From Number Cognition to Number Grammar

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。在美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）的支持下，凯瑟琳·博克（Kathryn Bock）博士将对自发言语中产生数字一致性的认知过程进行为期三年的心理语言学研究。该项目将调查婴儿早期的数字感知能力是否以及如何在成人语言使用中发挥基本作用。当代关于数字与语言关系的观点强调语言对数字知识的影响。相反，目前的项目强调数字知识对塑造语言的影响。目的是解释说话者如何心照不宣地识别语言数字的感知和概念前体，以及在与说话相关的正常时间压力下如何使用数字信息。这种压力来自于典型的每秒超过两个单词的语速，以及每隔五秒左右就会出现的对数字信息的结构性需求。这项研究将比较数字感知和概念如何影响语言使用的不同说法，特别是这种影响是在选择单词时产生的，还是在创建句子结构时产生的，还是两者兼而有之。研究方法需要实验室任务来测量与动词和主语之间以及代词和先行词之间的数字一致产生相关的准确性、时间、注意点和记忆资源。这项工作结合了人类智能的两个基石，计数能力和沟通能力。这些能力集中体现在数字在人类语言中所起的作用，特别是在语法数字一致性方面。协议远非语法细节，而是复杂思想语言表达背后的有力工具。这项研究旨在探索在进化上原始的数字感觉和语言的明显普遍特征之间先前未被发现的联系。原始的数字感觉存在于人类和许多其他物种中，并且在语言习得开始之前的非常小的婴儿中就可以观察到。这种感觉允许对物体进行即时和精确的个性化，最多可达3个。不管是否巧合，语法数字系统（例如，英语主语和动词之间的数字一致）仅限于三人组。有些语言对一件事、两件事和三件事有系统的、独特的一致标记，但没有一种语言要求对四件事达成一致。围绕这一规律有两个谜团。第一个是为什么存在限制，第二个是为什么数字一致在世界语言中如此普遍。目的是找到这两个问题的答案。这样的答案反过来又有助于理解儿童的特定语言障碍和成人的语言障碍，开发有效的第二语言学习方法，并创建可行的人机交互系统。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Kathryn Bock will conduct three years of psycholinguistic research on the cognitive processes involved in producing number agreement in spontaneous speech. The project will investigate whether and how the number-perception abilities that are present in early infancy serve basic functions in adult language use. Contemporary views of the relationship between number and language emphasize the effect that language has on number knowledge. The current project emphasizes, instead, the effect that number knowledge has on shaping language. The goal is to explain how speakers tacitly identify the perceptual and conceptual precursors of linguistic number and how number information is used under the normal time pressures associated with speaking. The pressures stem from typical speech rates of more than two words per second and from structural demands for number information that occur every five seconds or so in running speech. The research will compare different accounts of how number perception and conception come to influence language use, particularly whether the influence arises during the choice of words, during the creation of sentence structures, or both. The research methods call on laboratory tasks that measure the accuracy, timing, locus of attention, and memory resources associated with the production of number agreement between verbs and their subjects and between pronouns and their antecedents.The work unites two cornerstones of human intelligence, the ability to count and the ability to communicate. These abilities converge in the role that number plays in human language, especially in grammatical number agreement. Far from being a grammatical detail, agreement is a powerful vehicle behind the linguistic expression of complex ideas. The research is designed to explore a previously unidentified link between an evolutionarily primitive number sense and an apparent universal feature of language. The primitive number sense is found in humans and many other species, and is observable in very young infants before the onset of language acquisition. The sense allows immediate and precise individuation of objects up to a numerosity of three. Coincidentally, or not, grammatical number systems (e.g., number agreement between subjects and verbs in English) are limited to threesomes. There are languages with systematic, distinctive agreement markers for one thing, two things, and three things, but none that demand agreement for exactly four things. Two mysteries surround this regularity. The first is why the limitation exists, and the second is why number agreement is so common in the languages of the world. The aim is to find answers to both of these questions. Such answers can serve in turn to support the understanding of specific language disorders in children and language disabilities in adults, the development of effective methods for second-language learning, and the creation of workable systems for human-computer interaction.