Mutsumi Imai, psychologist (Keio University, Japan)

Event co-sponsored by Department of Linguistics and Department of Philosophy

(Pizza and beverages will be provided)

Relation between count/mass syntax and the ontological concept about individuation: From a psychological perspective.

Abstract:
The distinction concerning individuation is one of the most important distinctions in human concept, and appreciation of this distinction is a prerequisite for word learning (Imai & Gentner, 1997; Soja, Carey, & Spelke, 1991). However, two questions concerning individuation--(1) whether this conceptual distinction is universally coded by grammar and (2) whether the acquisition of the conceptual distinction depends on the acquisition of the grammatical distinction of countable and uncountable nouns--have been unsettled.  Classsifier languages provide interesting test cases for these questions.  It has been assumed that classifier languages such as Chinese and Japanese do not grammatically mark the countability status of nouns (Chirchiea, 1998; Quine, 1969; Lucy, 1991).  However, recently, some theorists argue that classifier languages actually mark the countability of nouns grammatically by the choice of classifiers or other quantifying constructions (Cheng & Sybesma,1998;  Yi, 2009: Zhang, 2009).
In this talk, I approach the two questions by neurological and behavioral experiments.  I first present results from a study that examined whether the count/mass distinction is neutrally processed as a syntactic or semantic distinction in Japanese speakers, using Event Related Potential (ERP) to address the first question.  I then address the second question based on the results of a series of crosslinguistic studies testing how Japanese and English-speaking speakers infer meanings of a novel word associated with a novel object or a substance before and after the acquisition of the classifier grammar and count-mass syntax, respectively.

Brief Biography:
Ph.D in Cognitive Psychology, Northwestern University, 1994
Assistant Professor at Keio University, 1994
Current: Professor of Psychology, Keio University
http://cogpsy.sfc.keio.ac.jp/imai/index.php?MUTSUMI%20IMAI

My research interests include three questions that are deeply interwoven with one another: (1) How children learn language; (2) The role of language in conceptual development; (3) Relation between language and thought (in cross linguistic contexts) in children and adults. For example, in my recent work, I studied how young children learn novel nouns and verbs, and there, I compared Japanese, Chinese, and English-speaking children to examine how linguistic properties of children's native language affect the pattern of learning (Imai et al., 2008). I also have been studying how grammatical categorization system such as classifier grammar and gender-marking grammar affects how children and adults form categories, construe similarity, construe individuation of entities, and draw inductive reasoning (Imai & Mazuka, 2007; Saalbach & Imai, 2007).