Classification of entities into categories can be determined based on a rule – a single criterion or relatively few criteria combined with logical operations like ‘and’ or ‘or’. Alternatively, classification can be based on similarity to prototypical examples, i.e. an overall degree of match to prototypical values on multiple dimensions. Two cognitive systems are reported in the literature to underlie processing by rules vs. similarity. This paper presents a novel thesis according to which adjectives and nouns trigger processing by the rule vs. similarity systems, respectively. The paper defends the thesis that nouns are conceptually gradable and multidimensional, but, unlike adjectives, their dimensions are integrated through similarity operations, like weighted sums, to yield an overall degree of match to ideal values on multiple dimensions. By contrast, adjectives are associated with single dimensions, or several dimensions bound by logical operations, such as ‘and’ and ‘or’. In accordance, nouns are predicted to differ from adjectives semantically, developmentally, and processing-wise. Similarity-based dimension integration is implicit – processing is automatic, fast, and beyond speaker awareness – whereas logical, rule-based dimension integration is explicit, and is acquired late. The paper highlights a number of links between findings reported in the literature about rule- vs. similarity-based categorization and corresponding structural, distributional, neural and developmental findings about adjectives and nouns. These links suggest that the rule vs. similarity (RS) hypothesis for the adjective-noun distinction should be studied more directly in the future.
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Bazaco, Carmelo & Melvin González-Rivera
2020. Nominal predication withestar. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 13:2 ► pp. 251 ff.
Del Pinal, Guillermo
2018. Meaning, modulation, and context: a multidimensional semantics for truth-conditional pragmatics. Linguistics and Philosophy 41:2 ► pp. 165 ff.
2015. Imposed Metaphoricity. Metaphor and Symbol 30:2 ► pp. 77 ff.
Solt, Stephanie
2015. Measurement Scales in Natural Language. Language and Linguistics Compass 9:1 ► pp. 14 ff.
Solt, Stephanie
2018. Multidimensionality, Subjectivity and Scales: Experimental Evidence. In The Semantics of Gradability, Vagueness, and Scale Structure [Language, Cognition, and Mind, 4], ► pp. 59 ff.
Castroviejo, Elena & Berit Gehrke
2014. Modification at the interfaces: An introduction. Lingua 149 ► pp. 1 ff.
Umbach, Carla & Helmar Gust
2014. Similarity demonstratives. Lingua 149 ► pp. 74 ff.
Xie, Zhiguo
2014. Where is the Standard? An Analysis of Size Adjectives as Degree Modifiers at the SemanticPragmatic Interface. Language and Linguistics 15:4 ► pp. 513 ff.
Kalkan, Sinan, O. Yuruten & E. Sahin
2013. 2013 21st Signal Processing and Communications Applications Conference (SIU), ► pp. 1 ff.
Orhan, Guner, Sertac Olgunsoylu, Erol Sahin & Sinan Kalkan
2013. 2013 IEEE Third Joint International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL), ► pp. 1 ff.
Yürüten, Onur, Erol Şahin & Sinan Kalkan
2013. The learning of adjectives and nouns from affordance and appearance features. Adaptive Behavior 21:6 ► pp. 437 ff.
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