Doctoral Dissertation Research: The mental representation and acquisition of the universal quantifiers

博士论文研究：全称量词的心理表征与习得

• 批准号: 2017525
• 负责人: Jeffrey Lidz
• 金额: $ 1.5万
• 依托单位: University of Maryland, College Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-08-01 至 2022-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2017525&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; mental; representation

A word like “cat” calls to mind different associations for different individuals (e.g., allergic reactions versus comforting companion). But at the same time, whatever meaning English speakers have paired with the word “cat” must be at least similar enough to enable successful communication. This suggests some level of invariance in meaning, but leaves open the level of detail at which our understanding of the word is shared. If speakers do share fine-grained details about a word’s meaning, the question of how they acquired those details arises. No two children have the exact same experience in the course of language learning, so how would they come to have a common understanding of a word? This project explores both questions – what aspect of word meaning is shared across speakers and how is this meaning acquired? – for the quantificational words “each” and “every”. Gaining a better understanding of how speakers represent and acquire these words will improve our understanding of the logical primitives of thought and the ways in which children make use of their input when learning a language.The research brings together approaches from various fields. Vision science experiments test participants’ memory for set and individual properties to determine whether the meanings of “each” and “every” implicate representations of sets. A linguistic corpus analysis identifies the data present in speech to children. Techniques from developmental psychology are used to test whether children in fact use these cues in learning the relevant difference between “each” and “every”. The project pursues the hypothesis that while a sentence like “every circle is green” implicates representations of sets (the set of circles), the minimally different “each circle is green” implicates only representations of individuals and their properties. The project also involves conducting outreach about related issues (e.g., the relationship between language and thought more generally) to local families and high school students.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.

像“猫”这样的词会让人想起不同个体的不同联想（例如，过敏反应与安慰伴侣）。但与此同时，无论英语使用者将“猫”这个词与什么意思搭配在一起，至少必须足够相似，才能成功地进行交流。这意味着意义上的某种程度的不变性，但留下了开放的细节水平，我们对这个词的理解是共享的。如果说话者确实分享了关于一个词的意思的细节，那么他们是如何获得这些细节的问题就出现了。没有两个孩子在学习语言的过程中有完全相同的经历，那么他们是如何对一个词有共同的理解的呢？这个项目探讨了两个问题-词汇意义的哪些方面是在说话者之间共享的，以及这种意义是如何获得的？- 对于数量词“每一个”和“每一个”。更好地理解说话者如何表达和习得这些单词将有助于我们理解思维的逻辑原语以及儿童在学习语言时如何利用他们的输入。这项研究汇集了来自各个领域的方法。视觉科学实验测试参与者对集合和个体属性的记忆，以确定“每个”和“每个”的含义是否涉及集合的表示。语言语料库分析确定的数据存在于语音的儿童。发展心理学的技术被用来测试儿童是否真的使用这些线索来学习“每个”和“每个”之间的相关差异。该项目追求的假设是，虽然像“每个圆圈都是绿色”这样的句子暗示了集合（圆圈的集合）的表示，但最小差异“每个圆圈都是绿色”只暗示了个体及其属性的表示。该项目还涉及就相关问题开展外联活动（例如，该奖项反映了NSF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。

项目成果

Genericity Signals the Difference between each and every in Child-Directed Speech

通用性标志着针对儿童的言语之间的差异

• 发表时间: 2020
• 作者: Tyler Knowlton;J. Lidz
• 通讯作者: J. Lidz

Linguistic meanings as cognitive instructions

作为认知指令的语言意义

• DOI: 10.1111/nyas.14618
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
• 影响因子: 5.2
• 作者: Knowlton, Tyler;Hunter, Tim;Odic, Darko;Wellwood, Alexis;Halberda, Justin;Pietroski, Paul;Lidz, Jeffrey
• 通讯作者: Lidz, Jeffrey