Collectivity, Distributivity, and the Interpretation of Plural Numerical Expressions in Child and Adult Language

Abstract

Sentences containing plural numerical expressions (e.g., two boys) can give rise to two interpretations (collective and distributive), arising from the fact that their representation admits of a part-whole structure. We present the results of a series of experiments designed to explore children’s understanding of this distinction and its implications for the acquisition of linguistic expressions with number words. We show that preschoolers access both interpretations, indicating that they have the requisite linguistic and conceptual machinery to generate the corresponding representations. Furthermore, they can shift their interpretation in response to structural and lexical manipulations. However, they are not fully adult-like: unlike adults, they are drawn to the distributive interpretation, and are not yet aware of the lexical semantics of each and together, which should favor one or another interpretation. This research bridges a gap between a well-established body of work in cognitive psychology on the acquisition of number words and more recent work investigating children’s knowledge of the syntactic and semantic properties of sentences featuring numerical expressions.

On the acquisition of distributivity in Yudja

“…The results found for Yudja children were consistent with the results found in previous studies in other languages (BROOKS;BRAINE, 1996, PAGLIARINI et al, 2012SYRETT;MUSSOLINO, 2013) where children favor a distributive interpretation over a collective interpretation in preference tasks, even for sentences without overt markers of distributivity. This was clear in Study 1 where we found a significant age effect.…”

“…Acquisition studies present a different pattern, as distributive interpretations are not necessarily dispreferred for children (cf. PAGLIARINI et al, 2012;SYRETT;MUSSOLINO, 2013).…”

All together now: Disentangling semantics and pragmatics withtogetherin child and adult language

“…In fact, this is precisely what Syrett & Musolino (2013) found: while adults appear to only allow the collective reading for sentences like (2), children allow both the collective and the distributive readings. While this pattern might appear on the surface to indicate that children overgenerate readings for this sentence relative to adults, we argue instead that children are driven by the semantics, but fail to recruit pragmatic information to constrain the readings to the ones intended in a given context.…”

“…To resolve these issues, we begin by turning to previous work reported by Syrett & Musolino (2013). There, participants – both preschoolers and adults – were tested for their understanding of sentences such as the one in (1) and (6a-b) below.…”

“…The collective/distributive distinction has fueled much discussion over the years in the semantics literature (Brisson, 2003; Champollion, 2011; Dowty, 1986; Gillon, 1984, 1987, 1990; Heim, Lasnik, & May, 1991; Lasersohn, 1989, 1990, 1995, 1998; Landman, 1989a, b, 1996; Link, 1983, 1987, 1991; Moltmann, 1997; Peres, 1998; Schwarzschild, 1994, 1996; van den Berg, 1994; van der Does, 1993; Verkuyl & van der Does, 1991; Winter, 2002), and has become a recent topic of interest in the field of language acquisition (Brooks & Braine, 1996; Musolino, 2009; Pagliarini, Fiorin, & Dotlačil, 2012; Pérez-Leroux & Roeper, 1999; Syrett & Musolino, 2013). …”