Sensitivity to extralinguistic cues to identify generic and non-generic meaning

• Authors: Karczewski, Daniel , Buivolova, Olga

Abstracts

EN

The authors are thankful to Anna Bakłażec who designed pictorial stimuli for the study.

EN

Generic sentences convey generalizations about kinds. In contrast, non-generics express facts about specific individuals or groups of individuals. However, to identify generic meaning, we have to integrate multiple cues. This study tested whether the discrepancy between the noun phrase and the number of objects (extralinguistic cues) present should force a generic interpretation whereas the match between the noun phrase and the number of objects present would give rise to a non-generic interpretation. Results demonstrated that adults are sensitive to the match and the mismatch situations in three out of four conditions tested. The data also indicate the importance of world knowledge cues in construing sentences as generic.

Keywords

EN

generics; non-generics; extralinguistic cues; adults; Russian

• Publisher: The University of Bialystok
• Journal: Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 10

Dates

published

2015

Contributors

author

Karczewski, Daniel

author

Buivolova, Olga

References

• Akhutina, T. 2015. Luria’s classification of aphasias and its theoretical basis. Aphasiology, 30, 1–20. doi: 10.1080/02687038.2015.1070950
• Alda, M., Beyssade, C., and Del Prete, F. (eds.) 2012. Genericity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Brandone, A.C., and Gelman, S.A. 2009. Differences in preschoolers’ and adults’ use of generics about novel animals and artifacts: A window onto a conceptual divide. Cognition, 110(1), 1–22. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2008.08.005
• Carlson, Gregory N. 1980. Reference to Kinds in English. New York: Garland.
• Cimpian, A., Meltzer, T. J. and Markman, E. M. 2011. Preschoolers’ use of morphosyntactic cues to identify generic sentences: Indefinite singular noun phrases, tense, and aspect. Child Development, 82, 1561–1578. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01615.x
• Cimpian, A., and Markman, E. M. 2008. Preschool children’s use of cues to generic meaning. Cognition, 107, 19–53. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2007.07.008
• Dąbrowska, E. 2012. “Different speakers, different grammars: Individual differences in native language attainment”. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 2:3, 219-253. doi: 10.1075/lab.2.3.01dab
• Dayal, Veneeta. 2011. “Bare Noun Phrases”. In C. Maeinborn, K. von Heusinger and P. Portner (eds.), Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning, 33.2, 1087-1108.
• Dragoy, O., Bergelson, M., Iskra, E., Laurinavichyute, A., Mannova, E., Skvortsov, A., and Statnikov, A. 2015. Comprehension of reversible constructions in semantic aphasia. Aphasiology, 30, 1–22. doi: 10.1080/02687038.2015.1063582
• Ermolenko, S. S. 1987. Образные средства морфологии. Киев: Наукова думка.
• Gelman, S. A. 2003. The Essential Child. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Gelman, S. A. and Raman, L. 2003. Preschool children use linguistic form class and pragmatic cues to interpret generics. Child Development, 74, 308–325. doi: 10.1111/1467-8624.00537
• Gelman, S. A., Coley, J. D., Rosengren, K., Hartman, E., and Pappas, A. 1998. “Beyond labeling: The role of parental input in the acquisition of richly structured categories”. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 235, Vol. 63, No.1.
• Golovan, E. A. 2013. “Переносное значение формы единственного числа имен существительных и их нереферентное употребление”. In Akhmetova, M.N., Ivanova, U.V., Laktionov, K.S., Komogortsev, M.G., Akhmetova, V.V., Brezgin, V.S., Kotlyarov, A.V., and Yakhina, A.S. (eds.), Современная филология: материалы II международной научной конференции (Уфа, январь 2013 г.). Уфа: Лето, 62–64.
• Jespersen, O. 2002. Философия грамматики. Москва: Едиториал УРСС.
• Karczewski, D. 2016. Generyczność w języku i w myśleniu. Studium kognitywne. Kraków: Universitas.
• Krifka, M., Pelletier, F. J., Carlson, G. N., ter Meulen, A., Link, G., and Chierchia G. 1995. “Genericity: An Introduction”. In G. N. Carlson and F.J. Pelletier (eds.), The Generic Book. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1–124.
• Leslie, S.-J. 2007. Generics and the structure of the mind. Philosophical Perspectives, 21, 375–403. doi: 10.1111/j.1520-8583.2007.00138.x
• Leshkova, O. O. 1984. “К вопросу о функционально-семантической категории собирательности в русском и польском языках”. Советское славяноведение 5, 92–101.
• Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Pappas, A., and Gelman S. A. 1998. “Generic noun phrases in mother-child conversations”. Journal of Child Language 25, 19-33. doi: 10.1017/S0305000997003292
• Peirce, J. W. 2009. Generating stimuli for neuroscience using PsychoPy. Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, 2(10), 1–8. doi:10.3389/neuro.11.010.2008
• Shelyakin, M. A. 1985. “О функциональной модели форм числа существительных в русском языке”. In Ученые записки Тартуского государственного университета №719: Функциональные аспекты грамматики русского языка. Тарту: Издательство Тартуского университета, 3–22.

Identifiers

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/11320/5295

DOI

10.15290/cr.2015.10.3.01