A Developmental Analysis of Generic Nouns in Southern Peruvian Quechua

Abstract

Generic noun phrases (e.g., "Cats like to drink milk") are a primary means by which adults express generalizations to children, yet they pose a challenging induction puzzle for learners. Although prior research has established that English speakers understand and produce generic noun phrases by preschool age, little is known regarding the cross-cultural generality of generic acquisition. Southern Peruvian Quechua provides a valuable comparison because, unlike English, it is a highly inflected language in which generics are marked by the absence rather than the presence of any linguistic markers. Moreover, Quechua is spoken in a cultural context that differs markedly from the highly educated, middle-class contexts within which earlier research on generics was conducted. We presented participants from 5 age groups (3-6, 7-9, 10-12, 14-35, and 36-90 years of age) with two tasks that examined the ability to distinguish generic from nongeneric utterances. In Study 1, even the youngest children understood generics as applying broadly to a category (like "all") and distinct from indefinite reference ("some"). However, there was a developmental lag before children understood that generics, unlike "all", can include exceptions. Study 2 revealed that generic interpretations are more frequent for utterances that (a) lack specifying markers and (b) are animate. Altogether, generic interpretations are found among the youngest participants, and may be a default mode of quantification. These data demonstrate the cross-cultural importance of generic information in linguistic expression. A developmental analysis of generic nouns in Southern Peruvian QuechuaGeneric noun phrases (e.g., "Dogs like to chew bones") are an important means of expressing generalizations to children. Generic noun phrases refer to kinds as opposed to individuals . Much of our world knowledge concerns kinds, yet kinds are abstractions (Prasada, 2000). Although one can view instances of a kind (e.g., Lassie, Rover, Rin-tin-tin), one can never view the kind fully or directly (e.g., dogs as a class). For this reason, generic language is a particularly crucial source of information to children regarding generic knowledge.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Bruce Mannheim, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 101 West Hall, Ann Arbor MI 48109-1107, mannheim@umich.edu.. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptLang Learn Dev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 July 19. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptPrior research on children learning English has found that generics are common in childdirected speech (Gelman, Coley, Rosengren, Hartman, & Pappas, 1998), produced from an early age (Gelman, Goetz, Sarnecka, & Flukes, 2008), and understood appropriately by age 3 or 4 years (Chambers, Graham, & Turner, 2008;Cimpian & Markman, 2008;Gelman & Raman, 2003). Moreover, 4-year-old English-speaking children distinguish generics from the quantifiers "all" and "some" (Hollander, Gelman...

Acquisition of generic noun phrases in Chinese: learning about lions without an ‘-s’

“…Because we wanted to be able to compare across languages, many of the questions were derived from Smith (1980) and used in prior studies conducted in English (Hollander, Gelman, & Star, 2002) and Quechua (Mannheim, Gelman, Escalante, Huayhua, & Puma, in press), with minor changes made to adapt to Chinese cultural and social issues. For example, ‘Do people have blonde hair’ was changed to ‘Do people wear glasses,’ because Chinese people generally do not have blonde hair, whereas some, but not all, Chinese people wear glasses.…”

Children's interpretations of general quantifiers, specific quantifiers and generics

“…or "Do all dogs have brown spots? ", in English (Hollander et al, 2002), Mandarin (Tardif et al, 2012), or Quechua (Mannheim et al, 2011). In these studies, generics show adult-like patterns of interpretation from the earliest age, whereas quantifiers undergo developmental change, initially being interpreted similarly to generics.…”

Individual Differences in Children's and Parents' Generic Language

“…To date, little work has examined the frequency of generic production across speakers. Generics are universally expressed across the world's languages (Carlson & Pelletier, 1995;Mannheim, Gelman, Escalante, Huayhua, & Puma, 2011;Tardif, Gelman, Fu, & Zhu, 2012) and are relatively frequent, particularly within pedagogical contexts (Gelman, Ware, Manczak, & Graham, 2013). For example, nearly all parents in a middle-class U.S. sample produced at least one generic within a brief (10-15 min) bookreading session (Gelman, Coley, Rosengren, Hartman, & Pappas, 1998).…”