An experimental analysis of the (non) exhaustivity in contrastive answers in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a psycholinguistic experiment aimed to examine whether answers with implicit contrast in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), marked by a contrastive topic, are interpreted as exhaustive. The experiment involved two experimental conditions: polar (yes/no) questions and constituent (wh-) questions. A total of 44 native speakers of BP participated in the study. Participants listened to short dialogues and evaluated three response alternatives as true or false, based on their interpretation. The data reveal that, in the polar question condition, the non-exhaustive answer — with the uncertainty of contrast —was selected most frequently (74%). The exhaustive answer was chosen in 25% of cases, and the contrastive one in 27%. In the constituent question condition, the non-exhaustive response again received the highest rate of acceptance (85%), while the exhaustive and contrastive answers were selected in 15% and 12.5% of instances, respectively. These results suggest that participants tend to interpret responses as non-exhaustive when contrastive topic marking is present in both question types. However, inferential statistical analysis showed that the differences between non-exhaustive and contrastive interpretations were statistically significant. It can thus be concluded that a conversational implicature of uncertainty is at play, indicating that speakers are generally reluctant to commit to interpretations involving either contrast or exhaustivity. Moreover, the type of question may influence how respondents interpret the degree of exhaustivity or contrast in a given utterance.