Pragmatic inference, not semantic competence, guides 3-year-olds' interpretation of unknown number words.

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 1066-1075 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neon Brooks ◽  
Jennifer Audet ◽  
David Barner
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Competence ◽  
Number Words ◽  
Unknown Number ◽  
Pragmatic Inference

scholarly journals Do children derive exact meanings pragmatically? Evidence from a dual morphology language

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franc Marušič ◽  
Rok Žaucer ◽  
Amanda Saksida ◽  
Jess Sullivan ◽  
Dimitrios Skordos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Morphological Markers ◽  
Number Words ◽  
Pragmatic Enrichment ◽  
Singular Form ◽  
Pragmatic Inference ◽  
Singular Noun ◽  
English Speaking

Number words allow us to describe exact quantities like sixty-three and (exactly) one. How do we derive exact interpretations? By some views, these words are lexically exact, and are therefore unlike other grammatical forms in language. Other theories, however, argue that numbers are not special and that their exact interpretation arises from pragmatic enrichment, rather than lexically. For example, the word one may gain its exact interpretation because the presence of the immediate successor two licenses the pragmatic inference that one implies “one, and not two”. To investigate the possible role of pragmatic enrichment in the development of exact representations, we looked outside the test case of number to grammatical morphological markers of quantity. In particular, we asked whether children can derive an exact interpretation of singular noun phrases (e.g., “a button”) when their language features an immediate “successor” that encodes sets of two. To do this, we used a series of tasks to compare English speaking children who have only singular and plural morphology to Slovenian-speaking children who have singular and plural forms, but also dual morphology, that is used when describing sets of two. Replicating previous work, we found that English-speaking preschoolers failed to enrich their interpretation of the singular and did not treat it as exact. New to the present study, we found that 4- and 5-year-old Slovenian-speakers who comprehended the dual treated the singular form as exact, while younger Slovenian children who were still learning the dual did not, providing evidence that young children may derive exact meanings pragmatically.

scholarly journals Contrast and Entailment: Abstract logical relations constrain how 2- and 3-year-old children interpret unknown numbers

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman Feiman ◽  
Joshua K. Hartshorne ◽  
David Barner
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Hypothesis ◽  
Existential Meaning ◽  
Number Words ◽  
Unknown Number ◽  
Entailment Relations

Do children understand how different numbers are related before they associate them with specific cardinalities? We explored how children rely on two abstract relations – contrast and entailment – to reason about the meanings of ‘unknown’ number words. Previous studies argue that, because children give variable amounts when asked to give an unknown number, all unknown numbers begin with an existential meaning akin to some. In Experiment 1, we tested an alternative hypothesis, that because numbers belong to a scale of contrasting alternatives, children assign them a meaning distinct from some. In the “Don’t Give-a-Number task”, children were shown three kinds of fruit (apples, bananas, strawberries), and asked to not give either some or a number of one kind (e.g. Give everything, but not [some/five] bananas). While children tended to give zero bananas when asked to not give some, they gave positive amounts when asked to not give numbers. This suggests that contrast – plus knowledge of a number’s membership in a count list – enables children to differentiate the meanings of unknown number words from the meaning of some. Experiment 2 tested whether children’s interpretation of unknown numbers is further constrained by understanding numerical entailment relations – that if someone, e.g. has three, they thereby also have two, but if they do not have three, they also do not have four. On critical trials, children saw two characters with different quantities of fish, two apart (e.g. 2 vs. 4), and were asked about the number in-between – who either has or doesn’t have, e.g. three. Children picked the larger quantity for the affirmative, and the smaller for the negative prompts even when all the numbers were unknown, suggesting that they understood that, whatever three means, a larger quantity is more likely to contain that many, and a smaller quantity is more likely not to. We conclude by discussing how contrast and entailment could help children scaffold their exact meanings of unknown number words.

