10 Count Nouns, Sortal Concepts, and the Nature of Early Words

Abstract

Abstract Sortal terms are an important subclass of the count terms (nonmass terms), namely, those that provide criteria for individuation and identity. These terms are all the things that mass terms are sometimes said not to be, and for this reason it is illuminating to see the ways that acquisition of such terms differs from or matches that of mass terms. Nonsortal terms, such as adjectives like red and mass terms like oatmeal, cannot be counted unless there is some sort of sortal or classifier associated with them: we can count the number of red balls in a room but not the number of “(the?) red” in a room. We can count bowls of oatmeal on the table but not “the oatmeal” on the table. The research reported here investigates how representations of sortal concepts develop in infancy and how learning count terms plays a causal role in constructing these concepts.