J Psycholinguist Res (2011) 40:327–349DOI 10.1007/s10936-011-9172-4

Pairing Words with Syntactic Frames:Syntax, Semantics, and Count-Mass Usage

William D. Raymond · Alice F. Healy ·Samantha J. McDonnel

Published online: 5 August 2011© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

Abstract Two experiments examined English speakers’ choices of count or masscompatible frames for nouns varying in imageability (concrete, abstract) and noun class(count, mass). Pairing preferences with equative (much/many) and non-equative (less/fewer)constructions were compared for groups of teenagers, young adults, and older adults. Devi-ations from normative usage were, for all ages, larger for count than for mass nouns, forthe non-equative than for the equative construction, and for abstract count than for concretecount nouns. These results indicate that mass syntax is not a developmental default, supportproposals that mass syntax is more flexible than count syntax, verify the non-prescriptive useof less with count nouns, and extend the interaction of syntax and semantics in noun classifi-cation to older ages, with older adults showing a reduced reliance on semantics. Knowledgeof frame compatibility and knowledge of noun class are also shown to be largely independent.

Keywords Pairing words with syntactic frames · Syntax · Semantics · Count-mass usage

English makes a distinction between a lexical class of count nouns (e.g., coin) and aclass of mass nouns (e.g., spinach), which are differentiated by morpho-syntactic criteria.Among other diagnostics, count nouns can be pluralized (e.g., coins) but mass nouns cannot(e.g., *spinaches); mass nouns can be used without a determiner (I like spinach) but countnouns cannot (*I like coin); and count nouns are used in a variety of syntactic constructionframes requiring different quantifiers (e.g., as many coins as, *as many spinach as) from theequivalent frames for mass nouns (e.g., *as much coins as, as much spinach as).

A preliminary version of this work was presented in part at the 2009 meeting of the Society for Research inChild Development, Denver, CO.

W. D. Raymond · A. F. Healy (B)Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0345, USAe-mail: Alice.Healy@Colorado.edu

S. J. McDonnelUniversity of California, Davis, CA, USA

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The count-mass distinction in English is largely correlated with the ontological categories“object” and “substance,” although an inspection of the English lexicon indicates that theclass of any individual noun cannot be computed from these categories. For example, thereare pairs of words that can be used to indicate essentially identical referents but belong todifferent classes (e.g., count noodles and mass spaghetti). In addition, the distinction appliesnot only to concrete nouns, but also to abstract nouns, which do not name physical objects(e.g., count fact, mass information). Moreover, as has been noted (Bloom 1994), even con-crete count nouns do not necessarily name whole objects, but can also name collectionsof objects (e.g., forest) or parts of objects (e.g., hand). Some mass nouns can also refer tocollections of objects (object-mass nouns, e.g., furniture). Contrary to earlier proposals thatontological categories form the basis for children’s acquisition of the distinction (Macnamara1972), even young children do not depend solely on semantics in learning nouns. Gordon(1985) found that from age 3;5 children categorized nouns primarily from syntactic cues,even when these conflict with the noun’s semantics. Adults also use the syntactic frames inwhich a noun is encountered to categorize it (Bloom 1994). Nevertheless, semantic propertiesof referents play a role in noun classification (Bloom 1994; Bloom and Kelemen 1995; Soja1992). Linguistic analyses (Jackendoff 1991; Wierzbicka 1988) and psycholinguistic studies(Middleton et al. 2004; Wisniewski et al. 1996) have identified characteristics of referentsthat constrain noun classification, including the degree of referent perceptual salience andreferent functional properties. Children display a maturational effect, in which more weightis given to semantic cues for classification of novel nouns with increasing age (Froud andvan der Lely 2007).

How does syntax contribute to the identification of a noun’s class? Count morpho-syntaxcontains elements that have the semantic role of individuation and quantification over individ-uals (e.g., a, several, the plural morpheme; Bloom 1994; Gillon 1996; Quine 1960), whereasmass syntax is used to refer to non-individuals (Bloom 1994; Gordon 1985; Wisniewski et al.2003). Thus, it has been proposed that the relevant correspondence in understanding count-mass categorization is perhaps better characterized as being between syntax and the abstractcognitive category of individual and not ontological properties (Bloom 1994; Bloom andKelemen 1995; Jackendoff 1991; Wierzbicka 1988; Wisniewski et al. 1996). Young childrenhave the notion of individual and can even quantify over certain non-objects like sounds andactions (Wynn 1990). Bloom (1994) concludes that children, as well as adults, can identifya noun’s class by establishing a correspondence between the syntactic context in which itappears and its referent’s individuation status.

Contributions of both syntax and semantics to the knowledge of a noun’s class have, thus,been recognized, but cues to classification may be contradictory or absent. Abstract nouns,which do not have physical referents and thus lack the semantic properties correlated withnoun class, have been little examined. Serwatka and Healy (1998) observed that the count-mass distinction seemed more arbitrary in the case of abstract nouns. If semantic propertiesmore generally are important for noun classification, then abstract noun class might be lessdeterminate than concrete noun class, because it must be based primarily on prior syntacticcues. Also problematic are concrete object-mass nouns. which refer to collections of indi-viduals. Barner and Snedeker (2005) found that, like count nouns, object-mass nouns areinterpreted as quantifying over individuals (i.e., more furniture entails more pieces of furni-ture, and not a larger volume of furniture). They proposed that mass syntax is not associatedwith non-individuals, but rather is unspecified for individuation. Mass syntax may thus havea more flexible cognitive schema than count syntax (Gillon 1990, 1996), allowing the quanti-fication over both individuals and non-individuals. This flexibility would make mass syntaxa likely candidate for a developmental default, which would result in its overgeneralized use

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with nouns of both classes by younger speakers. In any event, the use of a noun with masssyntax cannot always help in determining a noun’s class, perhaps leading to differences inclassification knowledge between count and mass nouns.

