scholarly journals Syntactic Cues Help Disambiguate Objects Referred to With Count Nouns: Illustration With Malay Children

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming Yean Sia ◽  
Julien Mayor
Keyword(s):  
Count Nouns ◽  
Syntactic Cues

A little goes a long way: evidence for a perceptual basis of learning for the noun categories COUNT and Mass

1991 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Maggie Perrin McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Perceptual Information ◽  
Count Noun ◽  
Mass Noun ◽  
Mass Nouns ◽  
Count Nouns ◽  
Distinct Individual ◽  
Syntactic Cues

ABSTRACTVarious theories of learning for the categories COUNT NOUN and MASS NOUN are compared. It is argued that children assign words to these categories on the basis of intuitions arising from perception that are relevant to Macnamara's (1986) semantic definitions of the categories. These definitions rest on the centrality of identity in the meaning of nouns and the centrality of individuation in the meaning of count nouns but not mass nouns. Empirical evidence is presented that supports the hypothesis that young children classify words as count nouns or mass nouns on the basis of perceptual information about the extension of the words, that is, whether or not the extension consists exclusively of enduring individuals whose discreteness from one another is perceptually salient (count nouns) or not (mass nouns). In an experiment, 48 children with a mean age of 2;10 (S.D. = 0;5) were taught a word for a kind of object (i.e. a perceptually distinct individual) or for a kind of substance (i.e. a collection of small granules). For some children the word was syntactically COUNT and for others it was syntactically MASS. Half of the children received incongruous perceptual and syntactic cues. For most of these children, classification of the word was guided by the object- or substance-like appearance of the stimulus despite the presence of incongruent syntactic cues. Syntactic cues influenced classification of the word for a minority of subjects, most of whom were among the oldest in the sample. It is concluded that perceptual information is critical in early decisions about membership in the categories COUNT NOUN and MASS NOUN.

Syntax–semantics mappings as a source of difficulty in Japanese speakers’ acquisition of the mass–count distinction in English

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 464-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHUNJI INAGAKI
Keyword(s):  
English Learners ◽  
Mass Nouns ◽  
Count Nouns ◽  
Japanese Speakers ◽  
Japanese Learners ◽  
Syntactic Cues

This paper investigates Japanese speakers’ acquisition of the mass–count distinction in English. Learners judge whether two large objects/portions of stuff are more than six tiny objects/portions of stuff or vice versa. Results show that learners correctly base judgments on number for count nouns (judging that six small cups are more cups than two large cups) and object-mass nouns (e.g., furniture) and on volume for substance-mass nouns (judging that two large portions of mustard are more mustard than six tiny portions of it). For nouns that can be either mass or count in English (e.g., string(s)) or cross-linguistically (e.g., “spinach”), learners fail to shift judgments according to the mass–count syntax in which the words appear. Results suggest that Japanese learners have difficulty using mass–count syntactic cues to disambiguate the meanings and thus fail to acquire the mass–count distinction in English.

Young children's use of syntactic cues to learn proper names and count nouns.

2001 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Geoffrey Hall ◽  
Sharon C. Lee ◽  
Julie Bélanger
Keyword(s):  
Proper Names ◽  
Count Nouns ◽  
Syntactic Cues

Mass/count

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie Gillon ◽  
Nicole Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Count Nouns ◽  
Measure Phrase ◽  
Plural Marking

This chapter investigates the mass/count distinction in Michif. In many languages, mass and count nouns are distinguished via the (in)ability to occur with plural marking, the (in)ability to occur with numerals without a measure phrase, and the (in)ability to occur with certain quantifiers (Jespersen 1909; Chierchia 1998). However, these diagnostics do not apply to all languages. For example, in Inuttut (Labrador Inuktitut), none of those diagnostics distinguishes between mass and count nouns, but there are other diagnostics that do (Gillon 2012). This chapter shows that Michif displays a split: in one part of the grammar, the three diagnostics distinguish between mass and count nouns, and in another part, the diagnostics do not. This shows that Michif disambiguates between French-derived vocabulary and Algonquian-derived vocabulary, which complicates the notion that the Michif DP is French (Bakker 1997).

Plural marking in the second language: Atomicity, definiteness, and transfer

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Sea Hee Choi ◽  
Tania Ionin
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Mass Nouns ◽  
Count Nouns ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Plural Marking

Abstract This paper examines whether second language (L2)-English learners whose native languages (L1; Korean and Mandarin) lack obligatory plural marking transfer the properties of plural marking from their L1s, and whether transfer is manifested both offline (in a grammaticality judgment task) and online (in a self-paced reading task). The online task tests the predictions of the morphological congruency hypothesis (Jiang 2007), according to which L2 learners have particular difficulty automatically activating the meaning of L2 morphemes that are incongruent with their L1. Experiment 1 tests L2 learners’ sensitivity to errors of –s oversuppliance with mass nouns, while Experiment 2 tests their sensitivity to errors of –s omission with count nouns. The findings show that (a) L2 learners detect errors with nonatomic mass nouns (sunlights) but not atomic ones (furnitures), both offline and online; and (b) L1-Korean L2-English learners are more successful than L1-Mandarin L2-English learners in detecting missing –s with definite plurals (these boat), while the two groups behave similarly with indefinite plurals (many boat). Given that definite plurals require plural marking in Korean but not in Mandarin, the second finding is consistent with L1-transfer. Overall, the findings show that learners are able to overcome morphological incongruency and acquire novel uses of L2 morphemes.

scholarly journals Regular and compositional aspects of NPN constructions

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
TORODD KINN
Keyword(s):  
Basic Structure ◽  
Present Approach ◽  
Considerable Degree ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
The Core ◽  
Count Nouns ◽  
Widespread View

The article proposes a novel analysis of NPN constructions, exemplified by English expressions like back to back and year after year. An NPN is typically composed of two identical bare singular count nouns with a preposition between them. Previous research tends to treat NPNs as highly idiosyncratic. While acknowledging some idiosyncrasies, the present contribution shows that NPNs exhibit a considerable degree of regularity and compositionality. A widespread view that bare singulars normally do not function as arguments is shown to rest on weak foundations. As a consequence, the present approach is able to show that NPNs are, at the core, NPs with PP modifiers. Nominal NPNs have this basic structure, while adverbial NPNs involve an extra layer of semantics and are exocentric constructions. A distinction between nominal types and instances is employed to account for the semantics of bare singulars. NPNs exhibit two kinds of emergent meanings, leading to chain NPNs and twin NPNs. The different semantic structures of these NPN subtypes explain why some NPNs can have nominal in addition to adverbial functions. The data comes mostly from Norwegian. Details differ between languages, but central parts of the analyses can be assumed to hold for other languages as well.

Mass Nouns and Count Nouns in German

1969 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Madison S. Beeler
Keyword(s):  
Mass Nouns ◽  
Count Nouns

Innateness, abstract names, and syntactic cues in How Children Learn the Meanings of Words

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 1107-1108
Author(s):  
Heidi Harley ◽  
Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Lexical Acquisition ◽  
Syntactic Cues

Bloom masterfully captures the state-of-the-art in the study of lexical acquisition. He also exposes the extent of our ignorance about the learning of names for non-observables. HCLMW adopts an innatist position without adopting modularity of mind; however, it seems likely that modularity is needed to bridge the gap between object names and the rest of the lexicon.

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