Many researchers have suggested that premise interpretation errors can account, at least in part, for errors on categorical syllogisms. However, although it is possible to show that people make such errors in simple inference tasks, the evidence for them is far less clear when actual syllogisms are administered. Part of the problem is due to the lack of clear predictions for the solutions that would be expected when using modified quantifiers, assuming that correct inferences are made from them. This paper (...) presents the expected solutions for Gricean, reversible, and reversible Gricean interpretations, and evaluates these using three datasets (two currently available, and one new). The evidence supported the adoption of reversible and reversible Gricean interpretations, but not Gricean interpretations on their own. These results suggest that the categorical syllogism task tends to induce different quantifier interpretations from those identified in simple inference tasks. (shrink)

In the semantics of natural language, quantification may have received more attention than any other subject, and one of the main topics in psychological studies on deductive reasoning is syllogistic inference, which is just a restricted form of reasoning with quantifiers. But thus far the semantical and psychological enterprises have remained disconnected. This paper aims to show how our understanding of syllogistic reasoning may benefit from semantical research on quantification. I present a very simple logic that pivots on the monotonicity (...) properties of quantified statements - properties that are known to be crucial not only to quantification but to a much wider range of semantical phenomena. This logic is shown to account for the experimental evidence available in the literature as well as for the data from a new experiment with cardinal quantifiers ("at least n" and "at most n"), which cannot be explained by any other theory of syllogistic reasoning. (shrink)