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Does Mass Count Anymore?

Does Mass Count Anymore? The theoretical literature on the mass/count distinction in Palestinian-Arabic ( PA ) is extremely scarce, and the psycholinguistic perspective has never been explored. In this paper, we report results from an experiment exploring the mass/count distinction in 48 (aged 6;6–17;04) young and adult speakers of PA . Using an adaptation of Barner & Snedeker’s (2005) Quantity-Judgment task, we show that while PA -speaking adults are essentially identical to English-speaking adults, PA -speaking children behave dramatically different from both adult PA speakers and from English-acquiring children. We suggest that these results may reflect a process of language change currently taking place in PA . We further propose two possible sources for the process. The first involves the fact that the grammaticization of mass/count in PA is rather marginal, as indicated by the relative paucity of syntactic structures encoding the distinction. Alternatively, our data may reflect a change process involving a relaxation of obligatory number-marking in cardinality contexts. Finally, we outline a research-program aimed to test these hypotheses. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Brill's Annual of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics Brill

Does Mass Count Anymore?

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
ISSN
1876-6633
eISSN
1877-6930
DOI
10.1163/18776930-00702005
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The theoretical literature on the mass/count distinction in Palestinian-Arabic ( PA ) is extremely scarce, and the psycholinguistic perspective has never been explored. In this paper, we report results from an experiment exploring the mass/count distinction in 48 (aged 6;6–17;04) young and adult speakers of PA . Using an adaptation of Barner & Snedeker’s (2005) Quantity-Judgment task, we show that while PA -speaking adults are essentially identical to English-speaking adults, PA -speaking children behave dramatically different from both adult PA speakers and from English-acquiring children. We suggest that these results may reflect a process of language change currently taking place in PA . We further propose two possible sources for the process. The first involves the fact that the grammaticization of mass/count in PA is rather marginal, as indicated by the relative paucity of syntactic structures encoding the distinction. Alternatively, our data may reflect a change process involving a relaxation of obligatory number-marking in cardinality contexts. Finally, we outline a research-program aimed to test these hypotheses.

Journal

Brill's Annual of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics – Brill

Published: Jan 1, 2015

Keywords: mass/count distinction; Palestinian Arabic; experimental psycholinguistics; developmental linguistics

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