In addition to the indeterminacy of mass syntax in the count-mass distinction, manynouns can be used in a frame incompatible with their class: mass nouns in count frames (e.g.,“more beers”) or count nouns in mass frames (e.g., “more chicken”) (Quirk et al. 1985).This incompatible usage is argued to be a type of syntactic coercion, in which a noun isimplicitly converted from one class to the other (Michaelis 2003; but see Ziegeler 2007, for apragmatic account of this phenomenon). The relationships between a noun’s semantics andthe semantics of a noun phrase employing coercion appear to be a conventionalized set, andsome nouns are more likely to appear in a coercion frame than others, because of aspects oftheir semantics. Examples in an English learner’s input of constructions in which a noun’sclass is coerced would introduce classification ambiguity via syntactic contexts alone andunderscore the importance of semantic properties of referents in noun classification.

There is also evidence for another syntactic source of noun class ambiguity in languageinput, which cannot be resolved using semantic and pragmatic knowledge. Speakers’ prefer-ences for placing nouns in mass- or count-compatible frames are not categorical. Serwatkaand Healy (1998) showed that in frames of a construction using the quantifiers much andmany speakers deviated from normative pairing of nouns with their compatible frames about7% of the time in a forced-choice task. The degree of noun-frame pairing variation appearsto be even greater for some constructions. Quirk et al. (1985) discuss a notable tendencyto use less with count nouns, even though less is prescriptively compatible only with massnouns. This usage is commonly seen in casual writing (e.g., “…you need to find a way to useless cars!”, in a blog posting to the New York Times on January 9, 2009). The prescriptivelycount-compatible counterpart of less is fewer (e.g., “…possibly by sharing fewer cars”, froman article in the New York Times on January 2, 2009).

The frequency of, and strong prescriptive prohibition against, the use of less with pluralcount nouns is supported by an examination of available sources online. A search of the NewYork Times online for the 12 months of 2008 revealed 42 uses of “fewer cars,” of which 15were in edited articles or opinion pieces and the remaining 27 were in blog entries; during thesame period there were 24 uses of “less cars,” all in blog entries. Thus, the less formal blogentries contained both prescriptively compatible and incompatible non-equative frames withcars, but in edited articles only the prescriptively compatible fewer cars was found. Suchmismatches are encountered more rarely in equative constructions with much and many,although they can be found in casual writing (e.g., “Try to hit as much cars as possiblewithout being hit by the joggles.”, at www.mcleague.com, November 25, 2003). However,a search of the New York Times online for 2008 produced over 9,000 occurrences of “manycars,” in both blog entries and published articles, but no occurrences of “much cars.” Thenon-categorical use of mass- or count-compatible syntactic frames with individual nounscould make syntactic cues to noun class unreliable, and the degree of usage variability, andthus class uncertainty, may depend on the particular construction used. How this variabilityis affected by speakers’ knowledge of noun class and whether this knowledge changes withage have not previously been considered.

The purpose of the present study is to examine how syntactic and semantic factors affectspeakers’ knowledge of a noun’s class, given the inconsistent values of these factors in thelanguage input across the lexicon. There are reasons to suspect that knowledge of noun classmay differ for words with physical referents (concrete nouns) and words that lack such ref-erents (abstract nouns). It may also differ depending on whether a word is commonly usedas count or mass, because of differences in classification cue strength between count- and

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mass-compatible syntax. These differences may interact with the syntactic frame with whichwords are paired, given the apparent differences in consistency of application of count- andmass-compatible frames from different constructions. Finally, as with other types of lin-guistic knowledge, knowledge of noun class may change as speakers gain more languageexperience.

Noun class knowledge can be assessed by examining how individuals use nouns. Thecurrent study examines speakers’ preferences for pairing English count and mass nouns withprescriptively compatible or incompatible syntactic frames. Binary preference decisions ofthis type have been shown to reflect speakers’ linguistic knowledge and correspond to theirproduction patterns (see Gaskell et al. 2003; Raymond et al. 2009). The influence of relevantsemantic properties of nouns on speakers’ knowledge of noun class is tested by comparingchoices for concrete nouns with those for abstract nouns, which lack these properties. Therole of construction type is assessed by considering frame preferences in two different con-structions that both have count- and mass-compatible variants. Finally, how the effects ofsyntax and semantics change with increasing language experience is examined by comparinggroups of speakers of three different ages.

Experiment 1

The first experiment builds on materials and procedures used by Serwatka and Healy (1998).That study looked at preferences for pairing abstract and concrete count and mass nounswith either a count-compatible or a mass-compatible frame. It showed that nouns were notexclusively matched with type-compatible frames. However, in the study by Serwatka andHealy only young adults were tested, and only compatibility with frames of a constructioninvolving the quantifiers much and many was examined (in their Experiment 3). Specifically,the frames used by Serwatka and Healy were: there aren’t many _____ (count compatible)and there isn’t much _____ (mass compatible). These frames are instances of the existen-tial comparative construction and differ not only in the quantifier but also in the verb form,with plural are occurring with the count-compatible quantifier many and singular is with themass-compatible quantifier much. In addition to the quantifier many itself, the plural verb isa cue to the count-compatibility of the many frame, which may have moderated the effectfound in that study. In the current experiment, the presence of a noun-frame compatibil-ity cue other than the quantifier in the frames is avoided by using an equative comparativeconstruction whose mass- and count-compatible frames retained the much-many quantifieralternation used by Serwatka and Healy. The equative frames used were: I have as much ____as (mass-compatible equative) and I have as many _____ as (count-compatible equative).

