Development of the Shape Bias During the Second Year

ABSTRACT. The shape bias is an attentional preference children show for the shape of an object over other aspects of the object in a word-learning context. This bias, which aids in establishing a word-object pairing, was investigated in 12-, 18-, and 24-month-old children (n = 90) across noun, adjective, and no-label conditions. The present research presents evidence of development across this time span; there was a transition from a label reducing the chance of shape extensions to indiscriminate shape extensions to a label increasing the chance of shape extensions. This research supports the notion that children are focusing their extensions more toward shape during the course of development thereby developing a more mature and more specialized shape bias.     

Ontologies and Construals in Lexical Semantics

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework of lexical meaning, broadly along the lines of Cognitive Semantics (Langacker 1987a). Within the proposed model, all aspects of meaning are to be explained in terms of properties of ontologies in conceptual space, i.e. properties of content ontologies and schematic ontologies and construals which are imposed on the conceptual structures on the occasion of use. It is through the operations of construals on ontological structures that different readings of lexical expressions arise. Lexical meanings are dynamic and sensitive to contextual demands, rather than fixed and stable. In a dynamic, usage-based model like this, polysemy and multiple readings emerge as a natural consequence of the human ability to think flexibly. Another more specific purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the usefulness of ontologies in linguistic research in general and semantic modelling in particular.     

The lover of the beautiful and the good: Platonic foundations of aesthetic and moral value

Though acknowledged by scholars, Plato’s identification of the Beautiful and the Good has generated little interest, even in aesthetics where the moral concepts are a current topic. The view is suspect because, e.g., it is easy to find examples of ugly saints and beautiful sinners. In this paper the thesis is defended using ideas from Plato’s ancient commentators, the Neoplatonists. Most interesting is Proclus, who applied to value theory a battery of linguistic tools with fixed semantic properties—comparative adjectives, associated gradable adjectives, mass nouns, and predicate negations—all with a semantics that demand a privative scale of value. It is shown how it is perfectly possible to interpret value terms Platonically over privative Boolean algebras so that beautifuland good diverge while at higher levels other value terms are coextensional. Considerations are offered that this structure conforms to actual usage.     

The indexicality of ‘knowledge’

Epistemic contextualism—the view that the content of the predicate ‘know’ can change with the context of utterance—has fallen into considerable disrepute recently. Many theorists have raised doubts as to whether ‘know’ is context-sensitive, typically basing their arguments on data suggesting that ‘know’ behaves semantically and syntactically in a way quite different from recognised indexicals such as ‘I’ and ‘here’ or ‘flat’ and ‘empty’. This paper takes a closer look at three pertinent objections of this kind, viz. at what I call the Error-Theory Objection, the Gradability Objection and the Clarification-Technique Objection. The paper concludes that none of these objections can provide decisive evidence against contextualism.     

Knowing what a novel word is not: Two-year-olds 'listen through' ambiguous adjectives in fluent speech

Three studies investigated how 24-month-olds and adults resolve temporary ambiguity in fluent speech when encountering prenominal adjectives potentially interpretable as nouns. Children were tested in a looking-while-listening procedure to monitor the time course of speech processing. In Experiment 1, the familiar and unfamiliar adjectives preceding familiar target nouns were accented or deaccented. Target word recognition was disrupted only when lexically ambiguous adjectives were accented like nouns. Experiment 2 measured the extent of interference experienced by children when interpreting prenominal words as nouns. In Experiment 3, adults used prosodic cues to identify the form class of adjective/noun homophones in string-identical sentences before the ambiguous words were fully spoken. Results show that children and adults use prosody in conjunction with lexical and distributional cues to ‘listen through’ prenominal adjectives, avoiding costly misinterpretation.     

情绪形容词词义的模糊赋值

353名大学生被试用模糊赋值方法对表示喜、怒、哀、惧四种基本情绪的48个形容词的强度和复杂度作语义经验赋值。结果表明：①强度和复杂度是两个不同的情绪评定维度,两者间的情绪形容词模糊语义赋值结果没有必然联系。②在强度和复杂度赋值上,各词的取值基本符合人们日常对这些词所表达情绪体验的理解,性别的量表值存在较大一致性。③男、女生在赋值上的差异主要表现在各词位次和把握度的不同,这种差异可能与性别差异的情绪经验及个体差异有关。④大学生情绪形容词模糊语义赋值的把握度总体上都较高,各词的语义在两个维度上都存在一定的模糊性。⑤根据各词强度赋值隶属度数据计算的模糊距离测度和Phi方关联测度得到了四类形容词相似的聚类分析结果。     

Typicality and Graded Membership in Dimensional Adjectives

This paper concerns an investigation of the manner in which typicality constrains graded membership in antonymous dimensional adjectives such as short/tall and cheap/expensive using the conceptual spaces framework. In this framework, items are organized in a space comprised of one or more dimensions along which they can be compared. The items’ graded membership is established by their relative proximity in this space to the prototypical instances of contrasting concepts. Because dimensional adjectives can be applied to an indefinite variety of things and grammatically have no upper bound to serve as cognitive reference point, they have been argued to lack prototypes. We present the results of an empirical study showing that the conceptual spaces framework can nevertheless be extended successfully to dimensional adjectives by complementing them with a comparison class argument (such as short/tall for an adult man and cheap/expensive for a smartphone), allowing participants to retrieve meaningful prototypical instances, which can be used to establish membership degree. Since dimensional adjectives are subjective, we investigate how the framework can accommodate interindividual variability in membership degree judgments. We find that the predictions of the framework significantly improve if prototypical instances themselves are assumed to come with a gradient instead of being considered equally typical, thereby providing a more fine‐grained account of typicality and furthering the development of the conceptual spaces framework.     

青少年学生的自立人格

经过5个步骤编制出了人格特质词的《大学生问卷》、《高中生问卷》、《初中生问卷》和《青少年学生问卷》,分别对大学生、高中生和初中生进行调查和探索性因素分析。结果发现：①《大学生问卷》显示的自立人格包括主动性、开放性、人际责任、积极性和独立性五个维度;②《高中生问卷》显示的自立人格包括人际开放与责任性、灵活与独立性、主动性和行为责任四个维度;③《初中生问卷》显示的自立人格包括主动与行为责任、开放性、人际责任、积极性、灵活与独立性五个维度;④《青少年学生问卷》显示的自立人格包括灵活与独立性、责任性、主动性、人际开放四个维度。最后,对自立人格构念的合理性、自立人格中“开放性”与“责任性”维度的特点、青少年学生自立人格结构的一致性程度以及本研究在探索自立人格结构方面的优劣等问题进行了讨论     

ACQUISITION OF ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS IN SENTENCES WRITTEN BY HEARING IMPAIRED AND APHASIC CHILDREN

The effect of an instructional package, which included modeling, reinforcement, and remedial feedback on the rate, accuracy, and topography of sentences composed by four hearing impaired and aphasic children, was examined. In a specially designed classroom, students wrote sentences describing a stimulus picture on acetate sheets placed on the stage of an overhead projector which was built into each student's desk. This arrangement provided the teacher and other students immediate and continuous visual access to each student's sentences. In a multiple baseline design across behaviors, model sentences were projected and token reinforcment and remedial feedback were made contingent upon writing correct sentences containing prenominal adjectives only, then adverbs only, then prenomial adjectives plus adverbs. During baseline all students displayed poor written language skills and seldom wrote sentences containing modifiers. When the instructional package was implemented, all students demonstrated significant increases in response rate, accuracy, and percentage of correct sentences including prenominal adjectives and adverbs.