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...nce number words but not several can be modified by adverbs such D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 SYNTAX AND NUMBER WORD ACQUISITION 151 as almost, approximately, exactly, and precisely. This distinction highlights differences in their semantic representations, since number words but not several mark discrete points or intervals on a scale. Although this is an oversimplification, given debates surrounding semantic and pragmatic accounts of number words and scalar implicatures (cf. Carston, 1990, 1998; Chierchia, 2006; Fox & Hackl, 2006; Gazdar, 1979; Grice, 1989; Horn, 1972, 1989; Levinson, 2000). However, even if we expand the list of surface-level cues, one problem remains: These cues are not universal. Cross-linguistically, language learners would need to rely on different syntactic cues to arrive at the same number word representation. It seems unlikely that children acquiring different languages would rely on a wholly different set of surface-level cues and yet converge on the same interpretation for these lexical items. Restricting our attention to English, we are left with yet another problem, namely, that while the informativity of these cues...

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...ny, bit, both, a couple, each, half , (a) lot, many, most, much, none, oodles, pair, plenty, (the) rest, some segment terms back, beginning, bits, bottom, edge, end, front, part, piece, side, top; body parts (e.g., head, neck) units of measurement standard: foot, hour, inch, minute, pint, pound, quart, week, year non-standard: bite, bottle, bowl, box, bucket, bunch, can, chunk, cup, drink, glass, pail, plate, reel, taste (Bloom et al., 1974, 1975) and Naomi (Sachs, 1983). However, since Eve’s transcripts do not extend beyond the age of 3, we replaced hers with Adam, another selection from the Brown (1973) corpus. We also included an additional set of transcripts from the Suppes (1974) corpus, Nina. We began with a wide filter, first searching for all occurrences of the word of in the selected transcripts.3 We then excluded instances where no lexical item or an uninterpretable utterance followed of , or where it was part of a wh-question, yielding frames such as X of Y . We then worked to narrow our results to what we term “potential partitives,” which are all phrases that have the potential to be partitives. We first tallied and categorized all of the lexical items occurring immediately to the...

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...ries of word learning. Their meaning is inherently abstract: “twoness” is not a property of individuals but rather of groups of individuals, be they concrete or abstract entities. Number words can also be used in a wide range of contexts for a variety of functions: a sequence, as in One, two, three; cardinal, as in two cats; ordinal, as in the third house on the left; measurement, as eight minutes long or eight-minute mile; and so on (cf. Fuson, 1988; Geurts, 2006 for discussion). What’s more, their distribution overlaps with that of other words, including nonexact quantifiers and adjectives (Bloom, 2000): Correspondence should be addressed to Kristen Syrett, Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University– New Brunswick, Psych Building, Addition, Busch Campus, 152 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8020. E-mail: k-syrett@ruccs.rutgers.edu D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 SYNTAX AND NUMBER WORD ACQUISITION 147 the two/many/happy girls. How, then, given this complex and variable picture, do children manage to identify words as number words and acquire their meaning? Two very different solutions have been proposed for how children go abou...

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...ich draws some support from young children’s ability to identify the difference between acceptable and unacceptable counting strings as well as the effect of unexpected changes in number (e.g., Cordes & Gelman, 2005; Gelman, 1993; Gelman and Gallistel, 1978; Gelman & Greeno, 1989; Greeno, Riley, & Gelman, 1984). According to the “Skill before Principles” view or the “Discontinuity Hypothesis,” knowledge of these principles is emergent, and is therefore not what children initially rely on to identify and learn the meaning of number words (e.g., Briars & Siegler, 1984; Carey, 2004; Fuson, 1988; Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Le Corre, Van de Walle, Brannon, & Carey, 2006; Le Corre & Carey, 2007; Spelke & Tsivkin, 2001). They set as their goal explaining how children identify and learn the meaning of number words from the verbal input as well as how knowledge of the principles is finally induced relatively late during the preschool years. One line of the Discontinuity Hypothesis appeals to the possibility of bootstrapping numberword meaning from the language system (e.g., Barner, Libenson, Cheung, & Takasaki, 2009; Bloom & Wynn, 1997; Carey, 2004, 2009; Wynn, 1992). Although there are differences among these boot...

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...tice to the full range of candidates appearing across these syntactic environments. To take a concrete example, let us focus on the case of the partitive frame. Of the four linguistic cues discussed, this one in particular demonstrates the clearest mapping from the syntax to a part-whole or quantity denotation in the semantics and provides children with evidence about an environment in which number words can appear (as opposed to their inability to appear with mass nouns, follow adjectives, or be modified by too or very). (For discussion of the semantic constraints of the partitive frame, see Diesing, 1992; Jackendoff, 1977; and Link, 1987.) While B&W began their corpus analysis with assumptions that the partitive frame picks out sets of individuals, and quantified the appearance of the partitive frame in the output results of a search for three sets of pre-selected lexical items, they did not turn their focus in the other direction and quantify the full range of lexical items occurring in the partitive frame. This omission is likely to oversimplify the learning process because it excludes other possible competitors for number words in that environment. At the same time, it also overestimates t...

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...ilding, Addition, Busch Campus, 152 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8020. E-mail: k-syrett@ruccs.rutgers.edu D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 SYNTAX AND NUMBER WORD ACQUISITION 147 the two/many/happy girls. How, then, given this complex and variable picture, do children manage to identify words as number words and acquire their meaning? Two very different solutions have been proposed for how children go about acquiring the meaning of number words. One is based on the role of a set of nonverbal arithmetic and counting principles identified by Gelman and Gallistel (1978) (hereafter G & G), which constrain the properties of the sequence of words that can become the count list of a language. The counting principles include three “how-to-count” principles (one-one correspondence, stable order, cardinality) and two others (abstraction—anything can be counted—and order irrelevance). G & G hold that the nonverbal mental structure serves to help children identify the relevant data and use rules; this is because the principles underlying verbal counting are isomorphic to the nonverbal ones. Once the data and their use conditions are identified, a child can proceed to...

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...Continuity Hypothesis,” which draws some support from young children’s ability to identify the difference between acceptable and unacceptable counting strings as well as the effect of unexpected changes in number (e.g., Cordes & Gelman, 2005; Gelman, 1993; Gelman and Gallistel, 1978; Gelman & Greeno, 1989; Greeno, Riley, & Gelman, 1984). According to the “Skill before Principles” view or the “Discontinuity Hypothesis,” knowledge of these principles is emergent, and is therefore not what children initially rely on to identify and learn the meaning of number words (e.g., Briars & Siegler, 1984; Carey, 2004; Fuson, 1988; Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Le Corre, Van de Walle, Brannon, & Carey, 2006; Le Corre & Carey, 2007; Spelke & Tsivkin, 2001). They set as their goal explaining how children identify and learn the meaning of number words from the verbal input as well as how knowledge of the principles is finally induced relatively late during the preschool years. One line of the Discontinuity Hypothesis appeals to the possibility of bootstrapping numberword meaning from the language system (e.g., Barner, Libenson, Cheung, & Takasaki, 2009; Bloom & Wynn, 1997; Carey, 2004, 2009; Wynn, 1992). Although th...

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...pretations, since we cannot unambiguously say that if a participant chose the side of the screen with two objects they thought that the number word meant “two.” We can conclude, however, that participants who chose the side with two objects did not assign an adjectival interpretation along the lines of “big” to the novel word (and likewise for the “very” condition).6 6The term adjective or adjectival is shorthand for (relative) gradable adjective, since only adjectives that allow for such an interpretation can be modified by very (e.g., very big v. !very wooden) (cf. Bartsch & Venneman, 1972; Kennedy, 1999). D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 SYNTAX AND NUMBER WORD ACQUISITION 167 * * age group FIGURE 2 Percentage of adults’ and children’s quantity interpretations in the two conditions in Experiment 2a: Contrasting Object and Set Size with the Partitive and Very Results We begin by analyzing the performance of the adult participants presented in Figure 2. As before, the dependent measure is the percentage of occasions on which participants assigned a quantity interpretation. In the partitive condition, adults assigned the novel word a quantity interpretat...

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...ic constraints associated with these syntactic environments, and if so, whether they are capable of recruiting this knowledge when extending the meaning of a novel word to a number word interpretation in a particular discourse context. Anticipating our results, we find that children are indeed aware of the semantic constraints associated with the partitive frame and modification by very. Crucially, though, relying upon syntactic cues to arrive at number-word meaning appears to be a delicate affair, even for adults who possess the requisite linguistic and conceptual wherewithal to succeed (cf. Gillette, Gleitman, Gleitman, & Lederer, 1999). Even with the addition of a supporting discourse context that should allow the participant to narrow the denotation of a word in a quantity-denoting linguistic environment to that of a specific quantity, participants are still pulled toward an objectlevel, adjectival interpretation. We conclude that a syntactic bootstrapping account in conjunction with the counting principles could operate in tandem to help children identify number words and acquire their precise meaning. 1Although note that G&G (1978) made clear that the three how-to-count principles are interrelated: the application of th...

