Individuating and comparing objects and events

我们交流关于世界和彼此的想法的主要方式是通过语言。然而，语言不仅仅是信息传递的被动载体。相反，我们的句子携带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，这个关于语言的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的人可能不会使用的词语，并且注意这些不同的选择告诉我们说话的人的一些事情。这种关于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，这些真理不容易被意识所理解，它们与我们的共同经历的元素更紧密相连。例如，人们说话时就好像有可以数的物体（“四个勺子”）和不能数的物质（例如，“四个泥”是奇数），即使它们被分散地堆放在一起。因此，在这个更深层次上研究语言可以揭示思维的基本结构，为认知理论及其发展提供信息，以及在人工智能中的应用。这个项目研究了“对象”和“事件”这两个基本类别概念化的相似之处，因为它们被编码成语言，并被成年人和4岁的孩子理解。先前在语言学和语言哲学方面的研究发现，在名义语言和口头语言中，这些类别的编码具有惊人的形式相似性。该项目将这项研究与认知科学中已知的客体表征联系起来，并利用这一联系来扩展已知的事件表征。具体而言，该项目(i)检验观察到的语言相似性是否与成人和儿童概念化最小差异的静态和动态场景的相似性相对应；（ii）调查简单动态场景的表征偏差在多大程度上预测成人和儿童如何理解涉及“more”等词的量化语言；（iii）通过教授说英语的成人和儿童已证实但非英语的事件编码模式，探讨语言-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之间的联系，以阐明语言和非语言感知和认知之间的接口。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.