Morphosyntactic Cues for Quantifier Comprehension in Children

ABSTRACT

Universal quantifiers, which refer to groups of individuals or events, can express a subtle distinction between collective (unified or simultaneous) and distributive (individuated and separate) events. Indeed, English uses different quantifiers for this distinction (“all” and “each”, respectively). Hebrew, however, has a single universal quantifier. Thus, the collective/distributive distinction associated with the universal quantifier is represented morphosyntactically. This study examined whether Hebrew-speaking children (4–6 year olds) detect the collective/distributive distinction based on morphosyntactic cues alone and whether they show similar performance pattern as adults. Using a novel drawing task, instructions were given in either a collective-preferred form or a distributive form, asking participants to add drawings to pictures of multiple items. Within-subjects (Experiment 1) and between-subjects designs (Experiment 2) were used. Overall, children distinguished between the forms, indicating that they attended the specific morphosyntic cues of these two forms. They produced distributive drawings following the distributive form, similarly to adults. However, they alternated between distributive and collective drawings following the collective-preferred form, unlike adults who mostly gave collective responses. We discuss a possibility for the interplay between the meaning of the universal quantifier and the morphosyntactic cues in children’s performance. This study provides insights into the acquisition of meaning that depends on morphosyntax.

Acknowledgments

We thank Zafrit Lewin, Einat Oz, Or Kaduri, Yechezkel Shabanov, Shiri Hornick, Nitzan Trainin, Sivan Shaul and Ravit Eilon for their assistance in recruiting and running the experiments, and to the adults and children who participated in the study. We would like to Thank Aviv Shoenfeld and Alon Fishman for their helpful insights into Hebrew semantics.

This work was supported by the Alon fellowship to E. S., and the Israeli Science Foundation under grants 1068/16 to R. N. and 1824/17 to E. S.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ KOL appears in other structures (i.e., to mean “whole” or “any”) which do not apply to the collective/distributive distinction (Doron & Mittwoch, 1986; Korat, 2016; Levy, 2008, also see, Bar-Lev & Margulis, 2013).

² “et” is an accusativity marker that appears with definite nouns (including proper names).

³ Cumulative interpretation is demonstrated in taking the sentence “All the children pushed two cars” to mean that the children pushed two cars together. Such interpretation is allowed with both the collective-preferred form in Hebrew and with the English all (e.g., Brisson, 2003). A distributive interpretation of the same sentence would mean that the children pushed two cars individually (Brisson, 2003). This interpretation is the only one available with the distributive form in Hebrew and with the English each in the same sentences (“Each child pushed two cars”) (Brisson, 2003; although see Champollion, 2016). Gather-type predicates are also assumed to distinguish between all and each (Champollion, 2014; Dowty, 1987). Applying such diagnostics to Hebrew reveals a similar pattern where the collective-preferred form occurs with collective predicates, but the distributive form cannot (e.g., Gil, 1995; Korat, 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation [1068/16,1824/17]; Alon fellowship.