大学生颜色词分类的研究

运用自然分类和多维标度法．对279名大学生进行了11种基本颜色词的分类研究、结果表明,大学生将11种基本颜色词分成三类：(1)非彩色,包括黑、白、灰,也包括色彩暗淡的棕色;(2)暖色,包括红、橙、黄和粉红色;(3)冷色．包括绿、蓝和紫。基本颜色词的语义空间有两个纬度：(1)彩色／非彩色;(2)冷色／暖色。不同专业大学生对颜色词分类基本一致,但也具有专业特点。     

Nature versus nurture: The simple contrast

We respond to the commentary of Franklin, Wright, and Davies (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,102, 239-245 [2009]) by returning to the simple contrast between nature and nurture. We find no evidence from the toddler data that makes us revise our ideas that color categories are learned and never innate.     

Truth Values,Neither-true-nor-false,and Supervaluations

The first section (§1) of this essay defends reliance on truth values against those who, on nominalistic grounds, would uniformly substitute a truth predicate. I rehearse some practical, Carnapian advantages of working with truth values in logic. In the second section (§2), after introducing the key idea of auxiliary parameters (§2.1), I look at several cases in which logics involve, as part of their semantics, an extra auxiliary parameter to which truth is relativized, a parameter that caters to special kinds of sentences. In many cases, this facility is said to produce truth values for sentences that on the face of it seem neither true nor false. Often enough, in this situation appeal is made to the method of supervaluations, which operate by “quantifying out” auxiliary parameters, and thereby produce something like a truth value. Logics of this kind exhibit striking differences. I first consider the role that Tarski gives to supervaluation in first order logic (§2.2), and then, after an interlude that asks whether neither-true-nor-false is itself a truth value (§2.3), I consider sentences with non-denoting terms (§2.4), vague sentences (§2.5), ambiguous sentences (§2.6), paradoxical sentences (§2.7), and future-tensed sentences in indeterministic tense logic (§2.8). I conclude my survey with a look at alethic modal logic considered as a cousin (§2.9), and finish with a few sentences of “advice to supervaluationists” (2.10), advice that is largely negative. The case for supervaluations as a road to truth is strong only when the auxiliary parameter that is “quantified out” is in fact irrelevant to the sentences of interest—as in Tarski’s definition of truth for classical logic. In all other cases, the best policy when reporting the results of supervaluation is to use only explicit phrases such as “settled true” or “determinately true,” never dropping the qualification.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Wissenschaftslogik</Emphasis>: The role of logic in the philosophy of science

Carl Hempel introduced what he called “Craig’s theorem” into the philosophy of science in a famous discussion of the “problem of theoretical terms.” Beginning with Hempel’s use of ‘Craig’s theorem,” I shall bring out some of the key differences between Hempel’s treatment of the “problem of theoretical terms” and Carnap’s in order to illuminate the peculiar function of Wissenschaftslogik in Carnap’s mature philosophy. Carnap’s treatment, in particular, is fundamentally anti-metaphysical—he aims to use the tools of mathematical logic to dissolve rather solve traditional philosophical problems—and it is precisely this point that is missed by his logically-minded contemporaries such as Hempel and Quine.     

The impact of children’s lexical and morphosyntactic knowledge on narrative competence development: A prospective cohort study

The authors investigate the contribution of children's early comprehension of relational terms and morphosyntactic knowledge to the development of narrative competence in kindergarten and Grade 1. Narrative competence was assessed through the cohesion, coherence, and structure of children’s productions. The participants in this study were 714 Italian children. The authors measured their oral narrative competence through a storytelling task at the beginning and end of the kindergarten year. A total of 115 children were randomly selected and followed through Grade 1, and their narrative competence was measured again. According to the path analysis model, early morphosyntactic knowledge contributes to explain narrative competence in Grade 1. Early comprehension of relational terms contributes to narrative competence at the end of the school year. These findings confirm the importance of exploring the influence of early language skills on narrative competence development and suggests early intervention at the level of language antecedents of narrative competence.     

The semantics and acquisition of number words: integrating linguistic and developmental perspectives

This article brings together two independent lines of research on numerally quantified expressions, e.g. two girls. One stems from work in linguistic theory and asks what truth conditional contributions such expressions make to the utterances in which they are used--in other words, what do numerals mean? The other comes from the study of language development and asks when and how children learn the meaning of such expressions. My goal is to show that when integrated, these two perspectives can both constrain and enrich each other in ways hitherto not considered. Specifically, work in linguistic theory suggests that in addition to their 'exactly n' interpretation, numerally quantified NPs such as two hoops can also receive an 'at least n' and an 'at most n' interpretation, e.g. you need to put two hoops on the pole to win (i.e. at least two hoops) and you can miss two shots and still win (i.e. at most two shots). I demonstrate here through the results of three sets of experiments that by the age of 5 children have implicit knowledge of the fact that expressions like two N can be interpreted as 'at least two N' and 'at most two N' while they do not yet know the meaning of corresponding expressions such as at least/most two N which convey these senses explicitly. I show that these results have important implications for theories of the semantics of numerals and that they raise new questions for developmental accounts of the number vocabulary.     

Constraints on children's color term acquisition

Kowalski and Zimiles (2006) and O'Hanlon and Roberson (2006) address an age-old question: Why do children find it difficult to learn color terms? Here these articles are reflected on, providing a focused examination of the issues central to this question. First, the criteria by which children are said to find color naming difficult are considered. Although the age of color term acquisition is decreasing, and color naming might not be more difficult than other abstract attributes, several stages of difficulty are identified. Second, it is argued that there are potentially multiple constraints (e.g., conceptual, attentional, and linguistic) for these multiple stages of difficulty with color term acquisition. Third, it is argued that the validity and reliability of techniques for identifying constraints need to be considered and that converging evidence for the constraints should be provided. Finally, a series of new questions that need to be asked to provide a well-rounded explanation of the difficulties children face when learning color terms is outlined.     

Science and Human Behavior translated into Portuguese: Ciência e Comportamento Humano

Science and Human Behavior was translated to Portuguese as part of the effort to begin a psychology course at the University of Brasília 40 years ago; one of the many results of the first visit of Fred S. Keller to Brazil. The book has been used continuously in undergraduate courses in Brazil since 1967.     

Catachrestic Plural Forms. Gregory of Nyssa and Theodore Abū Qurrah on Naming and Counting Essences

The fourth-century thinker and theologian Gregory of Nyssa was a convinced realist about universals. According to him, there is just one substance man for all the individuals of the species man and this universal substance is completely instantiated by each individual. In two of his treatises – the Ad Ablabium and the Ad Graecos – he draws linguistic consequences from this realist position. This enquiry results in the thesis according to which it is incorrect to use natural kind terms (such as names of species) in the plural form, because that would involve stating a plurality of substances, when in fact there is just one substance for all the individuals of a given kind. In consequence, since the substance of all individual human beings is the same, the word ‘man’ can only be used adequately in the singular form. In this contribution, Gregory's reasoning is reconstructed. In the second part of the paper, the posterity of his theory and its endorsement by Theodore Abū Qurrah at the turn of the eighth and ninth centuries are examined.