Acquisition of generic noun phrases in Chinese: Learning about lions without an '-s'

Journal of Child Language

Volumn 39, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 130-161

  Tardif, Twila ^a   Gelman, Susan A ^a   Fu, Xiaolan ^b   Zhu, Liqi ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

^b INSTITUTE OF PSYCHOLOGY   (China)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADULT; ARTICLE; CHILD; CHINA; FEMALE; HUMAN; LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT; LINGUISTICS; MALE; PRESCHOOL CHILD;

ADULT; CHILD; CHILD LANGUAGE; CHILD, PRESCHOOL; CHINA; FEMALE; HUMANS; LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT; LINGUISTICS; MALE;

EID: 82955247982     PISSN: 03050009     EISSN: 14697602     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000910000735     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. Bloom, A. (1981). The linguistic shaping of thought : A study in the impact of language on thinking in China and the West. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
2. Brooks, P. J., Jia, X., Braine, M. D. S. & DaGraca Dias, M. (1998). A cross-linguistic study of children's comprehension of universal quantifiers: A comparison of Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese and English. First Language 18, 33-79.
3. Carlson, G. (1977). Reference to kinds in English. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
4. Carlson, G. N. & Pelletier, F. J. (eds) 1995. The generic book. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
5. Cheng, L. L.-S. (1995). On dou-quantification. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 4, 197-234.
6. Cheng, L. & Sybesma, R. (1999). Bare and not so bare nouns. Linguistic Inquiry 30(4), 509-542.
7. Chomsky, N. (1975). Reflections on language. New York: Pantheon.
8. Cimpian, A., Gelman, S. A. & Brandone, A. (2010). Theory-based considerations influence the interpretation of generic sentences. Language and Cognitive Processes 25, 261-76.
9. Cimpian, A. & Markman, E. M. (2008). Preschool children's use of cues to generic meaning. Cognition 107, 19-53. (Pubitemid 351375184)
10. Dahl, O. (1975). On generics. In E. L. Kennan (ed.), Formal semantics of natural language, 99-111. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
11. Erbaugh, M. S. (2006). Chinese classifiers : Their use and acquisition. In P. Li (ed.), Handbook of Chinese psycholinguistics, 39-51. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
12. Gelman, S. A. (2003). The essential child : Origins of essentialism in everyday thought. New York: Oxford University Press.
13. Gelman, S. A. (2004). Learning words for kinds : Generic noun phrases in acquisition. In D. G. Hall & S. R. Waxman (eds), Weaving a lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
14. Gelman, S. A. & Bloom, P. (2007). Developmental changes in the understanding of generics. Cognition 105, 166-83. (Pubitemid 47223177)
15. Gelman, S. A. & Raman, L. (2003). Preschool children use linguistic form class and pragmatic cues to interpret generics. Child Development 74(1), 308-325. (Pubitemid 37244604)
16. Gelman, S. A. & Tardif, T. Z. (1998). Generic noun phrases in English and Mandarin: An examination of child-directed speech. Cognition 66, 215-48. (Pubitemid 128408787)
17. Goldin-Meadow, S., Gelman, S. A. & Mylander, C. (2005). Expressing generic concepts with and without a language model. Cognition 96, 109-126. (Pubitemid 40733602)
18. Hollander, M. A., Gelman, S. A. & Star, J. (2002). Children's interpretation of generic noun phrases. Developmental Psychology 38, 883-94.
19. Huang, S.-Z. (1996). Quantification and predication in Mandarin Chinese: A case study of dou. Institute for Research in Cognitive Science Technical Reports. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania. Available from: http://repository/upenn.edu/ircs-reports/114.
20. Hurewitz, F., Papafragou, A., Gleitman, L. & Gelman, R. (2006). Asymmetries in the acquisition of numbers and quantifiers. Language Learning and Development 2, 77-96.
21. Huttenlocher, J., Vasilyeva, M. & Cymerman, E. (2002). Language input and child syntax. Cognitive Psychology 45, 337-74. (Pubitemid 39659780)
22. Leslie, S. J. (2007). Generics and the structure of the mind. Philosophical Perspectives 21, 375-403.
23. Leslie, S. J. (in press). Generics. In E. Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online/: www.rep.routledge.com.
24. Mannheim, B., Gelman, S. A., Escalante, C., Huayhua, M. & Puma, R. (2011). A developmental analysis of generic nouns in Southern Peruvian Quechua. Language Learning and Development 7(1), 1-23.
25. Milne, A. A. (1928). The house at Pooh corner. New York: E. P. Dutton.
26. Prasada, S. (2000). Acquiring generic knowledge. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4, 66-72. (Pubitemid 30089269)
27. Prasada, S. & Dillingham, E. M. (2006). Principled and statistical connections in common sense conception. Cognition 99, 73-112. (Pubitemid 43145922)
28. Quine, W. V. O. (1960). Word and object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
29. Sarnecka, B. W. & Gelman, S. A. (2004). Six does not just mean a lot : Preschoolers see number words as specific. Cognition 92, 329-52. (Pubitemid 38270270)
30. Slobin, D. (1985). The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Vol. 2: Theoretical Issues. Hillsdale, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
31. Smith, C. L. (1979). Children's understanding of natural language hierarchies. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 27, 437-58.
32. Smith, C. L. (1980). Quantifiers and question answering in young children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 30, 191-205.
33. Smith, L. B., Jones, S. S. & Landau, B. (1996). Naming in young children : A dumb attentional mechanism? Cognition 60(2), 143-71. (Pubitemid 126399449)
34. Tabachnick, B. & Fidell, L. (1989). Using multivariate statistics. New York: Harper & Row.
35. Yang, R. (2001). Common nouns, classifiers, and quantification in Chinese. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Rutgers University. Available from: http://ling.rutgers.edu/papers/ RYThesis.PDF.
36. Yoshida, H. & Smith, L. B. (2001). Early noun lexicons in English and Japanese. Cognition 82, B63-B74. (Pubitemid 33041321)
37. Yu, C. & Smith, L. B. (2007). Rapid word learning under uncertainty via cross-situational statistics. Psychological Science 18(5), 414-20.