Download or read book Disjunction and Downward Entailment in Child Mandarin written by Esther Su and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis investigates 3-5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's knowledge of two putatively universal semantic properties. The first property is the interpretation of disjunction in human languages. The thesis assesses children's interpretation of the Mandarin disjunction word huozhe 'or'. The purpose is to test the hypothesis that natural language disjunction corresponds to inclusive-or, as in classical logic (Crain, 2008). More specifically, we examine children's knowledge that natural language disjunction (i.e., inclusive-or) generates a 'conjunctive entailment', when it appears in the scope of a number of linguistic expressions, called downward entailing expressions. These constructions are manifested only in complicated structures in which disjunction combines (a) with conditionals (e.g., Mandarin ruguo 'if'), (b) with negative quantificational expression (e.g., Mandarin meiyouren 'nobody'), and (c) with the universal quantifier (e.g., Mandarin mei 'every'). Given the complexity of these linguistic structures, it is unlikely that children have relevant evidence from experience to infer that disjunction in human languages has the truth conditions associated with inclusive-or. This intuition is verified by a search through the transcripts of adult input to Mandarin-speaking children. But it is evident from our experimental findings that Mandarin-speaking children initially assign the inclusive-or interpretation to disjunction. Children's interpretation of disjunction, moreover, reveals their knowledge of the semantic notion of downward entailment. This is the second semantic property that will be investigated. Downward entailment is a 'core' linguistic property, in the sense that downward entailment is a highly abstract notion, and one that unifies several linguistic phenomena that appear, on the surface, to be unrelated. We investigate this 'unification' feature of downward entailment by testing Mandarin-speaking children's knowledge of three linguistic phenomena: (a) the generation of the conjunctive entailment of disjunction, (b) the licensing of negative polarity items, and (c) the suspension of scalar implicatures. Children's successful performance on these phenomena invites the inference that downward entailment is an innate property of human languages. Taken together with previous studies, the present experimental investigations show that the inclusive-or interpretation of disjunction and the semantic notion of downward entailment (a) appear in typologically different languages, and (b) emerge at an early stage of language development. To the extent that these semantic properties emerge in child language without decisive evidence from experience, the present thesis offers insight into the contributions of the human genome to the development of language.

Download or read book Disjunction and Downward Entailment in Child Mandarin written by Yi Su and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This thesis investigates 3-5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's knowledge of two putatively universal semantic properties. The first property is the interpretation of disjunction in human languages... Children's interpretation of disjunction, moreover, reveals their knowledge of the semantic notion of downward entailment. This is the second semantic property that will be investigated... Taken together with previous studies, the present experimental investigations show that the inclusive-'or' interpretation of disjunction and the semantic notion of downward entailment (a) appear in typologically different languages, and (b) emerge at an early stage of language development. To the extent that these semantic properties emerge in child language without decisive evidence from experience, the present thesis offers insight into the contributions of the human genome to the development of language." -- abstract.

Download or read book Plurality and Classifiers across Languages in China written by Dan Xu and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-12-19 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plural marking, numeral classifiers and reduplication constitute the main means of quantification marking in the domain of grammar. The contributions in this book focus on the typological correlation between the three different strategies for quantification, as well as on some general issues. A better understanding of the quantification strategies in the languages of China will enrich our comprehension of human language and thought. The book is expected to have an impact on the study of linguistic typology, language contact, and patterns of the evolution.

Download or read book The Emergence of Meaning written by Stephen Crain and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation into the underlying logic of human languages which looks at how children acquire English and Mandarin.

Download or read book From Grammar to Meaning written by Ivano Caponigro and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-12 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the study of formal semantics and formal pragmatics has grown tremendously, showing that core aspects of language meaning can be explained by a few principles. These principles are grounded in the logic that is behind - and tightly intertwined with - the grammar of human language. In this book, some of the most prominent figures in linguistics, including Noam Chomsky and Barbara H. Partee, offer new insights into the nature of linguistic meaning and pave the way for the further development of formal semantics and formal pragmatics. Each chapter investigates various dimensions in which the logical nature of human language manifests itself within a language and/or across languages. Phenomena like bare plurals, free choice items, scalar implicatures, intervention effects, and logical operators are investigated in depth and at times cross-linguistically and/or experimentally. This volume will be of interest to scholars working within the fields of semantics, pragmatics, language acquisition and psycholinguistics.

Download or read book The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood written by Belma Haznedar and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2016-11-18 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood presents recent research on the nature of language acquisition by typically and atypically developing monolingual and bilingual Turkish-speaking children. The book summarises the most recent research findings on the acquisition of Turkish in childhood, with a focus on (i) the acquisition of phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, (ii) the acquisition of discourse skills, (iii) literacy development and (iv) atypical vs. typical development. The book also provides the reader with a unique perspective on cross-learner comparative research on the acquisition of Turkish, demonstrating how similar issues can be investigated in a range of various acquisition contexts. By grouping together the recent research on the acquisition of Turkish within a single volume, this book provides a unique opportunity for readers to review the general developmental tendencies and the most prominent hypotheses put forward by scholars.

Download or read book Studies in Chinese and Japanese Language Acquisition written by Mineharu Nakayama and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on important methodological and theoretical issues in Chinese and Japanese L1 and L2 acquisition. All contributions discuss experiments using the Truth Value Judgment Task (TVJT), on three syntactic and semantic domains, binding, scope interaction, and wh- and logical expressions. The issues in these grammatical domains are particularly well suited for TVJT studies as the task allows for the testing of particular interpretations among alternative representations and reveals children’s and adults’ understandings of these constructions. The book is a tribute to Stephen Crain’s contribution to the field of Chinese and Japanese language acquisition within the framework of Generative Grammar. It is a state-of-the-art collection that offers a picture of cutting-edge research on children’s and adult’s Chinese and Japanese acquisition. Readers will find the book a rich source of ideas and the starting point of new projects.

