The Conceptual Representation of Number. Issue 7 (July 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Patson, Nikole D.; George, Gerret; Warren, Tessa
• Is Part Of: Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. Volume 67:Issue 7(2014)
• Page Start: 1349
• Page End: 1365
• Publication Date: 2014-07
• Subjects: Conceptual representations -- Language comprehension -- Number -- Plurals -- Semantics; Psychology, Experimental -- Periodicals; Psychophysiology -- Periodicals; Psychology, Comparative -- Periodicals; 150.72405
• DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2013.863372
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1747-0218

Abstract

The experiments reported here investigated the format of plural conceptual representations using a picture-matching paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants read sentences that ended with a singular noun phrase (NP), a two -quantified plural NP, or a plural definite description [ The parents handed the child the (two) crayon/s ] and then saw a picture of one or multiple referents for the NP. Judgement times to confirm that there was overlap between the pictured object(s) and a noun in the sentence showed an interaction between the NP's number and NP–picture match. For singular NPs and two -quantified NPs, participants were reliably faster to respond "yes" to a picture that had the exact number of objects specified by the NP, but for plural definite descriptions, the effect of the number of pictured items was not reliable. Experiment 2 extended this finding to conceptual plurals. Participants read sentences biased toward either a collective ( Together the men carried a box—box is interpreted as singular) or distributed ( Each of the men carried a box—box is likely interpreted as plural) reading. Experiment 2 showed the same interaction between NP conceptual plurality and NP–picture match as that in Experiment 1. These results suggest that: (a) our default conceptual representations for plural definite descriptions are no more similar to images of small sets of multiple items than to images of singular items; and (b) the difference between singular and plural conceptual representations is unlikely to be simply the presence or absence of a plural feature. The results are consistent with theories in which plurality is unmarked, such that some plural NPs can refer to singular referents [e.g., Sauerland, U., Anderssen, J., & Yatsushiro, J. (2005). The plural is semantically unmarked. In S. Kepser & M. Reis (Eds.), Linguistic evidence (pp. 413–434). Berlin: de Gruyter].