Speaker: Mieke Slim (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics)
Title: Are all, every and each all the same? The trajectory of universality in the development of English universal quantifiers
Date: Thu 12 Oct
Location: Lipsius 2.17
Time: 16:15–17:30
Most languages have multiple universal quantifiers, like all, every, and each. These quantifiers share a common core of universality (that is, they all quantify over a full set), but differ along other dimensions. In particular, the use of each is more restricted to that of all. Since each is distributive, it can only express that a predicate separately applies to each individual member of the quantified set. The quantifier all, however, can also pair a predicate to the quantified set collectively.
When children learn universal quantifier, they therefore need to figure out a quantifier’s universality but also their distributivity. Several studies suggest that children understand that quantifiers like all and each are universal from early on, and become sensitive to the differences in distributivity later on in development (e.g., Brooks & Braine, 1996; Pagliarini et al., 2012). In this talk, I will present the results of three experiments that paint a different picture.
Experiment 1 was a ‘Give-a-Quantifier’ task, in which English-speaking children were asked to give all/each/every/all/some/dax objects to a puppet. The results showed that 4- and 5-year olds consistently gave the full set of items, but even 7-year-olds do not consistently treat each as a universal quantifier.
In Experiment 2, we zoomed in on children’s understanding of each. Children were shown animations of Cookie Monster biting 0, 2, or 3 out of 3 cookies, and asked “Did Cookie Monster bite the/each/two/dax (of the) cookies?”. Again, this experiment showed that even seven-year-olds did not consistently give a universal reading to each.
Experiment 3 was another Give-a-Quantifier task, but now the quantifiers were put in object position. In this experiment, the children were asked to give “each/every/all/some/dax of the fish“ objects. Data collection of this experiment is still underway, but preliminary results show that children year-old children consistently assign a universal reading of each from the age of six.
Altogether, the results of our three experiments indicate that children acquire the universality of each later than they acquire the universality of all and every. This raises questions about how children represent the semantics of each, and how they end up acquiring full understanding of universal quantification.
Note: Data were originally collected by Roman Feiman (Brown University) and David Barner (University of California San Diego).