Department of English and American Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10099, Berlin, Germany.
Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago, Rosenwald 201A, Chicago, USA.
J Psycholinguist Res. 2021 Dec;50(6):1369-1399. doi: 10.1007/s10936-021-09813-z. Epub 2021 Nov 1.
The concept of bias is familiar to linguists primarily from the literature on questions. Following the work of Giannakidou and Mari (Truth and Veridicality in Grammar and Thought: Modality, Mood, and Propositional Attitudes, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2021), we assume "nonveridical equilibrium" (implying that p and ¬p as equal possibilities) to be the default for epistemic modals, questions and conditionals. The equilibrium of conditionals, as that of questions, can be manipulated to produce bias (i.e., reduced or higher speaker commitment). In this paper, we focus on three kinds of modal elements in German that create bias in conditionals and questions: the adverb wirklich 'really', the modal verb sollte 'should', and conditional connectives such as falls 'if/in case'. We conducted two experiments collecting participants' inference about speaker commitment in different manipulations, Experiment 1 on sollte/wirklich in ob-questions and wenn-conditionals, and Experiment 2 on sollte/wirklich in wenn/falls/V1-conditionals. Our findings are that both ob-questions and falls-conditionals express reduced speaker commitment about the modified (antecedent) proposition in comparison to wenn-conditionals, which did not differ from V1-conditionals. In addition, sollte/wirklich in the antecedent of conditionals both create negative bias about the antecedent proposition. Our studies are among the first that deal with bias in conditionals (in comparison to questions) and contribute to furthering our understanding of bias.
偏见的概念对于语言学家来说主要是从关于问题的文献中熟悉的。在 Giannakidou 和 Mari 的工作（《语法与思想中的真理与真实性：模态、语气和命题态度》，芝加哥大学出版社，芝加哥，2021 年）之后，我们假设“非真实性均衡”（意味着 p 和 ¬p 作为同等可能性）是认知情态、问题和条件句的默认值。条件句的均衡，就像问题的均衡一样，可以被操纵以产生偏见（即，降低或提高说话者的承诺）。在本文中，我们专注于德语中三种在条件句和疑问句中产生偏见的模态元素：副词 wirklich '真的'、情态动词 sollte '应该' 和条件连接词如 falls '如果/如果'。我们进行了两项实验，收集了参与者在不同操纵下对说话者承诺的推理，实验 1 是关于 sollten/wirklich 在 ob 疑问句和 wenn 条件句中的用法，实验 2 是关于 sollten/wirklich 在 wenn/falls/V1 条件句中的用法。我们的发现是，与 wenn 条件句相比，ob 疑问句和 falls 条件句都表达了对修改后的（先行）命题的承诺降低，而与 V1 条件句没有区别。此外，条件句中先行词的 sollten/wirklich 既对先行命题产生了负面偏见。我们的研究是首批处理条件句中的偏见（与问题相比）的研究之一，有助于进一步理解偏见。
