“Hey can you help me move? I warn you I have a lot of books, though.” When we interpret such sentences we might assume that our friend is implying that there will be some heavy lifting, because she own “a lot of books”. If you’re opposed to heavy lifting, you probably want to know how many books your friend wants you to help her move. While it is easy to determine the quantities picked out by numerals, discovering the meaning of quantifiers, such as “a lot”, is less clear. For example, in a survey people gave different quantities for “a few” and “a lot” depending on the context they were asked about, choosing to give quantities as high as 76 for “a few friends on Facebook” and as low as 4 for “a lot of houses”. I ask what role context plays in these interpretations, and propose two possible hypotheses: the Fixed Quantities Hypothesis, and the Relative Quantities Hypothesis. The Fixed Quantities Hypothesis assumes that these terms pick out an exact range of quantities (e.g., 3-5 for “a few”) and that the effect of context is due to people being pragmatically generous in their interpretations (Leech, 1983; Brown & Levinson, 1987; Lasersohn, 1999). The Relative Quantities Hypothesis instead argues that the ranges picked out by each of the terms is relative to the context, and therefore these terms might be similar to relative gradable adjectives (e.g., the meaning of the word “tall” is dependent on the reference set, e.g., what counts as “tall” is different for a mug versus a building; Kennedy, 2007; Syrett, Kennedy, & Lidz, 2010). I attempt to tease apart these two theories by looking at whether people find certain quantities implausible for some contexts leading them to think a speaker is being sloppy (Experiment 1), whether the context effect persists even under light-to-no pragmatic pressure (Experiment 2), and whether we find the effect of context even with minimal knowledge of novel contexts (Experiment 3). The results favour the Relative Quantities Hypothesis, and I discuss potential future work investigating the role of distributional knowledge on quantifier mappings.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-198).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Behavioral and Neural Sciences." Includes bibliographical references (p. 254-271).

Thesis (M.S.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Rolf A. Zwaan, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Psychology. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Apr. 7, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1978. / Carbon-copy of typescript.

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Speech sounds are typically perceived categorically. The acoustic information in speech sounds is perceptually grouped into phonetic categories. It is widely known that language influences the way speech sounds are categorized. That is, one's native language influences where category boundaries are placed. However, it is less understood how bilingual listeners categorize speech sounds. There is evidence showing that bilinguals have different category boundaries from monolinguals, but there is also evidence suggesting that bilinguals have different category boundaries depending on the language they are using at the moment. This phenomenon has been referred as the double phonetic boundary. The goal of this investigation was to verify the existence of the double phonemic boundary in bilingual listeners. As has been done in other studies, bilingual speakers of Spanish and English were asked to identify the speech sound /ta/ from a 10-token speech continuum ranging in VOT from /da/ to /ta/ in two language contexts. In this study, however, two additional procedures were carried out. First, English monolinguals were asked to identify the continuum in two language contexts. It was expected that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, would show a double phonetic boundary. Second, while participants' behavioral measures were assessed, electrophysiological measures [event-related potentials, (ERPs)] also were recorded. This was done in order to observe how speech sounds are represented in the brain. It as expected that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, would show different ERP amplitudes across language contexts. The behavioral results showed that phonemic boundaries did not differ across language contexts for either bilinguals or monolinguals. Further analyses showed bilinguals, but not monolinguals, perceived specific speech sounds--in the "ambiguous zone"--differently across language contexts. The electrophysiological results showed that the ERPs of bilinguals, but not monolinguals, differed across language contexts. Interestingly, behavioral measures correlated significantly with electrophysiological measures only in bilinguals. This result showed that the ERP amplitude was in accordance with the number of sounds perceived as 'ta' across language contexts. The challenges of testing the double phonemic boundary are discussed, along with the limitations of the methodology used in this study. / text

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