Individuals and non-individuals in cognition and semantics: The mass/count distinction and quantity representation
Individuals and non-individuals in cognition and semantics: The mass/count distinction and quantity representation
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认知和语义中的个体和非个体：质量/计数区别和数量表示
DOI：
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发表时间：
2018
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
J. Lidz
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Darko Odic;P. Pietroski;Tim Hunter;Justin Halberda;J. Lidz
语言是人类认知的一个组成部分。对于认知科学家和语言学家来说，一个重要的目标是解释单词和句子的意义是如何与更一般的、非语言的、用于评估句子真假的认知系统联系起来的。在本文中，我们探讨了这样一种关系：指个体和非个体的语言结构（具体来说，指可数名词，如“奶牛”和质量名词，如“牛肉”）与量化和比较数量和面积的非语言认知系统之间的接口。虽然人类在不同语境下使用语言的方式可能是灵活的，但在两个使用标准心理物理测试的实验中，我们发现参与者通过数字表征来评价可数名词句子，并通过非数字表征来评价相应的质量名词句子；在评价这些术语时，符合语言和认知之间的原则接口。即使视觉显示在不同条件下保持不变，只有名词类型不同，情况也是如此，进一步表明在如何表示面积和数量以及计数和质量名词方面存在重要差异。这些发现涉及到语义-认知界面、质量-计数区分和数量表征的心理物理学等问题。
Language is a sub-component of human cognition. One important, though often unattained goal for both cognitive scientists and linguists is to explicate how the meanings of words and sentences relate to the more general, non-linguistic, cognitive systems that are used to evaluate whether sentences are true or false. In the present paper, we explore one such relationship: an interface between the linguistic structures referring to individuals and non-individuals (specifically, count-nouns like ‘cows’ and mass-nouns like ‘beef’) and the non-linguistic cognitive systems that quantify and compare number and area. While humans may be flexible in how they use language across contexts, in two experiments using standard psychophysical testing we find that participants evaluate a count-noun sentence via numerical representations and evaluate a corresponding mass-noun sentence via non-numerical representations; consistent with a principled interface between language and cognition for evaluating these terms. This was the case even when the visual display was held constant across conditions and only the noun type was varied, further suggesting an important difference in how area and number, as well as count and mass nouns, are represented. These findings speak to issues concerning the semantics-cognition interface, the mass-count distinction, and the psychophysics of quantity representation.