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...retation. Also of interest is the fact that participants were reluctant to assign the novel word a quantity interpretation in the prenominal condition, an environment in which both an adjective (e.g., those big cars) and a number word (e.g., those two cars) can occur. One possibility is that a number word interpretation is less likely than an adjectival interpretation in this environment. This may indicate that the default for a novel word interpretation is at the individual object level rather than the group/set level (see Bloom & Kelemen, 1995; Markman, 1990; Markman & Hutchinson, 1984; and Markman & Wachtel, 1988, for relevant discussions). However, it also may be that adjectives more naturally yield a restrictive interpretation in the prenominal position, providing essential or unique identifying information about a discourse referent in existence (Link, 1987; Alan Munn, personal communication, 2008). GENERAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS We asked whether syntactic patterns in the input can aid children when acquiring number-word meaning. We began by distinguishing two possible implementations of a syntactic bootstrapping approach—one in which language is able to uniquely identify the number word catego...

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...vant proposals that address how syntactic distinctions in the input could enable children to understand how plurality is encoded in a language.) Brown (1957) first discussed the possibility of relying on surface-level syntactic cues as a means of acquiring the meaning of words. Since then, subsequent experimental work has demonstrated the success of syntactic bootstrapping for the acquisition of nouns and proper names (Katz, Baker, & Macnamara, 1974; Hall, Lee, & Belanger, 2001; Macnamara, 1982), the meaning of verbs (Fisher, 2002; Fisher et al., 1994; Gleitman, 1990; Landau & Gleitman, 1985; Naigles, 1990), and adjectives (Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Syrett, 2007; Syrett & Lidz, 2010). However, unlike previous accounts of word learning within the domain of language, a bootstrapping account of number-word learning would be an example of word learning across domains, whereby children would combine linguistic information with knowledge of the domain of natural number. The clearest proposal for a syntactic bootstrapping of number-word meaning has come from Bloom and Wynn (1997) (hereafter B&W), following earlier suggestions by Wynn (1992). The motivation for their account is series of experimental ...

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...m, underlying constraints, and the discourse context in number word learning. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Number words present an interesting puzzle for theories of word learning. Their meaning is inherently abstract: “twoness” is not a property of individuals but rather of groups of individuals, be they concrete or abstract entities. Number words can also be used in a wide range of contexts for a variety of functions: a sequence, as in One, two, three; cardinal, as in two cats; ordinal, as in the third house on the left; measurement, as eight minutes long or eight-minute mile; and so on (cf. Fuson, 1988; Geurts, 2006 for discussion). What’s more, their distribution overlaps with that of other words, including nonexact quantifiers and adjectives (Bloom, 2000): Correspondence should be addressed to Kristen Syrett, Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University– New Brunswick, Psych Building, Addition, Busch Campus, 152 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8020. E-mail: k-syrett@ruccs.rutgers.edu D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 SYNTAX AND NUMBER WORD ACQUISITION 147 the two/many/happy girls. How, then, given this complex and variable pic...

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...75441.2011.583900 How Can Syntax Support Number Word Acquisition? Kristen Syrett Department of Linguistics, Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University–New Brunswick Julien Musolino and Rochel Gelman Department of Psychology, Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University–New Brunswick We expand upon a previous proposal by Bloom and Wynn (1997) that young children learn about the meaning of number words by tracking their occurrence in particular syntactic environments, in combination with the discourse context in which they are used. An analysis of the Childes database (MacWhinney, 2000) reveals that the environments studied by Bloom and Wynn (specifically, the partitive frame x of the y) do not on their own distinguish between number terms and those terms that are more generally quantity denoting. A set of novel word-learning experiments reveals that children (and adults) are aware of the semantic constraints of two of the syntactic environments targeted by Bloom and Wynn (the partitive frame and modification by very) but either rely upon or benefit from contextual information supporting learning where a number word can but need not be used in a sentence. We propose that chi...

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...l can be modified by adverbs such D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 SYNTAX AND NUMBER WORD ACQUISITION 151 as almost, approximately, exactly, and precisely. This distinction highlights differences in their semantic representations, since number words but not several mark discrete points or intervals on a scale. Although this is an oversimplification, given debates surrounding semantic and pragmatic accounts of number words and scalar implicatures (cf. Carston, 1990, 1998; Chierchia, 2006; Fox & Hackl, 2006; Gazdar, 1979; Grice, 1989; Horn, 1972, 1989; Levinson, 2000). However, even if we expand the list of surface-level cues, one problem remains: These cues are not universal. Cross-linguistically, language learners would need to rely on different syntactic cues to arrive at the same number word representation. It seems unlikely that children acquiring different languages would rely on a wholly different set of surface-level cues and yet converge on the same interpretation for these lexical items. Restricting our attention to English, we are left with yet another problem, namely, that while the informativity of these cues may be promising when comparing a ...

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...ka et al., 2007, for relevant proposals that address how syntactic distinctions in the input could enable children to understand how plurality is encoded in a language.) Brown (1957) first discussed the possibility of relying on surface-level syntactic cues as a means of acquiring the meaning of words. Since then, subsequent experimental work has demonstrated the success of syntactic bootstrapping for the acquisition of nouns and proper names (Katz, Baker, & Macnamara, 1974; Hall, Lee, & Belanger, 2001; Macnamara, 1982), the meaning of verbs (Fisher, 2002; Fisher et al., 1994; Gleitman, 1990; Landau & Gleitman, 1985; Naigles, 1990), and adjectives (Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Syrett, 2007; Syrett & Lidz, 2010). However, unlike previous accounts of word learning within the domain of language, a bootstrapping account of number-word learning would be an example of word learning across domains, whereby children would combine linguistic information with knowledge of the domain of natural number. The clearest proposal for a syntactic bootstrapping of number-word meaning has come from Bloom and Wynn (1997) (hereafter B&W), following earlier suggestions by Wynn (1992). The motivation for their account is series ...

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...rds but not several can be modified by adverbs such D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 SYNTAX AND NUMBER WORD ACQUISITION 151 as almost, approximately, exactly, and precisely. This distinction highlights differences in their semantic representations, since number words but not several mark discrete points or intervals on a scale. Although this is an oversimplification, given debates surrounding semantic and pragmatic accounts of number words and scalar implicatures (cf. Carston, 1990, 1998; Chierchia, 2006; Fox & Hackl, 2006; Gazdar, 1979; Grice, 1989; Horn, 1972, 1989; Levinson, 2000). However, even if we expand the list of surface-level cues, one problem remains: These cues are not universal. Cross-linguistically, language learners would need to rely on different syntactic cues to arrive at the same number word representation. It seems unlikely that children acquiring different languages would rely on a wholly different set of surface-level cues and yet converge on the same interpretation for these lexical items. Restricting our attention to English, we are left with yet another problem, namely, that while the informativity of these cues may be prom...

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...er’s stimuli. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two between-subject conditions: one in which the novel word was in the partitive frame (e.g., zav of the cars) and one in which the novel word was modified by very (e.g., the very zav cars). In each case, participants were asked to respond to five trials with five different objects across the experimental session. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two predetermined trial orders. An analysis revealed no item or order effects. Each trial had the same structure, modeled after the intermodal preferential looking paradigm (cf. Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, Cauley, & Gordon, 1987; Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 1996; Hollich, Rocroi, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 1999; Spelke, 1979) and previous word-learning studies (cf. Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Waxman & Booth, 2001). See Table 8 for a representative trial. (The “control” condition indicated on the bottom row is included as part of Experiment 2b.) A four-second screen displaying an animated animal (a spider or a snail) accompanied by a musical sound effect signaled the beginning of each trial. A blank screen then appeared for three seconds, and a female voice invited the participants to look at some objects (e.g., “Let’s lo...

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...ctival, and not a number, interpretation. Also of interest is the fact that participants were reluctant to assign the novel word a quantity interpretation in the prenominal condition, an environment in which both an adjective (e.g., those big cars) and a number word (e.g., those two cars) can occur. One possibility is that a number word interpretation is less likely than an adjectival interpretation in this environment. This may indicate that the default for a novel word interpretation is at the individual object level rather than the group/set level (see Bloom & Kelemen, 1995; Markman, 1990; Markman & Hutchinson, 1984; and Markman & Wachtel, 1988, for relevant discussions). However, it also may be that adjectives more naturally yield a restrictive interpretation in the prenominal position, providing essential or unique identifying information about a discourse referent in existence (Link, 1987; Alan Munn, personal communication, 2008). GENERAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS We asked whether syntactic patterns in the input can aid children when acquiring number-word meaning. We began by distinguishing two possible implementations of a syntactic bootstrapping approach—one in which language is able to uniquely id...

