Nominal countability processing in four anglophone patients with aphasia
The deficit in the use of uncountable nouns
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37467/revhuman.v19.4919Keywords:
Aphasiology, Psycholinguistics, Neurolinguistics, Agrammatism, Countability, Processing, Broca’s AphasiaAbstract
This study investigates nominal countability processing. It presents further evidence in favour of a possible influence of the semantic number in uncountable nouns processing in four patients diagnosed with Broca’s aphasia, whose native language is English. This suggests that the processing of these nouns would be a semantic and syntactic hybrid. Moreover, it corroborates as previous studies, a specific deficit in uncountable nouns grammar.
References
Allan, K. (1980). Nouns and countability. Language, 541-567.
Ash, S., Ternes, K., Bisbing, T., Min, N. E., Moran, E., York, C., & Grossman, M. (2016). Dissociation of quantifiers and object nouns in speech in focal neurodegenerative disease. Neuropsychologia, 89, 141-152.
Bale, A., & Barner, D. (2018). Quantity judgment and the mass-count distinction across languages: Advances, problems, and future directions for research. Glossa: a Journal of General linguistics, 3(1).
Barner, D., & Snedeker, J. (2005). Quantity judgements and individuation: Evidence that mass nouns count. Cognition, 97(1), 41-66.
Barner, D., Li, P., & Snedeker, J. (2010). Words as windows to thought: The case of object representation. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 195-200.
Bisiacchi, P., Mondini, S., Angrilli, A., Marinelli, K., & Semenza, C. (2005). Mass and count nouns show distinct EEG cortical processes during an explicit semantic task. Brain and Language, 95(1), 98-99.
Borer, H. (2005). Structuring Sense. Part I. Oxford Univ. Press.
Brannon, E. M., Abbott, S., & Lutz, D. J. (2004). Number bias for the discrimination of large visual sets in infancy. Cognition, 93(2), B59-B68.
Chiarelli, V., El Yagoubi, R., Mondini, S., Bisiacchi, P., & Semenza, C. (2011). The syntactic and semantic processing of mass and count nouns: an ERP study. PloS one, 6(10), e25885. Accedido desde:
<<https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0025885>>
Chierchia, G. (1998). Reference to kinds across language. Natural Language Semantics, 6(4), 339-405.
Chierchia, G. (2010). Mass nouns, vagueness and semantic variation. Synthese, 174(1), 99-149.
Crepaldi, D., Aggujaro, S., Arduino, L. S., Zonca, G., Ghirardi, G., Inzaghi, M. G., & Luzzatti, C. (2006). Noun–verb dissociation in aphasia: The role of imageability and functional locus of the lesion. Neuropsychologia, 44(1), 73-89.
Crutch SJ, Warrington EK. (2008). The semantic organisation of mass nouns: evidence from semantic refractory access dysphasia. Cortex, 43(8):1057-67.
Davis, J. C. (2005). N-Watch: A program for deriving neighborhood size and other psycholinguistic statistics. Behavior Research Methods, 37(1), 65-70.
Doetjes, J. (2017). The count/mass distinction in grammar and cognition. Annual Review of Linguistics, 3, 199-217.
Goodglass, H., Kaplan, E., & Barresi, B. (2001). Boston diagnostic aphasia examination. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins.
Domahs, F., Nagels, A., Domahs, U., Whitney, C., Wiese, R., & Kircher, T. (2012). Where the mass counts: common cortical activation for different kinds of nonsingularity. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 24(4), 915-932.
El Yagoubi, R., Mondini, S., Bisiacchi, P., Chiarelli, V., Angrilli, A., & Semenza, C. (2006). The electrophysiological basis of mass and count nouns processing. Brain and Language, 99, 8-219.
Fieder, N., Nickels, L., & Biedermann, B. (2014a). Representation and processing of mass and count nouns: A review. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1-18.
Fieder, N., Nickels, L., Biedermann, B., & Best, W. (2014b). From “some butter” to “a butter”: An investigation of mass and count representation and processing. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 31(4), 313-349.
Fieder, N., Nickels, L., Biedermann, B., & Best, W. (2015). How ‘some garlic’ becomes ‘a garlic’ or ‘some onion’: Mass and count processing in aphasia. Neuropsychologia, 75, 626, 645.
Fieder, N., Wang, H. C., Biedermann, B., & Nickels, L. (2017). Counting on number: effects of number information on grammatical processing of mass and count nouns. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 32(8), 1034-1047
Franzon, F., Zanini, C., & Rugani, R. (2018). Do non‐verbal number systems shape grammar? Numerical cognition and Number morphology compared. Mind & Language, 34(1), 37-58
Frausel, R. (2011). Relationship Between Count/Mass Nouns and Shape/Material Biases in Novel Word Learning Tasks.
