Learning what must and can must and can mean

Annemarie Van Dooren; Anouk Dieuleveut; Ailís Cournane; Valentine Hacquard

Learning what must and can must and can mean

Annemarie Van Dooren, Anouk Dieuleveut, Ailís Cournane, Valentine Hacquard

Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review

Abstract

This corpus study investigates how children figure out that functional modalslike must can express various flavors of modality. We examine how modality isexpressed in speech to and by children, and find that the way speakers usemodals may obscure their polysemy. Yet, children eventually figure it out. Ourresults suggest that some do before age 3. We show that while root andepistemic flavors are not equally well-represented in the input, there are robustcorrelations between flavor and aspect, which learners could exploit to discovermodal polysemy.

Original language	English (US)
Pages	225-234
Number of pages	10
State	Published - 2017
Event	21st Amsterdam Colloquium, AC 2017 - Amsterdam, Netherlands Duration: Dec 20 2017 → Dec 22 2017

Conference

Conference	21st Amsterdam Colloquium, AC 2017
Country/Territory	Netherlands
City	Amsterdam
Period	12/20/17 → 12/22/17

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Computational Theory and Mathematics
Software

Cite this

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title = "Learning what must and can must and can mean",

abstract = "This corpus study investigates how children figure out that functional modalslike must can express various flavors of modality. We examine how modality isexpressed in speech to and by children, and find that the way speakers usemodals may obscure their polysemy. Yet, children eventually figure it out. Ourresults suggest that some do before age 3. We show that while root andepistemic flavors are not equally well-represented in the input, there are robustcorrelations between flavor and aspect, which learners could exploit to discovermodal polysemy.",

author = "{Van Dooren}, Annemarie and Anouk Dieuleveut and Ail{\'i}s Cournane and Valentine Hacquard",

note = "Funding Information: * We would like to thank our research assistants Joon Lee and Jan Michalowski, the ModSquad @ UMD and audiences at Harvard, Rutgers, and Dubrovnik. Our project is supported by NSF grant #BCS-1551628. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} Amsterdam Colloquium, AC 2017.All right reserved.; 21st Amsterdam Colloquium, AC 2017 ; Conference date: 20-12-2017 Through 22-12-2017",

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AU - Van Dooren, Annemarie

AU - Dieuleveut, Anouk

AU - Cournane, Ailís

AU - Hacquard, Valentine

N1 - Funding Information: * We would like to thank our research assistants Joon Lee and Jan Michalowski, the ModSquad @ UMD and audiences at Harvard, Rutgers, and Dubrovnik. Our project is supported by NSF grant #BCS-1551628. Publisher Copyright: © Amsterdam Colloquium, AC 2017.All right reserved.

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - This corpus study investigates how children figure out that functional modalslike must can express various flavors of modality. We examine how modality isexpressed in speech to and by children, and find that the way speakers usemodals may obscure their polysemy. Yet, children eventually figure it out. Ourresults suggest that some do before age 3. We show that while root andepistemic flavors are not equally well-represented in the input, there are robustcorrelations between flavor and aspect, which learners could exploit to discovermodal polysemy.

AB - This corpus study investigates how children figure out that functional modalslike must can express various flavors of modality. We examine how modality isexpressed in speech to and by children, and find that the way speakers usemodals may obscure their polysemy. Yet, children eventually figure it out. Ourresults suggest that some do before age 3. We show that while root andepistemic flavors are not equally well-represented in the input, there are robustcorrelations between flavor and aspect, which learners could exploit to discovermodal polysemy.

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M3 - Paper

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T2 - 21st Amsterdam Colloquium, AC 2017

Y2 - 20 December 2017 through 22 December 2017

ER -

Learning what must and can must and can mean

Abstract

Conference

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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