Acquiring Number Word Semantics: A Syntactic Bootstrapping Approach

描述（由申请人提供）：本项目关注儿童如何学习单词的含义，重点关注数字单词的习得（例如，“二”、“三”）。数词对单词学习者来说是一个特殊的挑战，原因有二。首先，作为指代集合属性的词，它们本质上是抽象的。其次，它们在输入中的分布与其他词汇项重叠，如形容词（如“little”）和量词（如“some”），如“two/little/some children”所示。考虑到这种重叠，人们可能会想知道孩子们是如何学会给这些单词分配正确的意思的。这个项目调查了孩子们是否可以使用语言语境的范围，在这些语境中，数字词、形容词和量词可以（或不可以）对它们的含义进行推断（例如，“zav of the horses”一定是关于马的数量，而“very zav horses”则不是）。由于数字词在各种语言中都是通用的，这项工作解决了语言习得的基本问题。本研究的具体目标是(a)确定是否存在一组唯一识别数字单词的语言语境，以及(b)儿童是否对这些语境足够敏感，从而在单词学习中使用它们。为了解决(a)，将进行广泛的语料库分析，以确定一组精心挑选的语言上下文（例如，在分词（“Y的X”）中出现的频率，在“the”或形容词之后出现的频率，由副词修饰的频率，如“exactly”和“Very1”等），以及数词、形容词和量词出现的相对频率。为了解决(b)，将运行一组使用多式联运优先寻找范式的三个单词学习实验。在每个实验中，将使用一个新单词（“zav”）来描述一组对象，其中基数性与对象级别的颜色或大小属性相比较。目的是确定新单词出现的语言语境是否会引导儿童赋予它数字词的含义（例如，“two”）或形容词的含义（例如，“red”，“big”）。参与者为2.5岁、3.5-4岁和大学生。公共卫生相关性：这项工作将句法引导的讨论从名词和动词学习扩展到名词短语中的单词。它有可能让我们更好地理解儿童是如何学习数字单词的含义的，为我们提供一个更完整的单词学习过程的图片，并阐明语言如何作为进入概念系统的窗口。这个项目的核心是跨学科的，对研究数字单词学习的认知心理学家和对数字单词如何被表示和与其他词汇区分感兴趣的语言学家都有影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project addresses how children learn the meaning of words, by focusing on the acquisition of number words (e.g., 'two', 'three'). Number words pose a special challenge for word learners for two reasons. First, as words that refer to properties of sets, they are inherently abstract. Second, their distribution in the input overlaps with other lexical items, such as adjectives (e.g., 'little') and quantifiers (e.g., 'some'), as illustrated in 'two/little/some children'. Given this overlap, one might wonder how children learn to assign the correct meaning to these words. This project investigates the possibility that children could use the range of linguistic contexts in which number words, adjectives, and quantifiers can (and cannot) appear to draw inferences about their meanings (e.g., 'zav of the horses' must be about a quantity of horses, while 'very zav horses' cannot be). Because number words are universal across languages, this work addresses fundamental questions for language acquisition in general. The specific goals of this research are (a) to determine whether there is a set of linguistic contexts that uniquely identifies number words, and (b) whether children are sensitive enough to these contexts to use them in word learning. To address (a), an extensive corpus analysis will be conducted to determine the frequency of a set of carefully-selected of linguistic contexts (e.g., appearance in a partitive ('X of the Y'), appearance fter 'the' or adjectives, modification by adverbs such as 'exactly' and Very1, etc.) and the relative frequency with which number words, adjectives, and quantifiers appear in them. To address (b), a set of three word learning experiments using the intermodal preferential looking paradigm will be run. In each experiment, a novel word ('zav') will be used to describe a set of objects in which cardinality is pitted against the object-level property of color or size. The aim is to determine whether the linguistic context in which the novel word appears guides children to assign it either a number word meaning (e.g., 'two') or an adjective meaning (e.g., 'red', 'big'). The participants will be 2.5-year-olds, 3.5-4-year-olds, and undergraduates. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This work extends discussions of syntactic bootstrapping from noun and verb learning to words in the noun phrase. It has the potential to offer us a better understanding of how children learn about the meaning of number words, provide us with a more complete picture of the word learning process, and shed light on how language acts as a window into the conceptual system. This project is interdisciplinary at its core, and has implications for both cognitive psychologists working on number word learning and linguists interested in how number words are represented and are distinguished from these other lexical items.