To examine preference variation across construction types, the mass- and count-compatible frames of a non-equative comparative, which include the quantifiers lessand fewer, were used in the experiment. The non-equative frames used were: I haveless _____than (mass-compatible non-equative) and I have fewer _____ than (count com-patible non-equative). Following observations of the common use of less with count nounsin casual speech, more preference variation in pairing mass and count nouns with frames ispredicted for the non-equative construction than for the equative construction.

As in the study by Serwatka and Healy (1998), the influence of the semantic propertiesof referents was examined in Experiment 1 by testing pairing preferences of both concreteand abstract nouns. To examine how preference variation changes as a function of languageexperience, two age groups of participants were tested, teenagers and young adults. Age canbe considered an index of language experience, with older speakers having more experience

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than younger speakers. The adult speakers are, thus, expected to exhibit less deviation fromprescriptive usage and more consistency between construction types chosen for each nounthan the younger, teenage speakers.

Method

Participants

The participants consisted of a group of 21 teenagers (8 male and 13 female) and a groupof 21 adults (8 male and 13 female). The teenagers were Broomfield High School (Broom-field, CO) juniors, who participated as a part of an American Literature class during the Fall2004 semester. The teenage participants were the same participants used in the experimentby Raymond et al. (2009) and participated in the present experiment after completing theexperiment reported in that study. The adults were University of Colorado undergraduatestudents, who participated for credit in a course on introductory psychology during the Fall2007 semester. All participants were native speakers of English. By and large, the adults,whose average age was 18.8 and who were second-year undergraduate students, were in thesame age cohort as the teenagers, because the teenagers would have been college sophomoresat the time that the adults were tested.

Materials and Design

The stimuli consisted of a set of 48 English nouns presented underlined in a context sentence.The nouns and their context sentences were from the study of count-mass use by Serwatkaand Healy (1998). The 48 nouns from that study were crossed for noun class (count, mass)and imageability (concrete, abstract). Thus, there were 12 concrete count nouns, 12 concretemass nouns, 12 abstract count nouns, and 12 abstract mass nouns. The nouns used in theSerwatka and Healy study had been taken from a list of 926 nouns rated for concreteness ina study by Paivio et al. (1968). Serwatka and Healy’s 24 concrete nouns were among thosethat received very high concreteness ratings in the Paivio study, and their 24 abstract nounshad been selected from those with the lowest concreteness ratings in the Paivio study.

To categorize the nouns taken from the Paivio list as count or mass, Serwatka and Healy(1998) had used the morphological criterion of pluralizability. Nouns judged by the authorsto have a plural form when used with their most common meaning were categorized as count;those that were judged to have no accepted plural form when so used were categorized asmass. It should be noted that Serwatka and Healy had selected pluralizability as an easy-to-apply diagnostic procedure and maintained no theoretical implications associated with thischoice. In order to verify that the Serwatka and Healy categorizations based on judgments ofpluralizability corresponded to common usage, the frequencies of the singular word formsof all stimuli and the frequencies of the plural word forms of all stimuli (defined as thesingular form plus s, with any necessary orthographic adjustments, e.g., safeties) were deter-mined using the British National Corpus (2001), a 100-million word corpus of written andspoken English. (A similar analysis yielded comparable results using a corpus of AmericanEnglish, the SUBTLEXU S corpus of Brysbaert and New (2009), which is based on Americanmovie and television subtitles.) The frequency analysis did not discriminate noun and verbuses of a given word or between senses of a given noun. The mean frequencies per millionwords for singular and plural word forms from the corpus by noun class and imageabilityare shown in Table 1. There was no difference between the frequencies of singular countand mass nouns, between singular abstract and concrete nouns, or between plural abstract

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Table 1 Mean frequencies per million of singular and plural forms of noun stimuli in Experiment 1 by nounclass and imageability

Imageability Noun class

Count Mass

Concrete Singular: 87.39; plural: 31.04 Singular: 55.75; plural: 0.29Abstract Singular: 101.32; plural: 48.33 Singular: 62.41; plural: 0.05

The plural form was operationally defined as including an -s morpheme at the end of the word

and concrete nouns. However, the plural count noun frequencies were higher than the pluralmass noun frequencies, t (46) = 4.29, p < .001. In addition, separate analyses of the twoimageability sets revealed that the plural abstract count nouns had higher frequencies thanthe plural abstract mass nouns, t (22) = 3.08, p = .005, and the plural concrete count nounshad higher frequencies than the plural concrete mass nouns, t (22) = 3.13, p = .005. Theresults thus corroborate the categorization judgments based on pluralizability of Serwatkaand Healy.

The context sentence for each noun (see Appendix) identified the relevant meaning of thenoun for the participants in the experiment. The meaning indicated by the sentence contextwas consistent with the noun’s count or mass categorization in the experiment. In fact, in thecontext sentences the nouns were uninflected and were preceded by a definite or possessivedeterminer, which is compatible with both mass and count nouns. Thus, no morpho-syntacticindicator of the intended class of the noun was provided. Because of the possibility of syn-tactic coercion in English, a noun’s intended class could not be determined definitively fromthe context sentence by the participants. However, coercion is possible for both count andmass nouns.

