The Use of Epistemic Lexical Markers in Abductive, Inductive and Deductive Conditionals

SPEAKER

Sara Verbrugge

ABSTRACT

In Douven & Verbrugge (submitted) we discerned between abductive (inference to the best explanation), inductive (inference in which the conclusion follows with a certain statistical probability from the premises) and deductive (truth of what is inferred is guaranteed by the truth of the premises from which it is inferred) conditionals with regard to Adams’s Thesis. Here we will present a follow-up experiment with further evidence for this distinction between abductive, inductive and deductive conditionals. Our focus is not on Adams’s Thesis this time, but on the way in which the use of epistemic markers can discern further between these three types of conditionals.
We will present an experiment in which 122 students of the University of Leuven took part. In this experiment we investigated whether the insertion of the Dutch lexical markers “moet wel” (must), “zal wel” (will), and “kan niet anders dan” (cannot be otherwise than) into the conditionals makes a difference for acceptability ratings and their correlations with probability ratings. It turns out particular markers are more acceptable when they are combined with particular types of conditionals than with others.
This experiment will be complemented with eyetracking data in order to find out whether participants pick out the relevant elements which guide the reader to an abductive, inductive and deductive interpretation and in which ways participants are directly influenced by the presence of epistemic lexical markers.