Bilingual Children’s Use of the ‘Maximize Presupposition’ Principle

Abstract

This article reports the results of an experimental study that examines the influence of bilingualism on the acquisition and use of the Maximize Presupposition principle in the context of speakers’ choices among propositional attitude predicates (equivalent to) know and think. We compared the performance of monolingual Slovenian- and Italian-speaking school children to that of age-matched early bilingual children speaking both languages. Our findings suggest that while all children demonstrate adherence to Maximize Presupposition in an adult-like manner, bilingualism may enhance performance in pragmatic tasks that bear on this principle, and therefore constitutes a potential advantage in the relevant area.

Keywords

• Maximize Presupposition
• implicature
• presupposition
• Italian
• Slovenian
• bilingualism