There are various subclasses of English concrete nouns that are based on semantic featuresthat are independent of countability. Categories that have received attention in the literatureare aggregates (e.g., count noodles, mass macaroni) and superordinates (count garments,mass clothing) (Middleton et al. 2004; Wisniewski et al. 2003). Mass nouns have been sub-cateogorized as object mass (e.g., furniture, clothing) and substance mass (e.g., water, dust),where object-mass nouns quantify over individuals entities and not amount (i.e., more fur-niture entails more pieces of furniture and not bigger furniture pieces), but substance massnouns do not (see Barner and Snedeker 2005). In addition, many nouns are so-called dual (orflexible) nouns, which can commonly be either mass or count (e.g., chicken, beer) (Barnerand Snedeker 2005; Gillon et al. 1999). As noted, the two senses of dual nouns are relatedin any of a variety of conventional ways (e.g., a beer is a type of the liquid beer or a unit ofthe liquid beer, and chicken is the meat of the animal called a chicken). To discourage anysystematic response bias based on noun subcategory, a mix of subcategories was includedamong the stimuli employed here. The subclasses were not differentiated in the analyses,although some differences in behavior across categories was anticipated, and the behaviorof different noun subclasses was examined.

Participants’ preference for combining the mass and count nouns with the prescriptivelycompatible frame (mass-compatible, count-compatible) was determined by binary choicefor each noun in two tests, one for each comparative construction type. Test order was var-ied in two conditions (equative construction first, non-equative construction first), so thattest position (first or second) was not confounded with construction type (equative or non-equative). However, in both tests, frame class order was constant, with the mass-compatible

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Table 2 Alternative frames for tests of the two construction types

Frame class Construction type

Equative Non-equative

Mass compatible I have as much ___ as Mary I have less ___ than MaryCount compatible I have as many ___ as Mary I have fewer ___ than Mary

frame presented as choice a and the count-compatible frame as choice b, to avoid confusionby the participants. In both tests participants were asked to pair each noun with either choice a(the prescriptively mass-compatible frame) or choice b (the prescriptively count-compatibleframe) for a construction. The frame choices for tests of both construction types are providedin Table 2.

Procedure

The teenagers were all tested together, and the adults were tested in two groups. A subset of9 teenagers and 11 adults completed the equative (much/many) test first, and the remaining12 teenagers and 10 adults completed the non-equative (less/fewer) test first. Test materialswere presented as printed packets containing testing instructions and the two tests. The firstpage of each packet presented the following written instructions: “Read each numbered sen-tence on the left, paying attention to the underlined word. Then circle the letter (a or b) ofthe sentence on the right that seems more natural with the underlined word (or a form of theunderlined word) placed in the blank.”

Participants worked at their own pace. Following completion of the first test in the packet,each participant completed the other test. Following completion of the second test, each par-ticipant completed a short questionnaire, which elicited demographic information and alsoinformation about knowledge of quantifier use. Participants were asked whether they knewof a rule concerning the use of much versus many, and if so, to describe the rule. Participantswere then asked whether they knew of a rule concerning the use of less versus fewer, and ifso, to describe the rule.

Results

The results reported were analyzed in terms of errors and consistency using two mixed facto-rial analyses of variance, one with subjects as the random effect (F1) and the other with itemsas the random effect (F2). We report here only the results that were significant (p ≤ .05) byboth subject (F1) and item (F2) analyses or, at least, significant in one of these analyses andmarginally significant (p ≤ .10) in the other. The dependent variable in the error analyseswas the proportion of errors, defined as deviations from the normative rules for the use ofeach pair of quantifiers with count and mass nouns. The rules prescribe the use of much andless with nouns categorized as mass and many and fewer with nouns categorized as count.Thus, errors consisted of choosing a mass-compatible frame for a count noun or a count-compatible frame for a mass noun, using the categorization of the stimuli for the experiment.The error analyses included the factors of age group (teenagers, adults), noun class (count,mass), noun imageability (concrete, abstract), and construction type (equative, non-equative).Preliminary analyses of variance using errors as the dependent variable were conducted thatincluded the factor of test (i.e., construction type) order (equative first, non-equative first).

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This variable yielded no significant effects, so that variable was not included in the analy-ses reported here. The dependent variable in the consistency analyses was the proportion ofconsistent responses for each item across both constructions (i.e., for both equative and non-equative constructions). Responses for an item were consistent if a participant’s choices inthe two tests were both of count-compatible frames or both of mass-compatible frames. Theconsistency analyses included the factors of age group (teenagers, adults), noun class (count,mass), and word imageability (concrete, abstract). One teenager and two adults respondedwith the mass-compatible choice (Choice a) to all stimuli on both tests. Their data were notexcluded from either the error or consistency analyses but should be noted. There were noparticipants who always responded with Choice b, and there was only one (a teenager) whoresponded prescriptively correctly on all stimuli in both tests.

Error Analysis

The results of the error analyses are summarized in Fig. 1 (top panel), with a breakdown byall word variables averaged across the variable of age group, and Fig. 2 (top panel), with abreakdown by all variables averaged across the variable of imageability. Participants’ framepreferences generally agreed with the normative classification of nouns; the overall errorrate was. 235. However, the error rate was higher on count nouns (.378) than on mass nouns(.092); the main effect of noun class was significant [F1(1, 40) = 54.41, MSE = 0.127, p <

.001; F2(1, 44) = 35.16, MSE = 0.112, p < .001]. This result was due in part to partici-pants making an especially large number of errors on abstract count nouns (concrete count= .308; abstract count = .449; concrete mass = .106; abstract mass = .077). The interactionof noun class and imageability was significant in the subject analysis but only marginallysignificant in the item analysis [F1(1, 40) = 19.06, MSE = 0.032, p < .001; F2(1, 44) =3.11, MSE = 0.112, p = .085]. The difference between concrete count and abstract countnouns was significant, t (41) = 5.06, p < .001, even with a Bonferroni correction for theuse of two separate t tests, which changes alpha from .05 to .025, but the difference betweenconcrete mass and abstract mass words was not significant.