Frisson, S., & Franzier, L. (2005). Carving up word meaning: portioning and grinding. J.Mem. Lang, 53, 277-91.
Froud, K., & van der Lely, H. K. (2008). The count-mass distinction in typically developing and grammatically specifically language impaired children: New evidence on the role of syntax and semantics. Journal of communication disorders, 41(3), 274-303.
Gastaldon, S., Zanini, C., Arcara, G., Peressotti, F., & Franzon, F. (2016). Referential numerosity and morphosyntactic number agreement: A psycholinguistic study on Italian Qualche/Alcuni. RGG, 38 (2016), pp. 105-113.
Gillon, B. S. (1992). Towards a common semantics for English count and mass nouns. Linguistics and philosophy, 15(6), 597-639.
Gillon, B. S. (1999). The lexical semantics of English count and mass nouns. In Breadth and depth of semantic lexicons (pp. 19-37). Springer.
Grimm, S. (2018). Grammatical number and the scale of individuation. Language, 94(3), 527-574.
Grossman, M., Carvell, S., & Peltzer, L. (1993). The Sum and Substance of It: The Appreciation of Mass and Count Quantifiers in Parkinson′ s Disease. Brain and Language, 44(4), 351-384.
Grossman, M., Mickanin, J., Onishi, K., Hughes, E., D’Esposito, M., Ding, X. S., ... & Reivich, M. (1996). Progressive nonfluent aphasia: language, cognitive, and PET measures contrasted with probable Alzheimer’s disease. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 8(2), 135-154.
Herbert, R., & Best, W. (2010). The role of noun syntax in spoken word production: Evidence from aphasia. Cortex, 46(3), 329-342.
Jackendoff, R. (1991). Parts and boundaries. Cognition, 41(1-3), 9-45.
Kay, J., Lesser, R., & Coltheart, M. (1996). Psycholinguistic assessments of language processing in aphasia (PALPA): An introduction. Aphasiology, 10(2), 159-180.
Krohn, H. S. (2016). La expresión del número nominal en bribri. Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica, 42(1), 121-138.
Kulkarni, R., Rothstein, S., & Treves, A. (2013). A statistical investigation into the cross-linguistic distribution of mass and count nouns: Morphosyntactic and semantic perspectives. Biolinguistics, 7, 132-168.
Kulkarni, R., Rothstein, S., & Treves, A. (2016). A neural Network Perspective on the Syntantic-Semantic Association between Mass and Count nouns. Journal of Advances in Linguistics, 6(2), 964-976.
Laiacona, M., & Caramazza, A. (2004). The noun/verb dissociation in language production: Varieties of causes. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 21(2-4), 103-123.
Levelt, W. J. M. (1989). Speaking: From Intention to Articulation. MIT Press.
Levelt, W. J., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A. S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain sciences, 22(1), 1-38.
Link, G. (1983). The logical analysis of plurals and mass terms: A lattice-theoretical approach. Formal semantics: The essential readings, 127, 147.
Lima, S. (2014). All notional mass nouns are count nouns in Yudja. In Semantics and Linguistic Theory (Vol. 24, pp. 534-554).
Lima, S. (2018). New perspectives on the count-mass distinction: Understudied languages and psycholinguistics. Language and Linguistics Compass, 12(11), e12303.
MacDonald, D., & Carroll, S. E. (2018). Second-language processing of English mass-count nouns by native-speakers of Korean.
Meyer, A., New, B., Pliatsikas, C., & Smolka, E. MultiPic: A standardized set of 750 drawings with multilingual norms.
Middleton, E., Wisniewski, E., Trindel, K., & Imai, M. (2004). Separating the chaff from the oats: Evidence for a conceptual distinction between count noun and mass noun aggregates. Journal of Memory and Language, 50, 371-394.
Mondini, S., Jarema, G., & Liguori, F. (2004). Semantics and syntax of mass and count nouns: data from aphasia and dementia. Brain and Language, 1(91), 138-139.
Mondini, S., Angrilli, A., Bisiacchi, P., Spironelli, C., Marinelli, K., & Semenza, C. (2008). Mass and count nouns activate different brain regions: an ERP study on early components. Neuroscience Letters, 430(1), 48-53.
Mondini, S., Arcara, G., & Jarema, G. (2014). Semantic and syntactic processing of mass and count nouns: Data from dementia. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 36(9), 967-980.
Odic, D., Pietroski, P., Hunter, T., Halberda, J., & Lidz, J. (2018). Individuals and non-individuals in cognition and semantics: The mass/count distinction and quantity representation. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 3(1), 61.
Papafragou, A. (2005). Relations between language and thought: Individuation and the count/mass distinction. In Handbook of categorization in cognitive science (pp. 255-275). Elsevier Science Ltd.