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...counting principles identified by G&G to contribute to the learning process. Almost any view of number-word learning assigns special status to the count list. Note, however, that under this account of learning, the underlying principles of counting help children to identify number words in a language and to recognize the range of environments in which number words can appear in natural language. This process is not restricted to a search for an ordered count list or verbal counting but applies more generally to those communicative contexts that license the appearance of number words (see also Gelman, 2000). It is important to remember that a fundamental aspect of G&G’s view is that the counting principles do not stand alone. Rather, they generate entities whose meaning and the results of their combination through the operations of addition and subtraction, are governed by the arithmetic principles. For example, the combination 2 + 2 yields 4 and not “some more” or “a bunch.” In contrast, “some” and “some” logically combine to mean “some (more).” Furthermore, there is no rule in syntax that corresponds to the stable-order counting principle, which dictates that a count list must be used in exact...

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...ives (Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Syrett, 2007; Syrett & Lidz, 2010). However, unlike previous accounts of word learning within the domain of language, a bootstrapping account of number-word learning would be an example of word learning across domains, whereby children would combine linguistic information with knowledge of the domain of natural number. The clearest proposal for a syntactic bootstrapping of number-word meaning has come from Bloom and Wynn (1997) (hereafter B&W), following earlier suggestions by Wynn (1992). The motivation for their account is series of experimental findings by Wynn (1990, 1992)—since replicated in a number of laboratories—which appear to demonstrate that children go through a period of time during which they seem to know that number words refer to precise, unique numerosities without yet knowing which numerosity each number word picks out (cf. also D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 148 SYRETT, MUSOLINO, AND GELMAN Condry & Spelke, 2008). According to Wynn, such behavior represents a transparent reflection of children’s lack of knowledge of some of G&G’s counting principles (most notably, cardinality), because if these...

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...ather than collections of discrete individuals. (See Ferenz & Prasada, 2002, for relevant findings concerning children’s knowledge of when plural marking on the Y item is necessitated or not.) Finally, we note that while B&W found no occurrences of the partitive in the results from their adjective search, our results turned up 94 instances of “predicate” (or “adjective”) tokens (see Table 3 for a description). Twelve of these 94 tokens involved the adjective careful, and 12 involved the adjective nice, both of which are frequent in both child-directed speech and children’s early vocabularies (Dale & Fenson, 1996), and neither of which were on the list of adjectives searched for by B&W. Thus, once we consider the entirety of the expressions occurring in the partitive frame, we see appearance in the partitive frame could lead a word learner to assign a high probability to a quantity denotation (which is perhaps not surprising, given our sequence of filters to identify potential partitives), but that additional information would be needed to narrow down the interpretation to that of a specific quantity. Given the occurrence of nouns and predicates in the X slot of the partitive frame, a reviewer suggeste...

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...ld have an adjectival, and not a number, interpretation. Also of interest is the fact that participants were reluctant to assign the novel word a quantity interpretation in the prenominal condition, an environment in which both an adjective (e.g., those big cars) and a number word (e.g., those two cars) can occur. One possibility is that a number word interpretation is less likely than an adjectival interpretation in this environment. This may indicate that the default for a novel word interpretation is at the individual object level rather than the group/set level (see Bloom & Kelemen, 1995; Markman, 1990; Markman & Hutchinson, 1984; and Markman & Wachtel, 1988, for relevant discussions). However, it also may be that adjectives more naturally yield a restrictive interpretation in the prenominal position, providing essential or unique identifying information about a discourse referent in existence (Link, 1987; Alan Munn, personal communication, 2008). GENERAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS We asked whether syntactic patterns in the input can aid children when acquiring number-word meaning. We began by distinguishing two possible implementations of a syntactic bootstrapping approach—one in which lan...

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...mberword meaning from the language system (e.g., Barner, Libenson, Cheung, & Takasaki, 2009; Bloom & Wynn, 1997; Carey, 2004, 2009; Wynn, 1992). Although there are differences among these bootstrapping approaches, they all depend on there being a strong semantic similarity between number words and quantifiers and their having shared, but unique, distributions in the surface-level syntax. (See Clark & Nikitina, 2009, and Sarnecka et al., 2007, for relevant proposals that address how syntactic distinctions in the input could enable children to understand how plurality is encoded in a language.) Brown (1957) first discussed the possibility of relying on surface-level syntactic cues as a means of acquiring the meaning of words. Since then, subsequent experimental work has demonstrated the success of syntactic bootstrapping for the acquisition of nouns and proper names (Katz, Baker, & Macnamara, 1974; Hall, Lee, & Belanger, 2001; Macnamara, 1982), the meaning of verbs (Fisher, 2002; Fisher et al., 1994; Gleitman, 1990; Landau & Gleitman, 1985; Naigles, 1990), and adjectives (Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Syrett, 2007; Syrett & Lidz, 2010). However, unlike previous accounts of word learning within the...

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...ee Clark & Nikitina, 2009, and Sarnecka et al., 2007, for relevant proposals that address how syntactic distinctions in the input could enable children to understand how plurality is encoded in a language.) Brown (1957) first discussed the possibility of relying on surface-level syntactic cues as a means of acquiring the meaning of words. Since then, subsequent experimental work has demonstrated the success of syntactic bootstrapping for the acquisition of nouns and proper names (Katz, Baker, & Macnamara, 1974; Hall, Lee, & Belanger, 2001; Macnamara, 1982), the meaning of verbs (Fisher, 2002; Fisher et al., 1994; Gleitman, 1990; Landau & Gleitman, 1985; Naigles, 1990), and adjectives (Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Syrett, 2007; Syrett & Lidz, 2010). However, unlike previous accounts of word learning within the domain of language, a bootstrapping account of number-word learning would be an example of word learning across domains, whereby children would combine linguistic information with knowledge of the domain of natural number. The clearest proposal for a syntactic bootstrapping of number-word meaning has come from Bloom and Wynn (1997) (hereafter B&W), following earlier suggestions by Wynn (1992). Th...

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...egler, 1984; Carey, 2004; Fuson, 1988; Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Le Corre, Van de Walle, Brannon, & Carey, 2006; Le Corre & Carey, 2007; Spelke & Tsivkin, 2001). They set as their goal explaining how children identify and learn the meaning of number words from the verbal input as well as how knowledge of the principles is finally induced relatively late during the preschool years. One line of the Discontinuity Hypothesis appeals to the possibility of bootstrapping numberword meaning from the language system (e.g., Barner, Libenson, Cheung, & Takasaki, 2009; Bloom & Wynn, 1997; Carey, 2004, 2009; Wynn, 1992). Although there are differences among these bootstrapping approaches, they all depend on there being a strong semantic similarity between number words and quantifiers and their having shared, but unique, distributions in the surface-level syntax. (See Clark & Nikitina, 2009, and Sarnecka et al., 2007, for relevant proposals that address how syntactic distinctions in the input could enable children to understand how plurality is encoded in a language.) Brown (1957) first discussed the possibility of relying on surface-level syntactic cues as a means of acquiring the meaning of words. Since the...

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...tself is not what causes difficulty in the partitive condition. Instead, extension to number-word meaning given this frame seems to be the source of difficulty. It is noteworthy that even adults were not universally successful in mapping the novel word to a number word interpretation in the partitive condition. Further consideration of the adults’ performance in the partitive condition, especially given the split between the two subgroups, led us to wonder whether size—and consequently an interpretation of the novel word as something like “big”—was a more salient property than numerosity (cf. Clearfield & Mix, 1999). Perhaps if numerosity were better highlighted during the familiarization and contrast phases, a number word interpretation would be more accessible and the percentage of quantity interpretations in the partitive condition would increase. We explore this possibility in Experiment 2b with adult participants. EXPERIMENT 2B: INCREASING SET SIZE TO MAKE NUMEROSITY SALIENT FOR ADULTS In this experiment we manipulated the number of objects in the display during the familiarization and contrast phases. We hypothesized that this manipulation would better highlight the difference between the numerosit...

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... unique, distributions in the surface-level syntax. (See Clark & Nikitina, 2009, and Sarnecka et al., 2007, for relevant proposals that address how syntactic distinctions in the input could enable children to understand how plurality is encoded in a language.) Brown (1957) first discussed the possibility of relying on surface-level syntactic cues as a means of acquiring the meaning of words. Since then, subsequent experimental work has demonstrated the success of syntactic bootstrapping for the acquisition of nouns and proper names (Katz, Baker, & Macnamara, 1974; Hall, Lee, & Belanger, 2001; Macnamara, 1982), the meaning of verbs (Fisher, 2002; Fisher et al., 1994; Gleitman, 1990; Landau & Gleitman, 1985; Naigles, 1990), and adjectives (Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Syrett, 2007; Syrett & Lidz, 2010). However, unlike previous accounts of word learning within the domain of language, a bootstrapping account of number-word learning would be an example of word learning across domains, whereby children would combine linguistic information with knowledge of the domain of natural number. The clearest proposal for a syntactic bootstrapping of number-word meaning has come from Bloom and Wynn (1997) (hereaft...

