Understanding the Use of Quantifiers in M andarin (2022)

Abstract: We introduce a corpus of short texts in Mandarin, in which quantified expressions figure prominently. We illustrate the significance of the corpus by examining the hypothesis (known as Huang’s “coolness” hypothesis) that speakers of East Asian Languages tend to speak more briefly but less informatively than, for example, speakers of West-European languages. The corpus results from an elicitation experiment in which participants were asked to describe abstract visual scenes. We compare the resulting corpus, called MQTUNA, with an English corpus that was collected using the same experimental paradigm. The comparison reveals that some, though not all, aspects of quantifier use support the above-mentioned hypothesis. Implications of these findings for the generation of quantified noun phrases are discussed.

## introduction speakers trade-off clarity against brevity @xcite . it is often thought that speakers of east asian languages handle this trade-off differently than those who speak western european languages such as english @xcite . this idea was elaborated in @xcite , when huang borrowed a term from media studies, hypothesizing that mandarin is "cooler" than english in that the intended meaning of mandarin utterances depends more on context than that of their english counterparts; in other words, mandarin speakers make their utterances shorter but less clear than english speakers. this "coolness" hypothesis is often worded imprecisely, conflating (a) matters that are built into the grammar of a language (e.g., whether it permits number to be left unspecified in a given sentence position), and (b) choices that speakers make from among the options that the grammar permits. here we focus on the latter. studies of coolness have often focused on referring expressions (e.g., @xcite ; @xcite ; @xcite ; @xcite ). the present paper focuses on quantification, as in the quantified expressions (qes) "all a are b", "most a are b", and so on. in a nutshell, we want to know whether mandarin speakers use qes less clearly, and more briefly, than english ones. we report on an elicitation experiment, mq-tuna, inspired by the qtuna experiment of @xcite . the experiment asks mandarin speakers to produce sequences of qes to describe abstract visual scenes. sequences of qes that are used to describe visual scenes are called quantified descriptions @xcite . the mqtuna corpus will enable researchers to investigate a wide range of questions about quantification in mandarin. we illustrate this potential by comparing the corpus with the english qtuna corpus from the perspective of coolness and we ask how our findings impact computational models of the production of qds. in sum, our contribution is two-fold: ## qtuna experiment a growing body of empirical work has studied how people understand and produce quantifiers @xcite @xcite @xcite . these studies have focused on a limited number of quantifiers (chiefly "all", "most", "many", and "no"). in natural language generation (nlg), the qtuna corpus was built to study how english speakers use qds to describe a visual scene (figure 1 ). participants were free to (1) describe a visual scene in whatever way they want, (2) use as many sentences as they choose, and (3) use any sentence pattern that they choose. for example, for the scene in figure 1 , a participant could say "half of the objects are blue squares. the other half are red objects. there is only one red circle.". given the domain contains four objects in no more than two shapes, this qd describes the scene completely and correctly. participants were told that their descriptions should allow readers to reconstruct the scene modulo location. each scene contains n objects (nb: n is defined as domain size), which is either a circle or a square and either blue or red. to test how domain size impacts the use of quantifiers, qtuna experimented on 3 sizes, i.e., 4, 9, and 20. analysis of the resulting qtuna corpus revealed that, as the domain size increase, (english) speakers (1) use more vague quantifiers (e.g., most and few); (2) use less complete qds (nb: a qd is complete if the scene described is the only one modulo location that fits the description); (3) use more incorrect qds (nb: a qd is incorrect if it is not true with respect to the scene); and (4) do not use longer qds (measured in terms of the number of qes). ## research questions are the qtuna findings true for mqtuna? we are curious whether the above-mentioned findings about qtuna (see §2) hold true for mqtuna. we expected that domain size affects speakers of different languages in the same way, so these findings should hold for both corpora in the same way. are mandarin qds briefer and less clear than english qds? "coolness" says mandarin speakers speak more briefly and less clearly than english speakers. we check this hypothesis by comparing qds in qtuna and mqtuna. regarding brevity, we are curious about the length of qds. if mandarin qds are briefer than english qds, then we expect qds in mqtuna to contain less qes than those in qtuna. regarding clarity, if mandarin speakers utter qds in a less clear way, we expect to see more vague quantifiers in mqtuna than in qtuna and, more importantly, fewer logically complete qds. ## mqtuna experiment we followed the same methodology as in the qtuna experiment, re-using scenes of the qtuna experiment, inheriting its experimental design, and translating its instructions participants. ## analysis focusing on the research questions of §3, we analyse the mqtuna corpus ( §5.1), and we compare mqtuna with qtuna ( §5.2). we conclude with a few post-hoc observations ( §5.3). ## discussion we have presented and analysed the mqtuna corpus of quantifier use in mandarin. coolness. we assessed the coolness hypothesis by analysing mqtuna and comparing qtuna and mqtuna. as for the brevity of qds, we found both evidence (i.e., mandarin speakers often performed a-drop and expressed plurality implicitly) and counter-evidence (i.e., mandarin speakers uttered longer qds than english speakers). as for the clarity of qds, we confirmed that the mandarin corpus (mqtuna) contains significantly more incomplete qds and vague quantifiers than its english counterpart (qtuna). generating qds. @xcite proposed algorithms for generating qds (qdg algorithms). let us list issues to be heeded when building qdg algorithms for mandarin. first, plurality plays an important role in the qdg algorithms of @xcite . if these algorithms are to be adapted to mandarin, then they should first "decide" whether to realise the plurality of a qe explicitly, since this will influence how much information the qd should express in other ways. second, modelling the meaning of vague quantifiers is vital for generating humanlike qds. since mandarin speakers use vague quantifiers more frequently than english speakers, mandarin qdg needs to handle a larger number of vague quantifiers and capture nuances between them, which is a difficult and data-intensive challenge. lastly, qd surface realisation in mandarin needs to handle more syntactic variations than current qdg algorithms are capable of, because (1) a qe can be realised in multiple possible forms (see