Journal ArticleDOI
Nouns and Countability
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In this article, a noun's countability preference can be computed by checking its potential for occurrence in a definitive set of countability environments, i.e., whether a noun can be used both countably and uncountably in different NP environments.Abstract:
The customary disjunctive marking of lexical entries for English nouns as [+ countable] does not match the fact that the majority can be used both countably and uncountably in different NP environments: this binary opposition is characteristic not of the nouns, but of the NP's which they head. Nevertheless, nouns do have countability preferences; some enter countable environments more readily than others. And not all nouns occur in all kinds of countability environments. A noun's countability preference can be computed by checking its potential for occurrence in a definitive set of countability environments. In the dialect examined here, wellformedness conditions on NP must consider eight levels of countability among English nouns-not, as custom has it, only two.*read more
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Book ChapterDOI
Individuation, relativity and early word learning
Dedre Gentner,Lera Boroditsky +1 more
Abstract: Which words do children learn earliest, and why? These questions bear on how humans organize the world into semantic concepts, and how children acquire this parsing . A useful perspective is to think of how bits of experience are conflated into the same concept . One possibility is that children are born with the set of conceptual conflations that figures in human language . But assuming (as we will) that most semantic concepts are learned, not innate, there remain two possibilities . First, aspects of perceptual experience could form inevitable conflations that are conceptualized and lexicalized as unified concepts. In this case, we would have cognitive dominance : concepts arise from the cognitive-perceptual sphere and are simply named by language. A second possibility is linguistic dominance : the world presents perceptual bits whose clumping is not pre-ordained, and language has a say in how the bits get conflated into concepts . We propose that both cognitive and linguistic dominance apply, but to different degrees for different kinds of words (Gentner 1981, 1982). Some bits of experience naturally form themselves into inevitable (preindividuated) concepts, while other bits are able to enter into several different possible combinations.
Journal ArticleDOI
A Cross-Linguistic Study of Early Word Meaning: Universal Ontology and Linguistic Influence.
Mutsumi Imai,Dedre Gentner +1 more
TL;DR: It is speculated that children universally make a distinction between individuals and non-individuals in word learning but that the nature of the categories and the boundary between them is influenced by language.
Journal ArticleDOI
Quantity judgments and individuation: evidence that mass nouns count.
David Barner,Jesses Snedeker +1 more
TL;DR: It is suggested that children learning language parse words that refer to individuals as count nouns unless given morpho-syntactic and referential evidence to the contrary are acquired, in which case object-mass nouns are acquired.
Journal ArticleDOI
Detecting errors in English article usage by non-native speakers
TL;DR: A maximum entropy classifier was trained to select among a/an, the, or zero article for noun phrases (NPs), based on a set of features extracted from the local context of each, and used to detect article errors in TOEFL essays of native speakers of Chinese, Japanese, and Russian.
Journal ArticleDOI
The syntax of non-inflectional plural marking
TL;DR: This paper examines the formal properties of non-inflectional plural marking on the basis of a detailed case study of Halkomelem Salish and argues that its distributional properties derive from its syntax: it is a modifier adjoined to category-neutral $\sqrt{}$ roots.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
Ann S. Ferebee,Noam Chomsky +1 more
TL;DR: Methodological preliminaries of generative grammars as theories of linguistic competence; theory of performance; organization of a generative grammar; justification of grammar; descriptive and explanatory theories; evaluation procedures; linguistic theory and language learning.
Book
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
TL;DR: Generative grammars as theories of linguistic competence as discussed by the authors have been used as a theory of performance for language learning. But they have not yet been applied to the problem of language modeling.
Book
Meaning and the structure of language
TL;DR: For instance, the non-linguist who has conscientiously tried to keep abreast of developments in linguistic theory may well be ready to give up. as mentioned in this paper argues that transformational grammarians may seem to have developed increasingly narrow interests and, moreover, to have become embroiled in the muddy business of securing their own positions, digging themselves in on a narrow front, that whether they are involved in civil war or are continuing to extend the frontiers of linguistic knowledge is often very unclear-even to themselves.
Book
The linguistic description of opaque contexts
TL;DR: This paper aims to clarify the role of language in the development of modern literature and aims to provide a history of literature and language pedagogical practices in the post-modern era.
Journal ArticleDOI
Opacity, coreference, and pronouns
TL;DR: The problem discussed in this article is to find a basis for a uniform treatment of the relation between pronouns and their antecedents, taking into account both linguists' and philosophers' approaches.