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...onnumerical quantity-denoting lexical items found immediately before of Type of item Examples amount terms (including quantifiers) all, any, bit, both, a couple, each, half , (a) lot, many, most, much, none, oodles, pair, plenty, (the) rest, some segment terms back, beginning, bits, bottom, edge, end, front, part, piece, side, top; body parts (e.g., head, neck) units of measurement standard: foot, hour, inch, minute, pint, pound, quart, week, year non-standard: bite, bottle, bowl, box, bucket, bunch, can, chunk, cup, drink, glass, pail, plate, reel, taste (Bloom et al., 1974, 1975) and Naomi (Sachs, 1983). However, since Eve’s transcripts do not extend beyond the age of 3, we replaced hers with Adam, another selection from the Brown (1973) corpus. We also included an additional set of transcripts from the Suppes (1974) corpus, Nina. We began with a wide filter, first searching for all occurrences of the word of in the selected transcripts.3 We then excluded instances where no lexical item or an uninterpretable utterance followed of , or where it was part of a wh-question, yielding frames such as X of Y . We then worked to narrow our results to what we term “potential partitives,” which are all...

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...air, plenty, (the) rest, some segment terms back, beginning, bits, bottom, edge, end, front, part, piece, side, top; body parts (e.g., head, neck) units of measurement standard: foot, hour, inch, minute, pint, pound, quart, week, year non-standard: bite, bottle, bowl, box, bucket, bunch, can, chunk, cup, drink, glass, pail, plate, reel, taste (Bloom et al., 1974, 1975) and Naomi (Sachs, 1983). However, since Eve’s transcripts do not extend beyond the age of 3, we replaced hers with Adam, another selection from the Brown (1973) corpus. We also included an additional set of transcripts from the Suppes (1974) corpus, Nina. We began with a wide filter, first searching for all occurrences of the word of in the selected transcripts.3 We then excluded instances where no lexical item or an uninterpretable utterance followed of , or where it was part of a wh-question, yielding frames such as X of Y . We then worked to narrow our results to what we term “potential partitives,” which are all phrases that have the potential to be partitives. We first tallied and categorized all of the lexical items occurring immediately to the left of the word of , the word in the X slot. We identified two categories of X—...

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... to number-word meaning itself that is difficult? This distinction bears upon any syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis that calls upon a learner to use the rules of language to arrive at a number word interpretation. The possibility that two within-DP interpretations could be responsible for the chance-level performance in the nonframe conditions arises from the observation that studies in syntactic bootstrapping often pit two across-category interpretations against each other (e.g., noun v. adjective, or noun v. verb) (cf. Bernal, Lidz, Millotte, & Christophe, 2007; Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Waxman & Booth, 2001) or two variants of the same category (e.g., count v. mass or count v. proper nouns, or causativity or transitivity in verbs) (cf. Arunachalam & Waxman, 2010; Fisher, 2002; Hall et al., 2001; Katz et al., 1974; Naigles, 1990; Scott & Fisher, 2009; Yuan & Fisher, 2009). Could it be that when the two interpretations being considered are from different grammatical categories (i.e., adjective, numeral) but share similar syntactic positions (i.e., are both located in the Determiner Phrase) that this makes the assignment of a word meaning difficult? Or is it the case that word extension is made more...

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...he partitive frame (e.g., zav of the cars) and one in which the novel word was modified by very (e.g., the very zav cars). In each case, participants were asked to respond to five trials with five different objects across the experimental session. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two predetermined trial orders. An analysis revealed no item or order effects. Each trial had the same structure, modeled after the intermodal preferential looking paradigm (cf. Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, Cauley, & Gordon, 1987; Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 1996; Hollich, Rocroi, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 1999; Spelke, 1979) and previous word-learning studies (cf. Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Waxman & Booth, 2001). See Table 8 for a representative trial. (The “control” condition indicated on the bottom row is included as part of Experiment 2b.) A four-second screen displaying an animated animal (a spider or a snail) accompanied by a musical sound effect signaled the beginning of each trial. A blank screen then appeared for three seconds, and a female voice invited the participants to look at some objects (e.g., “Let’s look at cars!”). The trial then proceeded, and was segmented into three distinct phases: familiar...

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...een number words and quantifiers and their having shared, but unique, distributions in the surface-level syntax. (See Clark & Nikitina, 2009, and Sarnecka et al., 2007, for relevant proposals that address how syntactic distinctions in the input could enable children to understand how plurality is encoded in a language.) Brown (1957) first discussed the possibility of relying on surface-level syntactic cues as a means of acquiring the meaning of words. Since then, subsequent experimental work has demonstrated the success of syntactic bootstrapping for the acquisition of nouns and proper names (Katz, Baker, & Macnamara, 1974; Hall, Lee, & Belanger, 2001; Macnamara, 1982), the meaning of verbs (Fisher, 2002; Fisher et al., 1994; Gleitman, 1990; Landau & Gleitman, 1985; Naigles, 1990), and adjectives (Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Syrett, 2007; Syrett & Lidz, 2010). However, unlike previous accounts of word learning within the domain of language, a bootstrapping account of number-word learning would be an example of word learning across domains, whereby children would combine linguistic information with knowledge of the domain of natural number. The clearest proposal for a syntactic bootstrapping of number-word meani...

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...s before Skill” or the “Continuity Hypothesis,” which draws some support from young children’s ability to identify the difference between acceptable and unacceptable counting strings as well as the effect of unexpected changes in number (e.g., Cordes & Gelman, 2005; Gelman, 1993; Gelman and Gallistel, 1978; Gelman & Greeno, 1989; Greeno, Riley, & Gelman, 1984). According to the “Skill before Principles” view or the “Discontinuity Hypothesis,” knowledge of these principles is emergent, and is therefore not what children initially rely on to identify and learn the meaning of number words (e.g., Briars & Siegler, 1984; Carey, 2004; Fuson, 1988; Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Le Corre, Van de Walle, Brannon, & Carey, 2006; Le Corre & Carey, 2007; Spelke & Tsivkin, 2001). They set as their goal explaining how children identify and learn the meaning of number words from the verbal input as well as how knowledge of the principles is finally induced relatively late during the preschool years. One line of the Discontinuity Hypothesis appeals to the possibility of bootstrapping numberword meaning from the language system (e.g., Barner, Libenson, Cheung, & Takasaki, 2009; Bloom & Wynn, 1997; Carey, 2004, 2009; Wynn, 1992)...

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...between number words and, for example, several, since number words but not several can be modified by adverbs such D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 SYNTAX AND NUMBER WORD ACQUISITION 151 as almost, approximately, exactly, and precisely. This distinction highlights differences in their semantic representations, since number words but not several mark discrete points or intervals on a scale. Although this is an oversimplification, given debates surrounding semantic and pragmatic accounts of number words and scalar implicatures (cf. Carston, 1990, 1998; Chierchia, 2006; Fox & Hackl, 2006; Gazdar, 1979; Grice, 1989; Horn, 1972, 1989; Levinson, 2000). However, even if we expand the list of surface-level cues, one problem remains: These cues are not universal. Cross-linguistically, language learners would need to rely on different syntactic cues to arrive at the same number word representation. It seems unlikely that children acquiring different languages would rely on a wholly different set of surface-level cues and yet converge on the same interpretation for these lexical items. Restricting our attention to English, we are left with yet another problem, name...

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...ble and unacceptable counting strings as well as the effect of unexpected changes in number (e.g., Cordes & Gelman, 2005; Gelman, 1993; Gelman and Gallistel, 1978; Gelman & Greeno, 1989; Greeno, Riley, & Gelman, 1984). According to the “Skill before Principles” view or the “Discontinuity Hypothesis,” knowledge of these principles is emergent, and is therefore not what children initially rely on to identify and learn the meaning of number words (e.g., Briars & Siegler, 1984; Carey, 2004; Fuson, 1988; Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Le Corre, Van de Walle, Brannon, & Carey, 2006; Le Corre & Carey, 2007; Spelke & Tsivkin, 2001). They set as their goal explaining how children identify and learn the meaning of number words from the verbal input as well as how knowledge of the principles is finally induced relatively late during the preschool years. One line of the Discontinuity Hypothesis appeals to the possibility of bootstrapping numberword meaning from the language system (e.g., Barner, Libenson, Cheung, & Takasaki, 2009; Bloom & Wynn, 1997; Carey, 2004, 2009; Wynn, 1992). Although there are differences among these bootstrapping approaches, they all depend on there being a strong semantic similarity between number ...

