보편 양화사 (UNIVERSAL QUANTIFIER)에 대한 아동들의 해석 양상

This paper investigates the idiosyncratic understanding of universal quantifiers such as every, each or all by young children at the ages of 4 to 7, and argues that the phenomenon is explicable in terms of the maturation of both the cognitive system and the linguistic system. Evidence for this dual explanation comes from the fact that the visual input, a picture, plays a key role in determining the children’s conceptual representation, suggesting the need for the central integration of visual and linguistic elements; and from the fact that a quantifier in the linguistic input has an intrinsic property, i.e. a <+focus> feature. I have tried to explain the nature of the cognitive factors in terms of the function of the central system, suggesting a modified form of Smith & Tsimpli’s (1995) version of Fodor’s (1983) modularity hypothesis. Conceptual representations of two kinds are in competition with each other and they are integrated into a neutral LOT (Language of Thought) representation at some point . In the process of this integration, the representations from the visual input predominate over those from the auditory input, though the quantize. (treated as new information provided by the latter) is salient in the final representations. When visual conceptual representations predominate over purely linguistic ones, quantifier spreading errors occur. By contrast, when the relevant grammatical knowledge has developed sufficiently to counteract the conceptual representations, this peculiar behaviour by children should disappear. It is argued that children have to learn two kinds of grammatical fact with regard to universal quantification: (i) they have to learn the status of the quantifier as a functional head of DP so that it has to be positioned inside DP; and (ii) they have to learn the Left-Branch Condition which specifies that movement of an element in the left-branch position is possible only by pied-piping the entire phrase.