Quantifier Acquisition: Presuppositions of “every”

Three components of determiner meanings – truth conditions, implicatures, and presuppositions – have been identified. One of the major findings in acquisition, related to the truth conditions of the quantifiers, has been that children go through at least two stages of non-adult interpretation of the quantifier every (Philip, 1995). More recently, researchers (Noveck, 2001; Gualmini et al., 2001; Chierchia, 2001b; Papafragou & Musolino, 2003) have shown that children understand quantifiers logically in a context where adults derive scalar implicatures (for example, some vs. all ). In this paper, I focus on the third component of the determiner meaning, presupposition. Using Felicity Judgment Task, I argue that children acquire the lexical presupposition earlier than the implicated presupposition, and that the acquisition path of implicated presupposition resembles more closely that of scalar implicatures.