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...vel syntax. (See Clark & Nikitina, 2009, and Sarnecka et al., 2007, for relevant proposals that address how syntactic distinctions in the input could enable children to understand how plurality is encoded in a language.) Brown (1957) first discussed the possibility of relying on surface-level syntactic cues as a means of acquiring the meaning of words. Since then, subsequent experimental work has demonstrated the success of syntactic bootstrapping for the acquisition of nouns and proper names (Katz, Baker, & Macnamara, 1974; Hall, Lee, & Belanger, 2001; Macnamara, 1982), the meaning of verbs (Fisher, 2002; Fisher et al., 1994; Gleitman, 1990; Landau & Gleitman, 1985; Naigles, 1990), and adjectives (Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Syrett, 2007; Syrett & Lidz, 2010). However, unlike previous accounts of word learning within the domain of language, a bootstrapping account of number-word learning would be an example of word learning across domains, whereby children would combine linguistic information with knowledge of the domain of natural number. The clearest proposal for a syntactic bootstrapping of number-word meaning has come from Bloom and Wynn (1997) (hereafter B&W), following earlier suggestio...

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... this is because the principles underlying verbal counting are isomorphic to the nonverbal ones. Once the data and their use conditions are identified, a child can proceed to learn the verbal count list and where number words can be used. This position is often referred to as the “Principles before Skill” or the “Continuity Hypothesis,” which draws some support from young children’s ability to identify the difference between acceptable and unacceptable counting strings as well as the effect of unexpected changes in number (e.g., Cordes & Gelman, 2005; Gelman, 1993; Gelman and Gallistel, 1978; Gelman & Greeno, 1989; Greeno, Riley, & Gelman, 1984). According to the “Skill before Principles” view or the “Discontinuity Hypothesis,” knowledge of these principles is emergent, and is therefore not what children initially rely on to identify and learn the meaning of number words (e.g., Briars & Siegler, 1984; Carey, 2004; Fuson, 1988; Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Le Corre, Van de Walle, Brannon, & Carey, 2006; Le Corre & Carey, 2007; Spelke & Tsivkin, 2001). They set as their goal explaining how children identify and learn the meaning of number words from the verbal input as well as how knowledge of the principles i...

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...appearing across these syntactic environments. To take a concrete example, let us focus on the case of the partitive frame. Of the four linguistic cues discussed, this one in particular demonstrates the clearest mapping from the syntax to a part-whole or quantity denotation in the semantics and provides children with evidence about an environment in which number words can appear (as opposed to their inability to appear with mass nouns, follow adjectives, or be modified by too or very). (For discussion of the semantic constraints of the partitive frame, see Diesing, 1992; Jackendoff, 1977; and Link, 1987.) While B&W began their corpus analysis with assumptions that the partitive frame picks out sets of individuals, and quantified the appearance of the partitive frame in the output results of a search for three sets of pre-selected lexical items, they did not turn their focus in the other direction and quantify the full range of lexical items occurring in the partitive frame. This omission is likely to oversimplify the learning process because it excludes other possible competitors for number words in that environment. At the same time, it also overestimates the parity of number words and othe...

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...rds and, for example, several, since number words but not several can be modified by adverbs such D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 SYNTAX AND NUMBER WORD ACQUISITION 151 as almost, approximately, exactly, and precisely. This distinction highlights differences in their semantic representations, since number words but not several mark discrete points or intervals on a scale. Although this is an oversimplification, given debates surrounding semantic and pragmatic accounts of number words and scalar implicatures (cf. Carston, 1990, 1998; Chierchia, 2006; Fox & Hackl, 2006; Gazdar, 1979; Grice, 1989; Horn, 1972, 1989; Levinson, 2000). However, even if we expand the list of surface-level cues, one problem remains: These cues are not universal. Cross-linguistically, language learners would need to rely on different syntactic cues to arrive at the same number word representation. It seems unlikely that children acquiring different languages would rely on a wholly different set of surface-level cues and yet converge on the same interpretation for these lexical items. Restricting our attention to English, we are left with yet another problem, namely, that while the ...

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...corpus analysis yielded highly suggestive results about the viability of a syntactic bootstrapping approach to number-word learning, there are reasons to be cautious about their conclusions. First, it is not clear that these syntactic cues can, in B&W’s words, “tell children that number words refer to absolute quantities of discrete individuals” (p. 519). None of these cues, either separately or in combination, uniquely picks out number words. Notice, for example, that the quantifiers several and each have the same distribution as number words with respect to these four cues (cf. Kayne, 2007; Sarnecka & Gelman, 2004). (2) Count v. mass nouns a. !three rice (but three bowls) b. !several/each rice (but several bowls/each bowl) (3) Modifiers a. !very three children b. !very several children/!very each child (4) Position with respect to adjectives a. !good three children (but three good children) b. !good several children/!good each child (but several good children/each good child) (5) Appearance in the partitive a. three of the children b. several/each of the children Expanding the range of modifiers beyond those in (3) does distinguish between number words and, for example, several, since number words but n...

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...inciples underlying verbal counting are isomorphic to the nonverbal ones. Once the data and their use conditions are identified, a child can proceed to learn the verbal count list and where number words can be used. This position is often referred to as the “Principles before Skill” or the “Continuity Hypothesis,” which draws some support from young children’s ability to identify the difference between acceptable and unacceptable counting strings as well as the effect of unexpected changes in number (e.g., Cordes & Gelman, 2005; Gelman, 1993; Gelman and Gallistel, 1978; Gelman & Greeno, 1989; Greeno, Riley, & Gelman, 1984). According to the “Skill before Principles” view or the “Discontinuity Hypothesis,” knowledge of these principles is emergent, and is therefore not what children initially rely on to identify and learn the meaning of number words (e.g., Briars & Siegler, 1984; Carey, 2004; Fuson, 1988; Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Le Corre, Van de Walle, Brannon, & Carey, 2006; Le Corre & Carey, 2007; Spelke & Tsivkin, 2001). They set as their goal explaining how children identify and learn the meaning of number words from the verbal input as well as how knowledge of the principles is finally induced relatively la...

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... identify the relevant data and use rules; this is because the principles underlying verbal counting are isomorphic to the nonverbal ones. Once the data and their use conditions are identified, a child can proceed to learn the verbal count list and where number words can be used. This position is often referred to as the “Principles before Skill” or the “Continuity Hypothesis,” which draws some support from young children’s ability to identify the difference between acceptable and unacceptable counting strings as well as the effect of unexpected changes in number (e.g., Cordes & Gelman, 2005; Gelman, 1993; Gelman and Gallistel, 1978; Gelman & Greeno, 1989; Greeno, Riley, & Gelman, 1984). According to the “Skill before Principles” view or the “Discontinuity Hypothesis,” knowledge of these principles is emergent, and is therefore not what children initially rely on to identify and learn the meaning of number words (e.g., Briars & Siegler, 1984; Carey, 2004; Fuson, 1988; Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Le Corre, Van de Walle, Brannon, & Carey, 2006; Le Corre & Carey, 2007; Spelke & Tsivkin, 2001). They set as their goal explaining how children identify and learn the meaning of number words from the verbal...

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...d to one of two between-subject conditions: one in which the novel word was in the partitive frame (e.g., zav of the cars) and one in which the novel word was modified by very (e.g., the very zav cars). In each case, participants were asked to respond to five trials with five different objects across the experimental session. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two predetermined trial orders. An analysis revealed no item or order effects. Each trial had the same structure, modeled after the intermodal preferential looking paradigm (cf. Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, Cauley, & Gordon, 1987; Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 1996; Hollich, Rocroi, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 1999; Spelke, 1979) and previous word-learning studies (cf. Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Waxman & Booth, 2001). See Table 8 for a representative trial. (The “control” condition indicated on the bottom row is included as part of Experiment 2b.) A four-second screen displaying an animated animal (a spider or a snail) accompanied by a musical sound effect signaled the beginning of each trial. A blank screen then appeared for three seconds, and a female voice invited the participants to look at some objects (e.g., “Let’s look at cars!”). The trial then p...

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... Suppes 1; 11 – 3; 3 1 – 56 TABLE 2 Nonnumerical quantity-denoting lexical items found immediately before of Type of item Examples amount terms (including quantifiers) all, any, bit, both, a couple, each, half , (a) lot, many, most, much, none, oodles, pair, plenty, (the) rest, some segment terms back, beginning, bits, bottom, edge, end, front, part, piece, side, top; body parts (e.g., head, neck) units of measurement standard: foot, hour, inch, minute, pint, pound, quart, week, year non-standard: bite, bottle, bowl, box, bucket, bunch, can, chunk, cup, drink, glass, pail, plate, reel, taste (Bloom et al., 1974, 1975) and Naomi (Sachs, 1983). However, since Eve’s transcripts do not extend beyond the age of 3, we replaced hers with Adam, another selection from the Brown (1973) corpus. We also included an additional set of transcripts from the Suppes (1974) corpus, Nina. We began with a wide filter, first searching for all occurrences of the word of in the selected transcripts.3 We then excluded instances where no lexical item or an uninterpretable utterance followed of , or where it was part of a wh-question, yielding frames such as X of Y . We then worked to narrow our results to what we term “poten...

