PAPER PROPOSAL

DIFFERENTIAL NUMERICAL QUANTIFICATION OF SAME VAGUE QUANTIFIERS

Sneha Agarwal

Y9588

 

 

 

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A few                                    sand grains                                                         pebbles                                                boulders

=                                             100?                                                                       20?                                                         5?

 

INTRODUCTION  

 

When we talk about "a few pebbles", we refer to a much larger number than understood from "a few houses". This paper will demonstrate how the attributes such as size, monetary worth as well as the context of the entity involved affects the quantitative value we attach to literal quantifiers (several, few).

 This somehow relates to Functional Geometric Framework, implemented in Coventry et al, 2005, which asserts that the factors other than sole geometry, govern our assessment of spatial relations between depicted objects. Similar factors have been said to determine our choice for words that are used to quantitatively estimate the given object.

 

PREVIOUS WORKS

 

Research has been done in several areas involving linguistic quantifiers  

1.       The role of context and functionality in the interpretation of quantifiers

Newstead S. E.; Coventry K. R., The European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, Volume 12, Number 2, 1 June 2000 , pp. 243 259(17)

 

2.       Talking about quantities in space: Vague quantifiers, context and similarity, Kenny R. Coventry,

Angelo Cangelosi, Stephen N. Newstead, Davi Bugmann, Language and Cognition. Volume 2, Issue 2, Pages 221.241

This showed that the numerical estimation of the language quantifiers is affected by the presence of things apart from the one being described.

 

3.       The Understanding of Quantifiers in Semantic Dementia, MARINELLA CAPPELLETTI, BRIAN BUTTERWORTH, and MICHAEL KOPELMAN, Neurocase. 2006 June; 12(3): 136.145.

This work proved that the mapping of linguistic quantifiers in the brain is in numerical part rather than the language region.

 

 

RELEVANCE OF THE WORK

 

Apart from reinforcing the role of context and individuality of an article in the perception of sentences utilizing non numerical quantitative descriptors, this will look at this phenomenon for quantifiers of more than one language. 

 

HOW DO I PLAN TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM

 

2 groups of participants (college colleagues, 18 to 22 years) will be presented with a questionnaire in English and Hindi (native language), respectively that will ask them to give the numerical equivalent for the quantifier used for the particular examples. Same words will be used to describe objects that vary in context, size and value and then the numerical interpretations for the same terms will be noted down.

Example of proposed questions

Context based  

-          John owns several guitars. How many do you think he might have?

-          I visited a music shop yesterday. The shop had several guitars. How many guitars do you think the shop had?

A few examples of English quantifiers can be many, several, few, and some. Equivalent words in Hindi can be बहुत, कई, इने  गिने, and कुछ.

 

EXPECTED RESULTS  

 

 It is expected that the answer in the first case will be far lesser than in the second case and so on.

The results will, therefore, be analyzed to test the hypothesis and also compared for the two languages mentioned.