Language, thought, and real nouns.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Science
• Linguistics
• Psychology

Background:

• Theories suggest that acquiring a mass-count language, like English, influences how speakers conceptualize objects compared to speakers of classifier languages, such as Japanese.
• Previous research indicated cross-linguistic differences in early word learning and conceptual development, attributing them to linguistic influences on universal ontologies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether learning mass-count syntax in English alters conceptualization of entities compared to classifier languages like Japanese.
• To determine if cross-linguistic differences in word extension are due to non-linguistic thought or online lexical statistics.

Main Methods:

• Utilized three tasks: object-substance rating, quantity judgment, and word extension, comparing English and Japanese speakers.
• Assessed Mandarin-English bilinguals using a word extension task, testing them in both English and Mandarin with ambiguous syntax.

Main Results:

• Object-substance rating and quantity judgment tasks showed minimal effect of mass-count syntax on familiar noun interpretation between English and Japanese speakers.
• Speakers of English were more likely to interpret novel ambiguous expressions as referring to objects, attributed to the higher frequency of count nouns in English.
• Mandarin-English bilinguals extended novel words based on the language of testing: English-based extension favored objects, while Mandarin-based extension favored materials.

Conclusions:

• Cross-linguistic differences in word extension are mediated by online lexical statistics, not fundamental differences in non-linguistic thought.
• Speakers of different languages utilize a universal set of lexical meanings, with mass-count syntax enabling language-specific selection of these meanings.