The Flip Side of the Auditory Spatial Selection Benefit

2015 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iring Koch ◽  
Vera Lawo
Keyword(s):  
Task Switching ◽  
Auditory Task ◽  
Numerical Magnitude ◽  
Attention Shifting ◽  
Gender Selection ◽  
Spatial Selection ◽  
Number Words ◽  
Switch Costs ◽  
Mixing Costs ◽  
Experimental Group

In cued auditory task switching, one of two dichotically presented number words, spoken by a female and a male, had to be judged according to its numerical magnitude. One experimental group selected targets by speaker gender and another group by ear of presentation. In mixed-task blocks, the target-defining feature (male/female vs. left/right) was cued prior to each trial, but in pure blocks it remained constant. Compared to selection by gender, selection by ear led to better performance in pure blocks than in mixed blocks, resulting in larger “global” mixing costs for ear-based selection. Selection by ear also led to larger “local” switch costs in mixed blocks, but this finding was partially mediated by differential cue-repetition benefits. Together, the data suggest that requirements of attention shifting diminish the auditory spatial selection benefit.

How many and how often: Children's use of number words and frequency estimations in forensic interviews

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay C. Malloy ◽  
Sonja Pauline Brubacher ◽  
Michael E. Lamb ◽  
Polly Benton
Keyword(s):  
Forensic Interviews ◽  
Number Words

Language, procedures, and the non-perceptual origin of natural number concepts

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Barner
Keyword(s):  
General Framework ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Number Words ◽  
Linguistic Markers ◽  
Logical Foundations ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Perceptual Representations ◽  
Positive Integers ◽  
Perceptual Systems

Perceptual representations – e.g., of objects or approximate magnitudes –are often invoked as building blocks that children combine with linguisticsymbols when they acquire the positive integers. Systems of numericalperception are either assumed to contain the logical foundations ofarithmetic innately, or to supply the basis for their induction. Here Ipropose an alternative to this general framework, and argue that theintegers are not learned from perceptual systems, but instead arise toexplain perception as part of language acquisition. Drawing oncross-linguistic data and developmental data, I show that small numbers(1-4) and large numbers (~5+) arise both historically and in individualchildren via entirely distinct mechanisms, constituting independentlearning problems, neither of which begins with perceptual building blocks.Specifically, I propose that children begin by learning small numbers(i.e., *one, two, three*) using the same logical resources that supportother linguistic markers of number (e.g., singular, plural). Several yearslater, children discover the logic of counting by inferring the logicalrelations between larger number words from their roles in blind countingprocedures, and only incidentally associate number words with perception ofapproximate magnitudes, in an *ad hoc* and highly malleable fashion.Counting provides a form of explanation for perception but is not causallyderived from perceptual systems.

Numerical symbols as explanations of human perceptual experience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Barner
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Number Words ◽  
The World ◽  
Symbolic Systems ◽  
Perceptual Systems

Why did humans develop precise systems for measuring experience, like numbers, clocks, andcalendars? I argue that precise representational systems were constructed by earlier generationsof humans because they recognized that their noisy perceptual systems were not capturingdistinctions that existed in the world. Abstract symbolic systems did not arise from perceptualrepresentations, but instead were constructed to describe and explain perceptual experience. Byanalogy, I argue that when children learn number words, they do not rely on noisy perceptualsystems, but instead acquire these words as units in a broader system of procedures, whosemeanings are ultimately defined by logical relations to one another, not perception.

Proper names

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eros Corazza
Keyword(s):  
Proper Names ◽  
Semantic Competence ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Conversational Implicatures

In English, Italian, French, and Spanish (to name only a few languages), people’s names tend to suggest the referent’s gender. Thus “Paul,” “Paolo,” “Pierre,” and “Jesús” strongly suggest that their referent is male, while “Ortensia,” “Mary,” “Paola,” “Pauline,” and “Lizbeth” suggest that the referent is a female. To borrow the terminology introduced by Putnam, we can characterize the additional information conveyed by a name as stereotypical information. It doesn’t affect someone’s linguistic and semantic competence: one is not linguistically incompetent if one doesn’t know that “Sue” is used to refer to females. The argument here is that the stereotypical information conveyed by a name can be characterized along the lines of Grice’s treatment of generalized conversational implicatures and that anaphoric resolution exploits it.

scholarly journals Understanding the mapping between numerical approximation and number words: evidence from Williams syndrome and typical development

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 905-919 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa E. Libertus ◽  
Lisa Feigenson ◽  
Justin Halberda ◽  
Barbara Landau
Keyword(s):  
Williams Syndrome ◽  
Numerical Approximation ◽  
Typical Development ◽  
Number Words
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