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...ase. We explore this possibility in Experiment 2b with adult participants. EXPERIMENT 2B: INCREASING SET SIZE TO MAKE NUMEROSITY SALIENT FOR ADULTS In this experiment we manipulated the number of objects in the display during the familiarization and contrast phases. We hypothesized that this manipulation would better highlight the difference between the numerosity of the two sets. Increasing the distance between two set sizes renders the D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 SYNTAX AND NUMBER WORD ACQUISITION 169 numerosity more salient (for a review, see Gallistel & Gelman, 2005). Therefore, a number word interpretation for the novel word should be more accessible given a contrast between set sizes of 2 vs. 5 as opposed to 2 vs. 3. By targeting adults in this experiment, we sought to obtain baseline information about how the relative salience of numerosity could provide contextual support for a numerical interpretation for young number-word-learners. Method Participants. Forty-five undergraduates from Rutgers University who were fulfilling an experimental requirement for a psychology course participated (25 females, 20 males; age range: 18–23). Participants were rando...

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...ing of number-word meaning has come from Bloom and Wynn (1997) (hereafter B&W), following earlier suggestions by Wynn (1992). The motivation for their account is series of experimental findings by Wynn (1990, 1992)—since replicated in a number of laboratories—which appear to demonstrate that children go through a period of time during which they seem to know that number words refer to precise, unique numerosities without yet knowing which numerosity each number word picks out (cf. also D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 148 SYRETT, MUSOLINO, AND GELMAN Condry & Spelke, 2008). According to Wynn, such behavior represents a transparent reflection of children’s lack of knowledge of some of G&G’s counting principles (most notably, cardinality), because if these principles were in place, children would know, for example, that three means “three” and not just “a numerosity that is not two.”1 Given this state of affairs, B&W offer an alternative to the Principles before Skills view and argue instead that in the absence of the counting principles, a constellation of “linguistic cues [in the input] may play a significant role in children’s acquisition of number word meanin...

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...2009, and Sarnecka et al., 2007, for relevant proposals that address how syntactic distinctions in the input could enable children to understand how plurality is encoded in a language.) Brown (1957) first discussed the possibility of relying on surface-level syntactic cues as a means of acquiring the meaning of words. Since then, subsequent experimental work has demonstrated the success of syntactic bootstrapping for the acquisition of nouns and proper names (Katz, Baker, & Macnamara, 1974; Hall, Lee, & Belanger, 2001; Macnamara, 1982), the meaning of verbs (Fisher, 2002; Fisher et al., 1994; Gleitman, 1990; Landau & Gleitman, 1985; Naigles, 1990), and adjectives (Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Syrett, 2007; Syrett & Lidz, 2010). However, unlike previous accounts of word learning within the domain of language, a bootstrapping account of number-word learning would be an example of word learning across domains, whereby children would combine linguistic information with knowledge of the domain of natural number. The clearest proposal for a syntactic bootstrapping of number-word meaning has come from Bloom and Wynn (1997) (hereafter B&W), following earlier suggestions by Wynn (1992). The motivation for...

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...d modified by very should have an adjectival, and not a number, interpretation. Also of interest is the fact that participants were reluctant to assign the novel word a quantity interpretation in the prenominal condition, an environment in which both an adjective (e.g., those big cars) and a number word (e.g., those two cars) can occur. One possibility is that a number word interpretation is less likely than an adjectival interpretation in this environment. This may indicate that the default for a novel word interpretation is at the individual object level rather than the group/set level (see Bloom & Kelemen, 1995; Markman, 1990; Markman & Hutchinson, 1984; and Markman & Wachtel, 1988, for relevant discussions). However, it also may be that adjectives more naturally yield a restrictive interpretation in the prenominal position, providing essential or unique identifying information about a discourse referent in existence (Link, 1987; Alan Munn, personal communication, 2008). GENERAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS We asked whether syntactic patterns in the input can aid children when acquiring number-word meaning. We began by distinguishing two possible implementations of a syntactic bootstrapping approach—o...

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...langer, 2001; Macnamara, 1982), the meaning of verbs (Fisher, 2002; Fisher et al., 1994; Gleitman, 1990; Landau & Gleitman, 1985; Naigles, 1990), and adjectives (Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Syrett, 2007; Syrett & Lidz, 2010). However, unlike previous accounts of word learning within the domain of language, a bootstrapping account of number-word learning would be an example of word learning across domains, whereby children would combine linguistic information with knowledge of the domain of natural number. The clearest proposal for a syntactic bootstrapping of number-word meaning has come from Bloom and Wynn (1997) (hereafter B&W), following earlier suggestions by Wynn (1992). The motivation for their account is series of experimental findings by Wynn (1990, 1992)—since replicated in a number of laboratories—which appear to demonstrate that children go through a period of time during which they seem to know that number words refer to precise, unique numerosities without yet knowing which numerosity each number word picks out (cf. also D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 148 SYRETT, MUSOLINO, AND GELMAN Condry & Spelke, 2008). According to Wynn, such behavior repre...

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...the time, and four adults never accessed it. Of the remaining five, one accessed the quantity interpretation on the first trial only then patterned with the 0% acceptance group for trials 2–5. While the remaining four did not access this interpretation on trial 1 and maybe trial two, they favored it on trials 3–5 100% of the time. If we restrict our analysis to trials 3–5, we observe a categorical difference between two groups of participants: eight at 100% acceptance and five at 0% acceptance. Thus, the apparent chance pattern is the result of a misleading outcome of averaging responses (see Restle, 1962). Turning now to the children’s responses, also in Figure 2, we once again see a qualitative difference between the two conditions. Not only were children in the partitive condition unable to consistently access a quantity interpretation, but they also never supplied a justification that suggested such an interpretation when their choice was correct. This was so, despite some children having tagged and counted the objects they saw during training or familiarization. By contrast, children in the very condition almost never accessed a quantity interpretation, and half of these children explicitl...

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... constraints, and the discourse context in number word learning. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Number words present an interesting puzzle for theories of word learning. Their meaning is inherently abstract: “twoness” is not a property of individuals but rather of groups of individuals, be they concrete or abstract entities. Number words can also be used in a wide range of contexts for a variety of functions: a sequence, as in One, two, three; cardinal, as in two cats; ordinal, as in the third house on the left; measurement, as eight minutes long or eight-minute mile; and so on (cf. Fuson, 1988; Geurts, 2006 for discussion). What’s more, their distribution overlaps with that of other words, including nonexact quantifiers and adjectives (Bloom, 2000): Correspondence should be addressed to Kristen Syrett, Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University– New Brunswick, Psych Building, Addition, Busch Campus, 152 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8020. E-mail: k-syrett@ruccs.rutgers.edu D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 SYNTAX AND NUMBER WORD ACQUISITION 147 the two/many/happy girls. How, then, given this complex and variable picture, do child...

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...d a quantity interpretation. We kept those instances where Y was a definite or indefinite determiner (e.g., the, a) followed by a noun; a possessive or demonstrative (either followed by a noun, e.g., his/those toy, or as a full DP, e.g., his/those); an adjective-noun or quantifier-noun combination; a bare noun; or a pronoun. Again, we excluded instances where Y was a predicate (e.g., orange or bumpy). Note that including bare nouns such as lots of animals (Nina, file 3) or spoonfuls of sugar (Nina, file 53) also let in pseudopartitives. As these phrases also capture a part-whole relation (cf. Schwarzschild, 2006), they, too, are consistent with a quantity interpretation. Again, we do not make any claims about how the child would know to include or exclude certain lexical items to arrive at the partitive frame, since our interest is in the conclusions children can make about words appearing in this linguistic environment, provided they can identify the relevant frame. As with any other syntactic bootstrapping approach, we assume that the frame in question is a syntactically plausible unit and is identifiable to the learner. Results Table 4 illustrates the distribution of quantity-denoting words in the ...

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...ld be responsible for the chance-level performance in the nonframe conditions arises from the observation that studies in syntactic bootstrapping often pit two across-category interpretations against each other (e.g., noun v. adjective, or noun v. verb) (cf. Bernal, Lidz, Millotte, & Christophe, 2007; Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Waxman & Booth, 2001) or two variants of the same category (e.g., count v. mass or count v. proper nouns, or causativity or transitivity in verbs) (cf. Arunachalam & Waxman, 2010; Fisher, 2002; Hall et al., 2001; Katz et al., 1974; Naigles, 1990; Scott & Fisher, 2009; Yuan & Fisher, 2009). Could it be that when the two interpretations being considered are from different grammatical categories (i.e., adjective, numeral) but share similar syntactic positions (i.e., are both located in the Determiner Phrase) that this makes the assignment of a word meaning difficult? Or is it the case that word extension is made more difficult when the target interpretation is that of a number word (perhaps by virtue of it referring to a set-level, and not an object-level property)? We explore these questions in Experiment 2. EXPERIMENT 2A: CONTRASTING OBJECT AND SET SIZE WITH THE PARTITIVE AND V...

