Hollander Michelle A, Gelman Susan A, Star Jon
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109-1109, USA.
Dev Psychol. 2002 Nov;38(6):883-94. doi: 10.1037//0012-1649.38.6.883.
Generic utterances (e.g., "Cows say 'moo'") have 2 distinctive semantic properties: (a) Generics are generally true, unlike indefinites (e.g., "Bears live in caves" is generic; "I saw some bears in the cave" is indefinite), and (b) generics need not be true of all category members, unlike universal quantifiers (e.g., all, every, each). This article examined whether preschool children and adults appreciate both these features, using a comprehension task (Study 1) and an elicited production task (Study 2). In both tasks, 4-year-old children--like adults--treated generics as distinct from both indefinites ("some") and universal quantifiers ("all"). In contrast, 3-year-olds did not differentiate among generics, "all," and "some." By 4 years of age, generics emerge as a distinct semantic device.
类指话语（例如，“奶牛会发出‘哞哞’声”）具有两个独特的语义属性：（a）类指通常是真实的，这与不定指不同（例如，“熊生活在洞穴里”是类指；“我在洞穴里看到了一些熊”是不定指），以及（b）类指不必适用于所有类别成员，这与全称量词不同（例如，所有、每个、每一个）。本文通过一项理解任务（研究1）和一项引出式产出任务（研究2），考察了学龄前儿童和成年人是否理解这两个特征。在这两项任务中，4岁儿童——和成年人一样——将类指话语与不定指（“一些”）和全称量词（“所有”）区分开来。相比之下，3岁儿童并未区分类指话语、“所有”和“一些”。到4岁时，类指话语成为一种独特的语义手段。