Pelletier, F. J. (2012). Lexical nouns are both+ MASS and+ COUNT, but they are neither+ MASS nor+ COUNT.
Prasada, S., Ferenz, K., & Haskell, T. (2002). Conceiving of entities as objects and as stuff. Cognition, 83(2), 141-165.
Quine, W., & Van, O. (1960). Word and object: An inquiry into the linguistic mechanisms of objective reference.
Redolar Ripoll, D. (2015). Neurociencia cognitiva. QUITO/UIDE/2015.
Renans, A., Romoli, J., Makri, M. M., Tieu, L., De Vries, H., Folli, R., & Tsoulas, G. (2018). The abundance inference of pluralised mass nouns is an implicature: Evidence from Greek. Glossa.
Rey, A. (1997). Rey: Test de copia y de reproducción de memoria de figuras geométricas complejas. TEA ediciones.
Rice, M. L., Cleave, P. L., & Oetting, J. B. (2000). The use of syntactic cues in lexical acquisition by children with SLI. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 43(3), 582-594.
Rodao, F. (1982). El test de matrices progresivas de Raven: manual de aplicación y baremación española en preescolar y E.G.B. Ciencias de la Educació n Preescolar y Especial.
Rothstein, S. (2010). Counting and the mass/count distinction. Journal of Semantics, 27, 343-397.
Saravani, A. G., Forseth, K. J., Tandon, N., & Pitkow, X. (2019). Dynamic brain interactions during picture naming. ENeuro, 6(4).
Semenza, C., Mondini, S., & Cappelletti, M. (1997). The grammatical properties of mass nouns: An aphasia case study. Neuropsychologia, 35(5), 669-675.
Semenza, C., Mondini, S., & Manirelli, K. (2000). Count and mass nouns: Semantics and syntax in aphasia and Alzheimer’s disease. Brain and Language, 74(3), 428-43.
Severo, O. T. B. (2019). An Experimental Study on the Interpretation of Bare Singulars in Mexican Spanish. Revista de Estudos da Linguagem, 27(2).
Shapiro, L. P., Zurif, E., Carey, S., & Grossman, M. (1989). Comprehension of lexical subcategory distinctions by aphasic patients: proper/common and mass/count nouns. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 32(3), 481-488.
Sharvy, R. (1978). Maybe English has no count nouns: notes on Chinese semantics. Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language”, 2(3), 345-365.
Spelke, E. S., & Kinzler, K. D. (2007). Core knowledge. Developmental science, 10(1), 89-96.
Stemmer, B., y Whitakear, H. A. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of the Neuroscience of Language. Academic Press.
Soja, N. N., Carey, S., & Spelke, E. S. (1991). Ontological categories guide young children’s inductions of word meaning: Object terms and substance terms. Cognition, 38(2), 179-211.
Srinivasan, M., Chestnut, E., Li, P., & Barner, D. (2013). Sortal concepts and pragmatic inference in children’s early quantification of objects. Cognitive Psychology, 66, 302-326.
Steinhauer, K., Pancheva, R., Newman, A. J., Gennari, S., & Ullman, M. T. (2001). How the mass counts: An electrophysiological approach to the processing of lexical features. Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology, 12(5), 999-1005.
Taler, V., Jarema, G., & Saumier., D. (2004). Semantic and syntactic aspects of the mass/ count distinction: A case study of semantic dementia. Brain and Cognition, 57(3), 222-5.
Taler, V., & Jarema, G. (2005). On-line lexical processing in AD and MCI: An early measure of cognitive impairment? Journal of Neurolinguistics, 19(1), 38-55.
Troiani, V., Clark, R., & Grossman, M. (2011). Impaired verbal comprehension of quantifiers in corticobasal syndrome. Neuropsychology, 25(2), 159.
Witteloostuijn, M. V, & Schaeffer, J. (2018). The mass-count distinction in Dutch-speaking children with specific language impairment. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 3(1), 52.
Wierzbicka, A. (1998). The semantics of grammar. John Benjamins.
Wiese, H., & Maling, J. (2005). Beers, kaffi, and schnaps: Different grammatical options for restaurant talk coercions in three Germanic languages. Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 17(1), 1-38.
Yin, B., O’Brien, B. A., & O’Brien, B. A. (2018). Mass-count distinction in Chinese-English bilingual students. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 3(1).
Zwicky, A. (2001). Counting chad. Handout from Stanford Semantics Fest.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Those authors who publish in this journal accept the following terms:
- Authors will keep the moral right of the work and they will transfer the commercial rights.
- After 1 year from publication, the work shall thereafter be open access online on our website, but will retain copyright.
- In the event that the authors wish to assign an Creative Commons (CC) license, they may request it by writing to publishing@eagora.org
