Nouns are both mass and count: Evidence from unclassified nouns in adult and child Mandarin Chinese

Jing Lin,Jeannette Schaeffer

doi:10.5334/gjgl.406

Abstract

This paper examines the interpretation of unclassified nouns in Mandarin Chinese from the perspective of three theoretical approaches to the mass-count distinction in Mandarin: a lexico-syntactic approach (Doetjes 1997; Cheng &amp; Sybesma 1998), a syntax-driven approach (Borer 2005), and a hybrid approach (Pelletier 2012). Employing a Quantity Judgment Task (Barner &amp; Snedeker 2005), we examined the interpretation of unclassified nouns of different ontological types (count, mass, flexible, object-mass) in both adult and child Mandarin. In order to explain possible interpretational preferences, we also analysed the distributions of the tested nouns in the Chinese Internet Corpus (Sharoff 2006). The results of 27 adults and 55 children (2;11–5;09), together with the corpus data provide strong support for Pelletier. We therefore conclude that Mandarin nouns are semantically both count and mass, and receive a number-based or a volume-based interpretation according to the type of classifier they appear with. However, we argue for one exception in this respect: following Bale &amp; Barner (2009) we assume that nouns of the object-mass type (e.g., furniture) are marked for individualization in the lexicon. Finally, the emergence of adultlike preferences for number-based or volume-based interpretations in child Mandarin is argued to be linked to the acquisition of the classifier system.

Highlights

In the world surrounding us, entities are divided into different categories depending on whether they are countable
This paper examines the interpretation of unclassified nouns in Mandarin Chinese from the perspective of three theoretical approaches to the mass-count distinction in Mandarin: a lexico-syntactic approach (Doetjes 1997; Cheng & Sybesma 1998), a syntax-driven approach (Borer 2005), and a hybrid approach (Pelletier 2012)
Employing a Quantity Judgment Task (Barner & Snedeker 2005), we examined the interpretation of unclassified nouns of different ontological types in both adult and child Mandarin

Summary

Introduction

In the world surrounding us, entities are divided into different categories depending on whether they are countable Countable entities such as bird or ball refer to individual objects, which have clear boundaries, whereas uncountable entities such as dough or water refer to substances, which do not seem to have a clear boundary (see Quine 1960; Jackendoff 1993). Count nouns can be accompanied by an indefinite article, or a plural marker, and can be directly modified by numerals; whereas mass nouns do not allow these possibilities This is exemplified in (1) and (2). Mandarin Chinese is a classifier language, in which numerals are not allowed to directly modify count nouns, as opposed to number-marking languages such as English. As mass classifiers do not denote naturally existing quantificational units, they can co-occur with both nouns such as shu ‘book’ and nouns such as shui ‘water’, as exemplified in (4)

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion