Talking about quantities in space: Vague quantifiers, context and similarity
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Kenny R. Coventry
Abstract
In this paper we examine how vague quantifiers, such as few, several, lots of, map onto non-linguistic number systems. In particular our focus is to examine how judgements about vague quantifiers are affected by the presence of objects in visual scenes other than those being referred to. An experiment is presented that manipulated the number of objects in a visual scene (men playing golf; the ‘focus’ objects) together with the number of other objects in those scenes and their similarity — in terms of form (women or crocodiles) and function (playing golf, not playing golf) — to the focus objects. We show that the number of other objects in a scene impacts upon quantifiers judgements even when those objects are in a different category to the focus objects. We discuss the results in terms of the mapping between the large approximate number (estimation) system and language.
© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
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- Adaptive cognition without massive modularity
- Do classifiers predict differences in cognitive processing? A study of nominal classification in Mandarin Chinese
- The conceptual structure of deontic meaning: A model based on geometrical principles
- Talking about quantities in space: Vague quantifiers, context and similarity
- Abstract motion is no longer abstract
- Mutual bootstrapping between language and analogical processing
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Articles in the same Issue
- Adaptive cognition without massive modularity
- Do classifiers predict differences in cognitive processing? A study of nominal classification in Mandarin Chinese
- The conceptual structure of deontic meaning: A model based on geometrical principles
- Talking about quantities in space: Vague quantifiers, context and similarity
- Abstract motion is no longer abstract
- Mutual bootstrapping between language and analogical processing
- Reviews