As expected, participants made more errors on the non-equative construction(less/fewer, .252) than on the equative construction (much/many, .218); the main effect ofconstruction type was significant [F1(1, 40) = 5.26, MSE = 0.018, p = .027; F2(1, 44) =11.40, MSE = 0.005, p = .002]. Both constructions, however, showed the same pattern oferrors as a function of noun class and imageability (see Fig. 1); the interaction of constructiontype and noun class, the interaction of construction type and imageability, and the three-wayinteraction of construction type, noun class, and imageability were all non-significant.

The teenagers made more errors overall (.253) than the adults (.217), but the main effectof age group was not significant in the subject analysis [F1(1, 40) < 1; F2(1, 44) =9.00, MSE = 0.007, p = .004]. The discrepancy between the item and subject analysespresumably reflects the high variability of error rate across subjects within each age group(subject analysis MSE = 0.122; item analysis MSE = 0.007).

Consistency Analysis

In the consistency analyses there was a main effect of noun class, F1(1, 40) = 13.73, MSE =0.017, p < .001; F2(1, 44) = 15.11, MSE = 0.009, p < .001, reflecting a greater propor-tion of consistent responses for mass nouns (.870) than for count nouns (.795). Consistencyand error rate were negatively correlated across items (r = −.664); nouns with more con-sistent responses across tests tended to have lower error rates, suggesting that errors largely

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count mass count mass0.0

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Fig. 1 Proportion of errors averaged across age groups as a function of noun class, imageability, and con-struction type in Experiment 1. The top panel includes results for all items; the bottom panel includes resultsfor all but the six high-error items

involved inconsistent frame choices between constructions (with more errors on the non-equative construction, as described previously), rather than consistently non-prescriptivechoices on both constructions. There was also a main effect of age group, which was signif-icant in the item analysis, F2(1, 44) = 18.65, MSE = 0.007, p < .001, but only marginallysignificant in the subject analysis, F1(1, 40) = 3.14, MSE = 0.068, p = .084; the effect ofage reflects a somewhat greater proportion of consistent responses among the adults (.868)than among the teenagers (.797).

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Fig. 2 Proportion of errors averaged across imageability as a function of age group, noun class, and construc-tion type in Experiment 1. The top panel includes results for all items; the bottom panel includes results forall but the six high-error items

Breakdown by Words and Reanalysis of Errors

The overwhelming pattern of results was that teenage and adult preferences for matchingnouns with comparative frames are affected in a similar way by the noun class and image-ability of the nouns and by the frame’s construction type. To highlight these similar patternsand to understand the differences among the items, the error rate for each item as a func-tion of age group, noun class, imageability, and construction type is shown in Fig. 3. The

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Fig. 3 Proportion of errors for each word separately as a function of age group, noun class, imageability, andconstruction type in Experiment 1

breakdown of error rate by item illustrates not only that adults and teenagers make errors onthe same words but also that, in general, errors are made on the same words with the equativeconstruction frames as with the non-equative construction frames. Very high error rates wereseen on a relatively small subset of 6 (out of 24) count nouns: the 2 concrete nouns lip andbrain and the 4 abstract nouns advantage, disposition, mind, and attitude. Error rates on thesewords, but only these words, were over 50% in both age groups (except for the word lip forthe adults, which had an error rate of 48%). With these 6 words removed, the average errorrate on the remaining 42 words was 13%. Two observations may help to explain why errorrates of the removed words were so high. First, there are fairly common mass senses for threeof the words (senses illustrated in “Don’t give me so much lip/attitude.” and “She derived asmuch advantage from the situation as I did.”). Second, it might have been difficult for partic-ipants to easily place most of the six words in the count frame provided because of pragmaticconstraints barring variability in the number of these items an individual can possess, at leastat one time (“I have as many brains/minds/lips/dispositions/attitudes as Mary”).

Even if the six problematic count nouns are removed from consideration, the pattern ofmore errors on count nouns than on mass nouns is evident (see the bottom panel of Fig. 1).An analysis of variance with the six nouns removed showed that the main effect of nounclass was still significant, F1(1, 40) = 14.351, MSE = 0.162, p < .001; F2(1, 38) =61.46, MSE = 0.018, p < .001, suggesting a more general, pervasive effect. Likewise,the main effect of construction type was still significant, F1(1, 40) = 4.189, MSE =0.026, p = .047; F2(1, 38) = 12.028, MSE = 0.004, p = .001, suggesting that the

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differences between equative and non-equative constructions reflected differences in theconstructions rather than in the particular words used. With the six items removed, theinteraction of noun class and imageability was barely significant in the subject analysis,F1(1, 40) = 4.023, MSE = 0.032, p = .052, and still marginally significant in the itemanalysis, F2(1, 38) = 3.40, MSE = 0.018, p = .073.

