| Popis: |
To make the subtle distinction between collective (unified or simultaneous) and distributive (individuated and separate) events, many languages use different quantifiers. In English, for example, all is ambiguous: it is preferred with the collective reading, but can be assigned a distributive reading; each allows only for a distributive reading. Hebrew has a single quantifier and thus makes this distinction morphosyntactically, showing ambiguity between the readings in one form, and not in the other. In a series of experiments, we examined several factors that could affect the interpretation of these forms. In a picture-matching task (Experiment 1), Hebrew speakers, like English speakers, had a strong preference to associate the ambiguous form with collective events (and the other form with distributive events). However, in a sentence-matching task, the preference for the collective interpretation persisted only when the events were presented in pictures (Experiment 2), but not in stories (Experiment 3). Manipulations in the stories task included working memory demands (Experiment 4), type of distributivity (Experiment 5) and the sentence structure (Experiment 6). The results showed that only the latter affected speakers’ preferences. Therefore, we conclude that the semantic representation, but not the other factors, play a critical role in the collective/distributive distinction. |
