Listeners use descriptive contrast to disambiguate novel referents and make inferences about novel categories

In the face of unfamiliar language or objects, description is one cue people can use to learn about both. Beyond narrowing potential referents to those that match a descriptor, listeners could infer that a described object is one that contrasts with other relevant objects of the same type (e.g., “The tall cup” contrasts with another, shorter cup). This contrast may be in relation to other objects present in the environment or to the referent’s category. In two experiments, we investigate whether listeners use descriptive contrast to resolve reference and make inferences about novel referents’ categories. While participants use size adjectives contrastively to guide novel referent choice, they do not reliably do so using color adjectives (Experiment 1). Their contrastive inferences go beyond the current referential context: participants use description to infer that a novel object is atypical of its category (Experiment 2). Overall, people are able to use descriptive contrast to resolve reference and make inferences about a novel object’s category, allowing them to infer new word meanings and learn about new categories’ feature distributions.

Investigating the Mechanisms Driving Referent Selection and Retention in Toddlers at Typical and Elevated Likelihood for Autism Spectrum Disorder

It was suggested that children's referent selection may not lay memory traces sufficiently strong to lead to retention of new word-object mappings. If this was the case we expect incorrect selections to be easily rectified through feedback. Previous work suggested this to be the case in toddlers at typical likelihood (TL) but not in those at elevated likelihood (EL) for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (Bedford et al., 2013). Yet group differences in lexical knowledge may have confounded these findings. Here, TL (N = 29) and EL toddlers (N = 75) chose one of two unfamiliar objects as a referent for a new word. Both groups retained the word-referent mapping above chance when their choices were immediately reinforced but were at chance after corrective feedback. The same pattern of results was obtained when children observed another experimenter make the initial referent choice. Thus, children's referent choices lay memory traces that compete with subsequent correction; these strong word-object associations are not a result of children actively choosing potential referents for new words.

Anaphoric reference in creoles and noncreoles

ABSTRACTAnaphoric referential mechanisms are comparatively analyzed in a creole-related set of varieties (the Belizean continuum) and a noncreole language variety (formal and informal styles of American English), with the intent to evaluate the claim that creole languages display linguistic systems distinct from those of other languages. Three categories of topic referents (nominal, pronominal, and periphrastic) are identified in 27 Belizean texts and 12 American texts, and the effect on referent choice of two variables (topic number and stylistic/lectal context) are investigated. Some of the resulting findings inclued: (1) Singl-topic samples display consistent referential strategies in all Belizean lects, whereas multitopic texts indicate lect-linked variations; and (2) Belizean lects are strikingly similar to spontaneous styles of American English, whereas formal American English is markedly distinct in its use of referents, both from Belizean (including acrolects) and from casual English.