Abstract
This paper reports on a study that uses a novel methodology, the minimal part identification task, in order to probe the relationship between morphosyntax and interpretation. English, Korean and Mandarin Chinese differ from one another with regard to the count/mass distinction. Building on prior research but using a new methodology, this study examines whether speakers of these three languages also differ in how they interpret count vs. mass nouns. The findings, while uncovering some language-specific effects of morphosyntax, point to the importance of universality, and suggest that interpretation drives morphosyntax rather than the other way around.
Highlights
The object/substance distinction is cognitive, while the count/mass distinction is linguistic; in plural-marking languages like English, there are a number of diagnostics for whether a noun is count or mass, see Table 1
PARTICIPANTS. 20 native speakers of English residing in the U.S, and 20 native speakers of Korean residing in South Korea completed the grammaticality judgment task (GJT)
English speakers performed as expected given English morhposyntax, rejecting the singular form in categories 1 and 2, rejecting the plural form in categories 4 through 6, and accepting both forms in category 3
Summary
The object/substance distinction is cognitive, while the count/mass distinction is linguistic; in plural-marking languages like English, there are a number of diagnostics for whether a noun is count or mass, see Table 1. In languages like English, which have a fully grammaticized count/mass distinction, the relationship between atomicity and morphosyntax is not direct: e.g., furniture is atomic yet mass, while chocolate(s) can be either mass or count (see Table 1). There is cross-linguistic variation with regard to which nouns are count vs mass: e.g., spinach is mass in English but count in French; beans is count in English but mass in Russian Such nouns have been labeled flexible nouns in the literature: note that nouns can be flexible both across languages (as in the case of beans and spinach) and within a language (as in the case of chocolate(s) or stone(s) in English). Prior studies have used two types of tasks to address the relationship between the object/substance distinction and count/mass morphosyntax: the object/substance rating task and the quantity judgment task. Despite clear morphosyntactic differences between English and Japanese, the two participant groups performed very : nouns that are count in English (e.g., ball) were classified as denoting objects in both languages; nouns that are mass in English (e.g., water) were classified as substance-denoting in both languages; and many food-denoting nouns (e.g., pizza, banana) received a mix of ratings, in both languages
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