With the six items removed, there was a three-way interaction of age, construction type,and noun class (see the bottom panel of Fig. 2), which was barely significant in the subjectanalysis, F1(1, 40) = 3.96, MSE = 0.011, p = .053, and significant in the item analysis,F2(1, 38) = 4.68, MSE = 0.004, p = .037. However, none of the four paired comparisonsof the equative and non-equative constructions (count teenagers, count adults, mass teen-agers, and mass adults) were significant under a Bonferroni correction for the use of fourseparate t tests, which changes alpha from .05 to .0125.

Discussion

On the retrospective questionnaire, only three adults and three teenagers could state a rulethat captured the prescriptive use of the equative construction frames involving the quantifi-ers much and many and/or the non-equative frames involving the quantifiers less and fewer.Thus, unsurprisingly, most participants do not seem to be following an explicit rule basedon noun class when making preference choices. Nevertheless, participants’ choices overallfollowed prescriptive usage based on the classification of nouns used in the experiment bygenerally placing the count nouns in count-compatible frames and the mass nouns in mass-compatible frames. There thus seems to be general agreement regarding each noun’s classand which frames are licensed by the two classes. Despite general agreement on noun-framepairings, there was frame preference variation, indicated by error rates, on all 48 nouns andinconsistent responses on 38 of the 48 nouns. The subject and item variation observed implythat knowledge of a noun’s class was either not universal or not robust enough to alwaysguarantee prescriptive variant choices for both frames. The result is not unexpected if cate-gorization depends, to some extent, on interpretation of a noun’s individuation status, whichmay vary across speakers. Note that only one participant (a teenager) showed a pattern ofpreferences completely in line with the prescriptive constraints by matching all nouns withthe prescriptively compatible frame.

The variation in pairing nouns with frames supplies additional evidence that syntax maynot always be a reliable indicator of lexical class, underscoring the fact that the unqualifiedreliance on syntactic cues in an utterance for the acquisition of a noun’s class is problematic.Although there are reasons to expect some preference variability for individual nouns, therewere systematic deviations from the prescriptive pattern on the features examined, whichprovide clues to knowledge of count-mass categorization.

Participants made far fewer incompatible frame choices on mass nouns than on countnouns for both constructions, and they were more consistent across constructions in theirresponses to mass nouns than to count nouns. These results indicate a greater tendency topair nouns with mass-compatible frames than with count-compatible frames, in agreementwith the proposal that mass syntax has a more flexible cognitive schema than count syntax(Gillon 1996). If the more flexible mass syntax is also a developmental default, produced byyoung speakers when they are uncertain of a noun’s class, then we would expect younger,less experienced language users to generalize its use to both noun classes, making their errorrates higher on count nouns but lower on mass nouns. However, there was little or no effect ofage on error rate, although numerically the teenagers had a greater error rate on mass nounsthan did the adults (see Fig. 2), suggesting that the younger teenagers were not relying to a

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greater extent on a default mass frame, but rather were simply more uncertain about nounclass than the adults.

As anticipated, preference compatibility also varied by construction, with more incom-patible choices for the non-equative frames (involving the quantifiers less/fewer) than forthe equative frames (involving the quantifiers much/many), regardless of noun class orimageability of the words. Although there was a difference in the degree of prescriptiveuse between the two constructions, the pattern of responses on individual items was gener-ally the same for both. The anticipated difference in error rates between the two constructionsis consistent with observations of the common use of less with count nouns, but the failureto find differences by noun class and the similar pattern of responses across items indicatethat the participants were also likely to prefer fewer with mass nouns. Taken together, theresults indicate that the difference in behavior with respect to the two constructions is due towhat is known about the construction variants, and not about lexical knowledge of the nouns.Specifically, there is greater uncertainty about which frame is mass- or count-compatible inthe non-equative construction than in the equative construction.

Despite differences between age groups in consistency across constructions, it was notedthat the two groups largely showed the same pattern of responses on individual nouns withboth constructions, so that teenagers were not qualitatively different from the young adultsin this experiment in their frame pairing preferences on the nouns examined. In studies of theacquisition of morphological variation there is evidence that behavior continues to becomemore prescriptive with age (see Raymond et al. 2009), which may also be the case for thesyntactic preference variation examined here. A greater age difference between participantgroups might reveal differences in knowledge of noun class and also in knowledge of con-struction compatibility for the two constructions. The effect of a greater age differential, andhence a greater differential in language experience, between participant groups is exploredin Experiment 2. In addition, it was noted that some participants chose the mass frame forall items in Experiment 1, which was always Choice a, raising the possibility that the frameclass order may have biased responses and contributed to the more prescriptive performanceon mass items. This issue is also addressed in Experiment 2.

Experiment 2

Although there was an effect of age on consistency in Experiment 1, there was considerableoverlap in performance by the two groups, perhaps because the teenagers and adults in theseexperiments were close in age. The adults in Experiment 1 were young college age students,whose performance we would like to compare to that of older adults, with substantially morelanguage experience, to determine if more years of language experience results in perfor-mance that is more prescriptive and more consistent than that of younger adults. Experiment2 examined differences between a group of college-aged young adults, like the adult groupin Experiment 1, and older adults, aged 40–60. This age range was chosen for the older adultgroup because although knowledge of language continues to change throughout a speaker’slifetime, some allomorphic variability (e.g., use of the two allomorphs of the definite articlethe) has been shown to become largely prescriptive by around age 50 (see Keating et al.1994).

Experiment 2 used the same stimuli and task as Experiment 1, but was also designedto assess the methodological issue in the first experiment that may have contributed to agreater error rate on count nouns than on mass nouns. Recall that Experiment 1 held theorder of frame class constant in the two tests, with the mass-compatible frame presented as

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Choice a in both tests. It was noted that three participants in that experiment always chose themass-compatible frame, perhaps because it was always the first choice. These participantsmay have been part of a larger pattern of bias toward Choice a. Any order bias could havecontributed to the main effect of noun class, because selecting the mass-compatible choicewould lead to more errors on count nouns than on mass nouns. To eliminate any possibleorder bias, the order of frame class was manipulated in Experiment 2.

