Syntactic and Semantic Cues for Acquisition of Mass/Count Superordinates

Children’s acquisition of language has been hypothesized to be supported by a bootstrapping process between syntax and semantics. Children notice the correspondence between the meaning of expressions and their lexical categories, which allow them to learn these expressions and their grammatical rules more effectively. One syntactic distinction that children in some languages have to learn is the mass-count distinction, which has been theorized to be acquired with a bootstrapping process using one-to-one bidirectional mappings between syntax and semantics. In this view, count nouns denote individuated entities, while mass nouns denote non-individuated entities (Quine, 1960; Macnamara, 1972) – a correspondence that is used by children to learn mass and count nouns. However, mass superordinate nouns that refer to individuated objects (such as furniture and jewelry) appear to be counterexamples to the bidirectional mapping theory (Gillon, 1999; Chierchia, 1998). To reconcile these counterexamples, some theorists posit that mass nouns actually denote entities that are construed to be non individuated, regardless of their ontological status as individuated objects or unindividuated phenomena (Bloom, 1994; McCawley, 1975; Wisniewski, Imai & Casey, 1996). The current study tests a semantic contrast proposed by Wisniewski et al (1996) as corresponding to mass-count syntax for superordinate nouns: mass nouns denote objects that concurrently participate in a function, while count nouns denote objects participating in a function individually. We show that there is no evidence for the bidirectional mapping theory: adult English speakers showed no differential preference for functional context when shown either novel nouns in mass or count syntax. The results instead support a mass non-specificity theory (Gillon, 1999; Barner & Snedeker, 2006): while count nouns denote individuated objects, mass nouns are unspecified in their construal and can be flexibly individuated or not.