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...pants’ interpretations of the novel word in different conditions buttress this conclusion. Eleven of 15 participants in the partitive condition said that zav meant “two” (as opposed to a nonnumerical interpretation or a nonspecific quantity interpretation such as “some”). No one in the very condition provided a quantity interpretation; instead, they all said that the word zav meant “big” or “large(r).” Thus, the ability to extend word meaning to a number word interpretation may be compromised when otherwise robust syntactic cues are paired with perceptually salient object properties (see also Subrahmanyam, Landau, & Gelman, 1999). Although participants benefited from a manipulation of the experimental context that made a quantity interpretation more salient than a competing object property interpretation, a subset of the participants continued to assign an interpretation to the novel word that was inconsistent with the semantic constraints of the given syntactic environment. Thus, even adults who might never say or judge as grammatical a phrase such as !big of the cars nevertheless allowed a novel word appearing in the big slot to have this interpretation. By contrast, participants unequivocally recognized that a nov...

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...(3) does distinguish between number words and, for example, several, since number words but not several can be modified by adverbs such D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 SYNTAX AND NUMBER WORD ACQUISITION 151 as almost, approximately, exactly, and precisely. This distinction highlights differences in their semantic representations, since number words but not several mark discrete points or intervals on a scale. Although this is an oversimplification, given debates surrounding semantic and pragmatic accounts of number words and scalar implicatures (cf. Carston, 1990, 1998; Chierchia, 2006; Fox & Hackl, 2006; Gazdar, 1979; Grice, 1989; Horn, 1972, 1989; Levinson, 2000). However, even if we expand the list of surface-level cues, one problem remains: These cues are not universal. Cross-linguistically, language learners would need to rely on different syntactic cues to arrive at the same number word representation. It seems unlikely that children acquiring different languages would rely on a wholly different set of surface-level cues and yet converge on the same interpretation for these lexical items. Restricting our attention to English, we are left with ye...

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...owledge of the principles is finally induced relatively late during the preschool years. One line of the Discontinuity Hypothesis appeals to the possibility of bootstrapping numberword meaning from the language system (e.g., Barner, Libenson, Cheung, & Takasaki, 2009; Bloom & Wynn, 1997; Carey, 2004, 2009; Wynn, 1992). Although there are differences among these bootstrapping approaches, they all depend on there being a strong semantic similarity between number words and quantifiers and their having shared, but unique, distributions in the surface-level syntax. (See Clark & Nikitina, 2009, and Sarnecka et al., 2007, for relevant proposals that address how syntactic distinctions in the input could enable children to understand how plurality is encoded in a language.) Brown (1957) first discussed the possibility of relying on surface-level syntactic cues as a means of acquiring the meaning of words. Since then, subsequent experimental work has demonstrated the success of syntactic bootstrapping for the acquisition of nouns and proper names (Katz, Baker, & Macnamara, 1974; Hall, Lee, & Belanger, 2001; Macnamara, 1982), the meaning of verbs (Fisher, 2002; Fisher et al., 1994; Gleitman, 1990; Landau & Gleitm...

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...miner Phrase (DP)-level (i.e., adjective and number), or is it extension to number-word meaning itself that is difficult? This distinction bears upon any syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis that calls upon a learner to use the rules of language to arrive at a number word interpretation. The possibility that two within-DP interpretations could be responsible for the chance-level performance in the nonframe conditions arises from the observation that studies in syntactic bootstrapping often pit two across-category interpretations against each other (e.g., noun v. adjective, or noun v. verb) (cf. Bernal, Lidz, Millotte, & Christophe, 2007; Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Waxman & Booth, 2001) or two variants of the same category (e.g., count v. mass or count v. proper nouns, or causativity or transitivity in verbs) (cf. Arunachalam & Waxman, 2010; Fisher, 2002; Hall et al., 2001; Katz et al., 1974; Naigles, 1990; Scott & Fisher, 2009; Yuan & Fisher, 2009). Could it be that when the two interpretations being considered are from different grammatical categories (i.e., adjective, numeral) but share similar syntactic positions (i.e., are both located in the Determiner Phrase) that this makes the assignment of a word meaning difficult?...

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...DP interpretations could be responsible for the chance-level performance in the nonframe conditions arises from the observation that studies in syntactic bootstrapping often pit two across-category interpretations against each other (e.g., noun v. adjective, or noun v. verb) (cf. Bernal, Lidz, Millotte, & Christophe, 2007; Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Waxman & Booth, 2001) or two variants of the same category (e.g., count v. mass or count v. proper nouns, or causativity or transitivity in verbs) (cf. Arunachalam & Waxman, 2010; Fisher, 2002; Hall et al., 2001; Katz et al., 1974; Naigles, 1990; Scott & Fisher, 2009; Yuan & Fisher, 2009). Could it be that when the two interpretations being considered are from different grammatical categories (i.e., adjective, numeral) but share similar syntactic positions (i.e., are both located in the Determiner Phrase) that this makes the assignment of a word meaning difficult? Or is it the case that word extension is made more difficult when the target interpretation is that of a number word (perhaps by virtue of it referring to a set-level, and not an object-level property)? We explore these questions in Experiment 2. EXPERIMENT 2A: CONTRASTING OBJECT AND SET SIZE WI...

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...word interpretation. The possibility that two within-DP interpretations could be responsible for the chance-level performance in the nonframe conditions arises from the observation that studies in syntactic bootstrapping often pit two across-category interpretations against each other (e.g., noun v. adjective, or noun v. verb) (cf. Bernal, Lidz, Millotte, & Christophe, 2007; Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Waxman & Booth, 2001) or two variants of the same category (e.g., count v. mass or count v. proper nouns, or causativity or transitivity in verbs) (cf. Arunachalam & Waxman, 2010; Fisher, 2002; Hall et al., 2001; Katz et al., 1974; Naigles, 1990; Scott & Fisher, 2009; Yuan & Fisher, 2009). Could it be that when the two interpretations being considered are from different grammatical categories (i.e., adjective, numeral) but share similar syntactic positions (i.e., are both located in the Determiner Phrase) that this makes the assignment of a word meaning difficult? Or is it the case that word extension is made more difficult when the target interpretation is that of a number word (perhaps by virtue of it referring to a set-level, and not an object-level property)? We explore these questions in Experim...

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...rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 150 SYRETT, MUSOLINO, AND GELMAN Note that another surface-level cue that helps children to pick number words out of the speech stream is its appearance in a count list with a stable ordering. Because the counting principles and the arithmetic system include the requirement of an ordered list, children guided by these principles would recognize this ordered list in the environment. Presumably, because B&W were interested in cues arising from the syntax and the syntax-semantics interface, this cue was not included in their investigation. For discussion, see Bultinck (2005). In their analysis of these cues, B&W took the following approach. They first argued that by comparing the distribution of words across these environments and capitalizing on the mapping between the surface-level syntax and the underlying semantic representations, children may begin to identify number words in the input. They then sought to establish (a) whether for three predetermined sets of lexical items (the number words two through ten, some quantifiers, and some adjectives) these distributional cues are present in caregiver speech in a way that is informative about number-word meaning a...

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...e input could enable children to understand how plurality is encoded in a language.) Brown (1957) first discussed the possibility of relying on surface-level syntactic cues as a means of acquiring the meaning of words. Since then, subsequent experimental work has demonstrated the success of syntactic bootstrapping for the acquisition of nouns and proper names (Katz, Baker, & Macnamara, 1974; Hall, Lee, & Belanger, 2001; Macnamara, 1982), the meaning of verbs (Fisher, 2002; Fisher et al., 1994; Gleitman, 1990; Landau & Gleitman, 1985; Naigles, 1990), and adjectives (Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Syrett, 2007; Syrett & Lidz, 2010). However, unlike previous accounts of word learning within the domain of language, a bootstrapping account of number-word learning would be an example of word learning across domains, whereby children would combine linguistic information with knowledge of the domain of natural number. The clearest proposal for a syntactic bootstrapping of number-word meaning has come from Bloom and Wynn (1997) (hereafter B&W), following earlier suggestions by Wynn (1992). The motivation for their account is series of experimental findings by Wynn (1990, 1992)—since replicated in a number...

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...e rules of language to arrive at a number word interpretation. The possibility that two within-DP interpretations could be responsible for the chance-level performance in the nonframe conditions arises from the observation that studies in syntactic bootstrapping often pit two across-category interpretations against each other (e.g., noun v. adjective, or noun v. verb) (cf. Bernal, Lidz, Millotte, & Christophe, 2007; Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Waxman & Booth, 2001) or two variants of the same category (e.g., count v. mass or count v. proper nouns, or causativity or transitivity in verbs) (cf. Arunachalam & Waxman, 2010; Fisher, 2002; Hall et al., 2001; Katz et al., 1974; Naigles, 1990; Scott & Fisher, 2009; Yuan & Fisher, 2009). Could it be that when the two interpretations being considered are from different grammatical categories (i.e., adjective, numeral) but share similar syntactic positions (i.e., are both located in the Determiner Phrase) that this makes the assignment of a word meaning difficult? Or is it the case that word extension is made more difficult when the target interpretation is that of a number word (perhaps by virtue of it referring to a set-level, and not an object-level property)? We e...