Download or read book Semantics Typology Diachrony and Processing written by Klaus Heusinger and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now available in paperback for the first time since its original publication, the material in this book provides a broad, accessible guide to semantic typology, crosslinguistic semantics and diachronic semantics. Coming from a world-leading team of authors, the book also deals with the concept of meaning in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, and the understanding of semantics in computer science. It is packed with highly cited, expert guidance on the key topics in the field, making it a bookshelf essential for linguists, cognitive scientists, philosophers, and computer scientists working on natural language.

Download or read book Handbook of Psycholinguistics written by Matthew Traxler and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2011-04-28 with total page 1197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Psycholinguistics in its fifth decade of existence, the second edition of the Handbook of Psycholinguistics represents a comprehensive survey of psycholinguistic theory, research and methodology, with special emphasis on the very best empirical research conducted in the past decade. Thirty leading experts have been brought together to present the reader with both broad and detailed current issues in Language Production, Comprehension and Development. The handbook is an indispensible single-source guide for professional researchers, graduate students, advanced undergraduates, university and college teachers, and other professionals in the fields of psycholinguistics, language comprehension, reading, neuropsychology of language, linguistics, language development, and computational modeling of language. It will also be a general reference for those in neighboring fields such as cognitive and developmental psychology and education. Provides a complete account of psycholinguistic theory, research, and methodology 30 of the field's foremost experts have contributed to this edition An invaluable single-source reference

Download or read book Mental States written by Andrea C. Schalley and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collecting the work of linguists, psychologists, neuroscientists, archaeologists, artificial intelligence researchers and philosophers this volume presents a richly varied picture of the nature and function of mental states. Starting from questions about the cognitive capacities of the early hominin homo floresiensis, the essays proceed to the role mental representations play in guiding the behaviour of simple organisms and robots, thence to the question of which features of its environment the human brain represents and the extent to which complex cognitive skills such as language acquisition and comprehension are impaired when the brain lacks certain important neural structures. Other papers explore topics ranging from nativism to the presumed constancy of categorization across signed and spoken languages, from the formal representation of metaphor, actions and vague language to philosophical questions about conceptual schemes and colours. Anyone interested in mental states will find much to reward them in this fine volume.

Download or read book The Interpretation of Sentences with Disjunction by Child and Adult Speakers of Mandarin written by Na Gao and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Streams of Generative Language Acquisition Research written by Tania Ionin and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019-04-15 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume contains a representative sample of papers presented at the 7th meeting of the Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition – North America (GALANA-7) conference. The book features three streams of research (Variation in Input, First Language Acquisition, and Second Language Acquisition), each of which investigates the nature of language acquisition from the generative perspective. A unique feature of the GALANA-7 conference, and of this volume, is the bringing together of research on generative language acquisition and research on the role that cross-dialectal input variation plays in acquisition. This volume should be of interest to scholars and students of first language acquisition, second language acquisition, and input variation.

Download or read book Disjunction in Mandarin Chinese written by Yi Chen Lin and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 75 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America Honolulu written by Kamil Ud Deen and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Meeting Handbook written by Linguistic Society of America and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Quantity Implicatures written by Bart Geurts and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-02 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, quantity implicatures - a type of pragmatic inference - have been widely debated in linguistics, philosophy, and psychology, and have been subject to an enormous variety of analyses, ranging from lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic, to various hybrid accounts. In this first book-length discussion of the topic, Bart Geurts presents a theory of quantity implicatures that is resolutely pragmatic, arguing that the orthodox Gricean approach to conversational implicature is capable of accounting for all the standard cases of quantity implicature, and more. He shows how the theory deals with free-choice inferences as merely a garden variety of quantity implicatures, and gives an in-depth treatment of so-called 'embedded implicatures'. Moreover, as well as offering a comprehensive theory of quantity implicatures, he also takes into account experimental data and processing issues. Original and pioneering, and avoiding technical terminology, this insightful study will be invaluable to linguists, philosophers, and experimental psychologists alike.

Download or read book Plurals and Events written by Barry Schein and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barry Schein proposes combining a second-order treatment of plurals with Donald Davidson's suggestion that there are positions for reference to events in ordinary predicates in order to account for several of the more puzzling features of plurals without invoking plural objects, with its attendant metaphysics, and also provide an absolute truth-theoretic characterization of the semantics of sentences with plurals in them. How do we make sense of sentences with plural noun phrases in them? In Plurals and Events, Barry Schein proposes combining a second-order treatment of plurals with Donald Davidson's suggestion that there are positions for reference to events in ordinary predicates in order to account for several of the more puzzling features of plurals without invoking plural objects, with its attendant metaphysics, and also provide an absolute truth-theoretic characterization of the semantics of sentences with plurals in them. Schein's highly original argument should have significant impact on how natural-language semantics is done, with repercussions for philosophy and logic. The book opens with foundational arguments that the logical language should have four major features: reduction to singular predication via a Davidsonian logical form, amereology of events, a logical syntax that allows the constituents of a Davidsonian analysis to be predicated of distinct events and separated from one another by other logical elements, and descriptive anaphors that cross-refer to the events described by antecedent clauses. A semantics for plurality and quantification is developed in the remaining chapters, which address some of the empirical and formal questions raised by the variety of interpretations in which plurals and quantifiers participate.