Method

Participants

Experiment 2 included 54 participants in two groups, a young adult group and an olderadult group. The young adult group consisted of 38 University of Colorado undergraduatestudents who participated for credit in a course on introductory psychology during the Fall2008 semester. In the younger group there were 7 male and 31 female students, who wereall native speakers of English. By and large, the young adults in Experiment 2 were a yearyounger than the age cohort of the (teenage and adult) participants in Experiment 1, becausethe teenagers would have been college juniors at the time that the participants in Experiment 2were tested. The older adult group included 16 participants. All older participants served on apurely volunteer basis and were tested throughout 2009. They were recruited through friendsand acquaintances of the experimenter (WDR). The participants consisted of 4 men and 12women who were all native speakers of English. All participants were between the ages of 40and 60 (M = 51.1). The educational background of the older age group of participants wasnot strictly controlled. In fact, the educational background of the older adults varied fromhigh-school-only to graduate-training. It is then possible that the intelligence and languageexperience within this group differs on average, and varies more than, within the group ofyoung adults.

Materials and Design

The materials used in Experiment 2 were the same as those in Experiment 1, except that bothconstruction class orders (mass-compatible first, count-compatible first) were used acrossparticipants. As in Experiment 1 the participants in Experiment 2 all completed two testson paper, one involving a choice between the two equative frames (including the quantifi-ers much and many) and the other involving a choice between the two non-equative frames(including the quantifiers less and fewer). There were thus three crossed between-subjectsfactors of age group, test (construction type) order (equative first, non-equative first), andconstruction class order (mass-compatible first, count-compatible first). The mixed factorialdesign also included the within-subject factors of noun class (count, mass), construction type(equative, non-equative), and imageability (concrete, abstract).

Procedure

The participants were tested in four counterbalancing subgroups for the manipulatedfactors of construction type order and construction class order. The young adult par-ticipants were all tested together. The older adult participants were tested individuallyover a period of a year. In the young adult group there were 10 participants (8 female,2 male) in the equative first, mass-compatible first condition; there were 9 participants (allfemale) in the equative first, count-compatible first condition; there were 10 participants

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(7 female, 3 male) in the non-equative first, mass-compatible first condition; and there were9 participants (7 female, 2 male) in the non-equative first, count-compatible first condition.In the older adult group there were 4 participants (3 female, 1 male) in each of the fourconditions. After completing both tests, all participants completed the same questionnairegiven as a post-test in Experiment 1.

Results

The results reported were analyzed in terms of errors and consistency, each using two mixedfactorial analyses of variance, one with subjects as the random effect (F1) and the other withitems as the random effect (F2), with the analyses designed as in Experiment 1. As for Exper-iment 1, we report all effects that were significant in one analysis and at least marginallysignificant in the other analysis. All paired comparisons were conducted as t tests on thedata with subjects as the random effect and using a Bonferroni correction for multiple tests.Preliminary analyses of variance using errors as the dependent variable were conducted thatincluded the factor of test (i.e., construction type) order (equative first, non-equative first).As in Experiment 1, this variable yielded no significant effects. Subsequent analyses of vari-ance were conducted including the factor of construction class order (mass-compatible first,count-compatible first). This variable also yielded no significant effects, so neither counter-balancing variable was included in the analyses reported here. One (young adult) participantin this experiment responded with the mass-compatible choice to all stimuli, which in thisparticipant’s condition was Choice b. This participant’s data were not excluded from theanalysis. There were no participants who always responded with the choice correspond-ing to the count-compatible frame or who responded prescriptively correctly on all stimuli.These results argue against any systematic effect of response choice ordering on participantresponses in Experiment 1.

Breakdown by Words

The error rate for each item as a function of age group, noun class, imageability, and con-struction type is shown in Fig. 4. As in Experiment 1 the pattern of results was that youngadult and older adult preferences for matching words with comparative frames are affected ina similar way by the noun class and imageability of the words and by the frame’s constructiontype. As can be seen in Fig. 4, both groups had high error rates on the same six count nounsas in Experiment 1, presumably once again for the reasons discussed in the Results sectionof Experiment 1. In Experiment 2 error rates on these six words were again over 50% inboth groups, except for the word lip, which had an error rate of 38% for the older adults.No words other than these six had error rates above 50%. In order to remove any effectsof these six words and allow for the generalizability of the results to the factors examinedin the experiment and also to facilitate comparison of results between the two experiments,the results reported are from analyses performed on the data with the six words removed.A preliminary analysis including all words yielded no differences in the pattern of results,except for those few noted in the reported results.

Error Analysis

As in Experiment 1, participants generally preferred to match a noun with the frame pre-scriptively compatible with the noun’s class; the overall error rate was .119. However, therewas a main effect of noun class [F1(1, 52) = 18.63, MSE = 0.072, p < .001; F2(1, 38) =

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Fig. 4 Proportion of errors for each word separately as a function of age group, noun class, imageability, andconstruction type in Experiment 2

32.99, MSE = 0.019, p < .001], reflecting more errors on count nouns (.182) than on massnouns (.057). As in Experiment 1, count nouns were more likely to be paired with mass-compatible frames than mass nouns were to be paired with count-compatible frames. Nounclass and imageability significantly interacted [F1(1, 52) = 12.33, MSE = 0.039, p <

.001; F2(1, 38) = 11.75, MSE = 0.019, p = .002]. The pattern was the same as in Experi-ment 1; there were more errors on abstract count nouns (.235) than on concrete count nouns(.130), t (53) = 3.65, p < .001, but there were more errors on concrete mass nouns (.094)than on abstract mass nouns (.019), t (53) = 4.30, p < .001 (which are both significant evenwith a Bonferroni correction for the use of two separate t tests, which changes alpha from.05 to .025).

