Quantity judgments and individuation: evidence that mass nouns count
Three experiments explored the semantics of the mass-count distinction inyoung children and adults. In Experiments 1 and 2, the quantity judgmentsof participants provided evidence that some mass nouns refer toindividuals, as such. Participants judged one large portion of stuff to be”more” than three tiny portions for substance-mass nouns (e.g. mustard,ketchup), but chose according to number for count nouns (e.g. shoes, candles)and object-mass nouns (e.g. furniture, jewelry). These results suggest thatsome mass nouns quantify over individuals, and that therefore reference toindividuals does not distinguish count nouns from mass nouns. Thus,Experiments 1 and 2 failed to support the hypothesis that there existone-to- one mappings between mass-count syntax and semantics for eitheradults or young children. In Experiment 3, it was found that for mass-countflexible terms (e.g. string, stone) participants based quantity judgmentson number when the terms were used with count syntax, but on total amountof stuff when used with mass syntax. Apparently, the presence of discretephysical objects in a scene (e.g. stones) is not sufficient to permitquantity judgments based on number. It is proposed that object-mass nouns(e.g. furniture) can be used to refer to individuals due to lexically specified grammatical features that normally occur in count syntax. Also, wesuggest that children learning language parse words that refer toindividuals as count nouns unless given morpho-syntactic and referentialevidence to the contrary, in which case object-mass nouns are acquired.