Mapping individuation to mass-count syntax in language acquisition

Mapping individuation to mass-count syntax in language acquisition David Barner (barner@fas.harvard.edu) Department of Psychology, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street Cambridge, MA 02138 USA Jesse Snedeker (snedeker@wjh.harvard.edu) Department of Psychology, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street Cambridge, MA 02138 USA Abstract syntax and semantics, as in (1), resulting in a categorical effect of number specification in noun phrases: Various theories propose that count nouns are distinguished from mass nouns by their specification of individuation. We present evidence that, while 3-year-old children acquiring language extend words differentially on the basis of mass- count syntax, they quantify over individuals for both novel mass and count nouns. We suggest that children may begin acquisition with an underspecified representation of mass noun semantics, permitting quantification over both individuals and continuous quantities. Also, children may rely on ontologically based biases to guide quantification. a. count noun ÷ individual b. mass noun ÷ non-individual However, such mappings may not provide the full story of what children know about the mass-count distinction. As noted by Barner and Snedeker (2004), mass syntax may not have a strong interpretation like count syntax, but may be semantically unspecified and allow reference to either individuals or non-individuals. In their study, Barner and Snedeker observed that 4-year-old children and adults interpreted many mass and count nouns in the way predicted by the mappings in (1). For example, participants judged three tiny shoes to be more shoes than one giant shoe and one giant portion of butter to be more butter than three tiny portions. However, they also based judgments on number for “object-mass” terms like furniture, jewelry, mail, and clothing, which children begin to produce by around 4 years of age. In each case, participants judged six tiny objects to be more than two giant ones. Thus, count syntax led to quantification on the basis of number, while mass syntax quantified over both continuous quantities and certain individual objects. 1 As a result, it was concluded that object- mass terms like furniture must allow quantification over individuals due to a lexical specification of number, which is normally found in count syntax. Expressions that house this feature quantify over individuals, while those that do not assume a default interpretation of quantifying over a continuous extent (see Borer, 2004, for a similar proposal). This view is schematized in (2): Introduction In English, the specification of number sends a ripple through the language, determining a word’s status as mass or count, licensing the use of plural morphology, and selecting among measure terms such as many and much. Children begin to show signs of such knowledge early in language acquisition, with plural production and comprehension emerging as early as 2 years of age (Brown, 1973; Cazden, 1968; Ferenz & Prasada, 2002; Gordon, 1988), sensitivity to the mass-count distinction evidenced by around 2;6 years (see Soja, 1992), and the use of measure terms like more and less emerging between 2;6 and 3 years of age (Donaldson & Balfour, 1968; Gathercole, 1985; Palermo, 1973). The mass-count distinction provides a particularly interesting case of number specification, because it entrains important consequences for both the syntax and semantics of noun phrases. For example, count terms like cat can take the plural morpheme (e.g., cats) follow cardinal numbers (e.g., one cat, two cats, three cats), and be modified by quantifiers like these, those, few and many (e.g., many cats). Mass terms, on the other hand, can occur in none of these environments and can be distinguished by their use with terms like much and little (e.g., I don’t eat much porridge). According to most accounts, this distributional difference corresponds to a semantic distinction whereby count nouns quantify over individuals and mass nouns quantify over non-individuals (e.g., Bloom, 1994, 1999; Gordon, 1985; Link, 1998; Quine, 1960; Wisniewski, Casey, & Imai, 1996). For example, Bloom proposed that children might begin acquisition with bidirectional mappings between a. count syntax ’ individual b. mass syntax ÷ no number specification If the dimension of measurement of mass terms is specified in part by lexical semantics as these results suggest, children may need some amount of experience with But not all objects. Terms that can be used as either mass or count (e.g., string/s, chocolate/s, paper/s, stone/s) quantified by number as count nouns and by continuous extent as mass nouns.