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...rbal input as well as how knowledge of the principles is finally induced relatively late during the preschool years. One line of the Discontinuity Hypothesis appeals to the possibility of bootstrapping numberword meaning from the language system (e.g., Barner, Libenson, Cheung, & Takasaki, 2009; Bloom & Wynn, 1997; Carey, 2004, 2009; Wynn, 1992). Although there are differences among these bootstrapping approaches, they all depend on there being a strong semantic similarity between number words and quantifiers and their having shared, but unique, distributions in the surface-level syntax. (See Clark & Nikitina, 2009, and Sarnecka et al., 2007, for relevant proposals that address how syntactic distinctions in the input could enable children to understand how plurality is encoded in a language.) Brown (1957) first discussed the possibility of relying on surface-level syntactic cues as a means of acquiring the meaning of words. Since then, subsequent experimental work has demonstrated the success of syntactic bootstrapping for the acquisition of nouns and proper names (Katz, Baker, & Macnamara, 1974; Hall, Lee, & Belanger, 2001; Macnamara, 1982), the meaning of verbs (Fisher, 2002; Fisher et al., 1994; Glei...

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...eaning. 1Although note that G&G (1978) made clear that the three how-to-count principles are interrelated: the application of the cardinal principle depends on the child having first successfully tagged each item in a set using a stable-ordered list. Thus, it stands to reason that higher success rates would be positively correlated with smaller set sizes. 2A few notes on terminology. We do not assume that number words are ‘quantifiers’, given their variable function in language and relevant linguistic discussions about their compositional semantics and position in the syntactic structure (cf. Corver & Zwarts, 2006; Ionin & Matushansky, 2006). Here, we remain neutral and refer to them as denoting a specific quantity. However, by doing so, we do not mean to adopt one or the other semantic accounts of number word meaning. Finally, while we talk about the meaning of “number words,” this position itself is not without controversy. To be more accurate, we could talk about the interpretation assigned to sentences with “numerals,” or as G&G suggested, “numerlogs.” D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 SYNTAX AND NUMBER WORD ACQUISITION 149 ROLE OF LINGUISTIC CUES IN NUMBER...

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...ctives Eve 3/64 12/572 0 4.7% 2.1% 0% Peter 3/22 11/229 0 13.6% 4.8% 0% Naomi 1/22 19/407 0 4.5% 4.7% 0% giraffe (Nina, file 13), or top of the truck (Peter, file 13) may indicate that the discourse entity referred to by the word following of the can be broken down into parts, but they do not indicate that the word preceding of quantifies over sets of individuals or picks out a plurality denoted by the Y item, which is what number words do. In these examples, the singular count nouns glass, giraffe, and truck are individual, whole objects, rather than collections of discrete individuals. (See Ferenz & Prasada, 2002, for relevant findings concerning children’s knowledge of when plural marking on the Y item is necessitated or not.) Finally, we note that while B&W found no occurrences of the partitive in the results from their adjective search, our results turned up 94 instances of “predicate” (or “adjective”) tokens (see Table 3 for a description). Twelve of these 94 tokens involved the adjective careful, and 12 involved the adjective nice, both of which are frequent in both child-directed speech and children’s early vocabularies (Dale & Fenson, 1996), and neither of which were on the list of adjectives s...

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... conditions: one in which the novel word was in the partitive frame (e.g., zav of the cars) and one in which the novel word was modified by very (e.g., the very zav cars). In each case, participants were asked to respond to five trials with five different objects across the experimental session. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two predetermined trial orders. An analysis revealed no item or order effects. Each trial had the same structure, modeled after the intermodal preferential looking paradigm (cf. Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, Cauley, & Gordon, 1987; Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 1996; Hollich, Rocroi, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 1999; Spelke, 1979) and previous word-learning studies (cf. Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Waxman & Booth, 2001). See Table 8 for a representative trial. (The “control” condition indicated on the bottom row is included as part of Experiment 2b.) A four-second screen displaying an animated animal (a spider or a snail) accompanied by a musical sound effect signaled the beginning of each trial. A blank screen then appeared for three seconds, and a female voice invited the participants to look at some objects (e.g., “Let’s look at cars!”). The trial then proceeded, and was segmented into three distinct p...

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...serves to help children identify the relevant data and use rules; this is because the principles underlying verbal counting are isomorphic to the nonverbal ones. Once the data and their use conditions are identified, a child can proceed to learn the verbal count list and where number words can be used. This position is often referred to as the “Principles before Skill” or the “Continuity Hypothesis,” which draws some support from young children’s ability to identify the difference between acceptable and unacceptable counting strings as well as the effect of unexpected changes in number (e.g., Cordes & Gelman, 2005; Gelman, 1993; Gelman and Gallistel, 1978; Gelman & Greeno, 1989; Greeno, Riley, & Gelman, 1984). According to the “Skill before Principles” view or the “Discontinuity Hypothesis,” knowledge of these principles is emergent, and is therefore not what children initially rely on to identify and learn the meaning of number words (e.g., Briars & Siegler, 1984; Carey, 2004; Fuson, 1988; Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Le Corre, Van de Walle, Brannon, & Carey, 2006; Le Corre & Carey, 2007; Spelke & Tsivkin, 2001). They set as their goal explaining how children identify and learn the meaning of number words f...

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...enable children to understand how plurality is encoded in a language.) Brown (1957) first discussed the possibility of relying on surface-level syntactic cues as a means of acquiring the meaning of words. Since then, subsequent experimental work has demonstrated the success of syntactic bootstrapping for the acquisition of nouns and proper names (Katz, Baker, & Macnamara, 1974; Hall, Lee, & Belanger, 2001; Macnamara, 1982), the meaning of verbs (Fisher, 2002; Fisher et al., 1994; Gleitman, 1990; Landau & Gleitman, 1985; Naigles, 1990), and adjectives (Booth & Waxman, 2003, 2009; Syrett, 2007; Syrett & Lidz, 2010). However, unlike previous accounts of word learning within the domain of language, a bootstrapping account of number-word learning would be an example of word learning across domains, whereby children would combine linguistic information with knowledge of the domain of natural number. The clearest proposal for a syntactic bootstrapping of number-word meaning has come from Bloom and Wynn (1997) (hereafter B&W), following earlier suggestions by Wynn (1992). The motivation for their account is series of experimental findings by Wynn (1990, 1992)—since replicated in a number of laboratories—which...

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...rty of a proper subset (e.g., the “big” or “small” cars) or the entire set of objects on the screen (e.g., the “pretty,” “shiny,” “nice” cars, etc., which could be all of them). A female native speaker of American English (the first author) recorded the auditory stimuli in a sound-attenuated recording booth. The speaker read from a script and produced the stimuli in D ow nl oa de d by [R ut ge rs U ni ve rs ity ] a t 0 7: 53 2 4 M ay 2 01 2 166 SYRETT, MUSOLINO, AND GELMAN a style modeling the prosody of child-directed speech. The first author then edited the sound files using Praat software (Boersma & Weenink, 2007), controlling for articulation, pitch, amplitude, length, and overall consistency. Next, during the contrast phase, the target subset disappeared, and the speaker asked what happened, again placing the target word in the syntactic context for the condition (e.g., “Oh, no! What happened? Zav of the cars are missing!” or “The very zav cars are missing!”). The subset then reappeared, and the voice announced their return. Before the test phase, a blank screen appeared for four seconds, and the speaker invited the participants to look at more of the same kind of object (e.g., “Let’s look at more ca...

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... while B&W’s corpus analysis yielded highly suggestive results about the viability of a syntactic bootstrapping approach to number-word learning, there are reasons to be cautious about their conclusions. First, it is not clear that these syntactic cues can, in B&W’s words, “tell children that number words refer to absolute quantities of discrete individuals” (p. 519). None of these cues, either separately or in combination, uniquely picks out number words. Notice, for example, that the quantifiers several and each have the same distribution as number words with respect to these four cues (cf. Kayne, 2007; Sarnecka & Gelman, 2004). (2) Count v. mass nouns a. !three rice (but three bowls) b. !several/each rice (but several bowls/each bowl) (3) Modifiers a. !very three children b. !very several children/!very each child (4) Position with respect to adjectives a. !good three children (but three good children) b. !good several children/!good each child (but several good children/each good child) (5) Appearance in the partitive a. three of the children b. several/each of the children Expanding the range of modifiers beyond those in (3) does distinguish between number words and, for example, several...