model could represent deontic permission over a conjunction as a joint licence, kept separate from epistemic possibility, so it does not commit A or B as facts.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🔬Centre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueParis · France168 works · 62,369 citations🎓Seoul National UniversitySeoul · South Korea41 works · 45,671 citations🎓University of PotsdamPotsdam · Germany44 works · 5,305 citations🎓Université Paris Sciences et LettresParis · France21 works · 3,290 citations🔬École des hautes études en sciences socialesParis · France15 works · 2,302 citations🔬Institut Jean NicodParis · France11 works · 1,659 citations🎓Université Paris CitéParis · France19 works · 1,426 citations

 Fields, topics and concepts

📚 Shelves 5The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Computer Science · 16,667 worksArtificial Intelligence · 16,194 worksArts and Humanities · 16,039 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 15,891 worksPhilosophy · 284 works

🧭 Topics 1Research subjects and languages the work is about.Reasoning · 1,426 works

Cite

Cite as Nadine Bade, Léo Picat, WooJin Chung and Salvador Mascarenhas. 2022. Alternatives and attention in language and reasoning: A reply to Mascarenhas & Picat 2019. Semantics and Pragmatics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.3765/sp.15.2

@article{bade2022alternatives,
  title = {{Alternatives and attention in language and reasoning: A reply to Mascarenhas \& Picat 2019}},
  author = {Nadine Bade, Léo Picat, WooJin Chung and Salvador Mascarenhas},
  journal = {Semantics and Pragmatics},
  year = {2022},
  doi = {10.3765/sp.15.2},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.2}
}

References

25 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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  25. Walsh, Clare & Philip N. Johnson-Laird. 2004. Co-reference and reasoning. Memory and Cognition 32(1). 96–106. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf0319582 3. Nadine Bade University of Potsdam Cognitive Science Department Division Linguistics Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 24–25 14476 Potsdam, Germany nadine.bade@uni-potsdam.de Léo Picat Université de Paris UFR de médecine 15 Rue de l’École de Médecine 75006 Paris, France picatleo@hotmail.fr WooJin Chung Seoul National University Department of Linguistics 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu 08826 Seoul, Republic of Korea woojin@snu.ac.kr Salvador Mascarenhas Ecole Normale Supérieure Department of Cognitive Studies (DEC) 29 rue d’Ulm 75005 Paris, France salvador.mascarenhas@ens.fr ↗

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