Abstract
We find that children compute distributive inferences, and thus that they are capable pragmatic reasoners when alternatives can be derived without lexical substitution. This provides further evidence that they are not limited by other factors like working memory or pragmatic tolerance. In addition, we find evidence that children consistently computed weak distributive inferences. In the spirit of Fox’s (2007) grammatical account, such inferences require double application of Exh, one scoping above the universal quantifier and another below. Thus, not only do children compute implicatures, but they appear to adopt the more complex parse—embedding one operator inside another—rather than relying on the simpler, global option that generates a strong distributive inference.