Individuals and kinds in language and cognitiion

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A primary goal of cognitive science is to characterize the concepts in terms of which we reason and talk about things in the world. This goal presents a major challenge, at least in part because of the enormous flexibility of our conceptual capacities. This flexibility is notably evident in the fact that we may construe any physical object (e.g., a dog) either as an instance of a kind (e.g., dog) or as a unique individual (e.g., Fido). Human languages reflect this distinction, having some expressions that may be used to designate objects as kind members (e.g., count nouns, CNs, like "dog") and others that may be used to label them as specific individuals (e.g., proper names, PNs, like "Fido"). Kind concepts (and CNs) play a central role in human cognition (and language), because they support our ability to draw powerful inferences about properties that an object shares with any other member of the kind. Individual concepts (and PNs) are also foundational to human thinking (and speaking), because they underlie our capacity to conceive of an object as a unique entity, distinct from all other instances of the kind. Although the notions of kind and individual are both essential to how we think and talk about objects, little work has sought to understand their origin, nature, and inter-relations. The proposed research aims to achieve this understanding, by exploring (1) the learning of PNs and CNs in infancy and early childhood, and (2) the corresponding development of concepts of individuals and kinds. Four sets of experiments are proposed. The first two sets address a deep mystery in the study of language acquisition: When and how do infants learn the linguistic properties of words from the lexical categories, PN and CN? The third set investigates children's early capacity to reason flexibly about physical objects either as individuals or as instances of kinds. The fourth set aims to specify the relation between concepts of individuals and concepts of kinds for young children. Taken together, the planned experiments will play an important role in advancing our understanding of two types of concepts (kind and individual) that are foundational in language and cognition.