Individuating and comparing objects and events

我们交流对世界和彼此的看法的主要方式是通过语言。然而，语言不仅仅是传递信息的被动工具。相反，我们的句子伴随着我们用来理解世界和彼此的基本概念和范畴的证据。在某种程度上，关于语言的这一事实似乎是显而易见的：争论一方的人可能会选择使用另一方可能不会使用的词语，而关注这些不同的选择可以告诉我们一些关于说话的人的信息。这种对语言和语言使用者的观察在社会语言学等领域得到了研究。然而，我们的语言也揭示了更多关于我们的基本真理，这些真理不那么容易为意识所接受，而且更多地与我们共同经历的元素联系在一起。例如，人们说话就好像有可以数的东西(“四个勺子”)和不能数的物质(例如，“四个泥”是奇怪的)，即使放在不同的堆里。因此，在更深的层面上研究语言可以揭示基本的思维结构，为认知及其发展理论提供信息，以及在人工智能中的应用。该项目研究了基本范畴对象和事件在概念化方面的相似之处，因为它们被编码在语言中，并被成年人和4岁的儿童理解。语言学和语言哲学之前的研究已经发现，这些范畴在名词性语言和动词性语言中的编码形式上有惊人的相似之处。该项目将这项研究与认知科学中关于物体表征的已知联系起来，并利用这种联系来扩展关于事件表征的已知。具体地说，该项目(I)测试观察到的语言相似性是否与成人和儿童对最小不同的静态和动态场景的概念化的相似性相对应，(Ii)调查对简单动态场景的表征偏差在多大程度上预测了成年人和儿童如何理解涉及“more”等词的量化语言，以及(Iii)通过教授讲英语的成年人和儿童证明但非英语的事件编码模式来探索语言-认知联系的假设普遍性。这个项目的结果将展示形式语义学、语言哲学和认知科学相结合的成果，以阐明语言和非语言感知和认知之间的接口。

The primary mode by which we communicate our ideas about the world and about each other is through language. However, languages aren't merely passive vehicles for the transmission of information. Rather, our sentences carry along with them evidence of the fundamental concepts and categories that we use to understand the world and each other. At one level, this fact about language might seem obvious: a person on one side of an argument might choose to use words that a person on a different side might not, and attending to these different choices tells us something about the people speaking. Such observations about language and language users are studied in fields like sociolinguistics. Yet, our language also reveals more basic truths about us which are not as easily accessible to consciousness, and which are more tied to elements of our common experience. For example, people talk as if there are objects that can be counted ("four spoons") and substances that cannot (e.g., "four muds" is odd), even if arranged in discrete piles. Investigating language at this deeper level can thus reveal basic structures of thought, informing theories of cognition and its development, as well as applications in artificial intelligence.This project studies parallels in the conceptualization of the basic categories 'object' and 'event' as they are encoded in language and understood by both adults and 4 year olds. Previous research in linguistics and the philosophy of language has uncovered striking formal parallels in the encoding of these categories across nominal and verbal language. The project links this research to what is known about object representation in cognitive science, and uses this link to extend what is known about event representation. Specifically, the project (i) tests whether the observed linguistic parallels correspond to parallels in how adults and children conceptualize minimally-different static and dynamic scenes, (ii) investigates the extent to which representational biases for simple dynamic scenes predicts how adults and children understand quantificational language involving words like "more", and (iii) probes the hypothetical universality of the language-cognition linkages by teaching English-speaking adults and children attested, but non-English patterns of event encoding. The results of this project will demonstrate the fruitfulness of connecting formal semantics, philosophy of language, and cognitive science to illuminate the interface between linguistic and non-linguistic perception and cognition.