There was a main effect of construction type [F1(1, 52) = 11.74, MSE = 0.017,

p = .001; F2(1, 38) = 34.52, MSE = 0.003, p < .001]; as in Experiment 1 partici-pants made more errors on the non-equative test (less/fewer, .143) than on the equativetest (much/many, .096). There was also an interaction of construction type and noun class[F1(1, 52) = 7.62, MSE = 0.015, p = .008; F2(1, 38) = 18.88, MSE = 0.003, p <

.001], reflecting a greater difference in error rates for the non-equative construction betweencount and mass noun errors (count: .223; mass: .062) than for the equative construction(count: .141; mass: .052), t (53) = 3.13, p = .003. This interaction was not significant inExperiment 1, although the pattern of errors was the same in both experiments. The interactionindicates a tendency specifically to use the mass-compatible non-equative frame (containingless) with count nouns, and not a general uncertainty of use for both non-equative frames.

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The young adults made more errors overall (.133) than the older adults (.087), but themain effect of age was not significant in the subject analysis [F1(1, 52) = 2.16, MSE =0.088, p = .148; F2(1, 38) = 13.13, MSE = 0.007, p < .001]. Once again, variabilityin participants’ behaviors within each age group perhaps accounts for the failure to find amain effect of age in the subject analysis, although the behavioral overlap in the two groupscannot in Experiment 2 be attributed to closeness in age, but perhaps, rather, to the variabilityin age and educational background among the older adults. Unlike in Experiment 1, therewas an interaction of age and imageability in the item analysis, which was marginally sig-nificant in the subject analysis [F1(1, 52) = 3.57, MSE = 0.019, p = .064; F2(1, 38) =4.72, MSE = 0.007, p = .036] (although the interaction was not significant in the anal-ysis on the complete set of words); the older adults had more errors on concrete nouns(.099) than on abstract nouns (.076), but the reverse was true of the young adults (con-crete: .117; abstract: .149), although this difference between concrete and abstract nounswas not significant for either age group. There was also a three-way interaction of age, im-ageability, and noun class (not significant in the analysis of all words and also not found inExperiment 1) [F1(1, 52) = 4.04, MSE = 0.039, p < .050; F2(1, 38) = 10.91, MSE =0.007, p = .002]. The interaction reflects the fact that for young adults there were manymore errors on abstract count than on concrete count nouns, t (37) = 4.12, p < .001, butno difference for the older adults, even though there were more errors on concrete massthan on abstract mass nouns both for young adults, t (37) = 3.70, p < .001, and for olderadults, t (15) = 2.25, p = .040 (although the t test for older adults is not significant with aBonferroni correction for the use of four separate t tests, which changes alpha from .05 to.0125) (Fig. 5). The four-way interaction of age, construction type, noun class, and image-ability was marginally significant in the subject analysis and significant in the item analysis[F1(1, 52) = 3.34, MSE = 0.011, p = .073; F2(1, 38) = 8.51, MSE = 0.002, p = .006];this complex interaction will not be interpreted but can be reviewed in Fig. 4.

0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6concrete

abstract

Pro

port

ion

of E

rror

s

Older Adults Young Adults

count mass count mass

Minus Six High-Error Items

Fig. 5 Proportion of errors averaged across construction type as a function of age group, noun class, andimageability in Experiment 2. The graph includes results for all but the six high-error items

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Consistency Analysis

In the consistency analysis there was a main effect of noun class [F1(1, 52) = 22.36, MSE =0.024, p < .001; F2(1, 38) = 34.95, MSE = 0.006, p < .001]; participants were less con-sistent across construction types in their frame choices for count nouns (.815) than they werefor mass nouns (.933). As in the error analyses, there was also an interaction of noun class andimageability (which was not found in the consistency analysis in Experiment 1, although thepattern of errors was the same) [F1(1, 52) = 20.58, MSE = 0.014, p < .001; F2(1, 38) =18.70, MSE = 0.006, p < .001]. As might be expected, the pattern for the consistencyinteraction was the opposite of that for the error interaction of these factors, with more framepreference consistency among the concrete count nouns (.869) than on the abstract countnouns (.762), t (53) = 3.69, p < .001, but more consistency among the abstract mass nouns(.965) than on the concrete mass nouns (.901), t (53) = 3.885, p < .001, with these pairedcomparisons significant even with a Bonferroni correction for the use of two separate t tests,which changes alpha from .05 to .025. In fact, as in Experiment 1, consistency and errorrate were negatively correlated across items (r = −.722). Also as in Experiment 1, the twoage groups differed in their preference consistency [F1(1, 52) = 7.29, MSE = 0.031, p =.009; F2(1, 38) = 56.17, MSE = 0.003, p < .001], with the young adults less consistent intheir frame choices across the two tests (.853) than the older adults (.924).

Discussion

There were no participants in Experiment 2 who selected the prescriptively compatible syn-tactic frame on all 48 items in both tests (and only 2 participants, both older adults, whoperformed fully prescriptively on the 42 items analyzed after the 6 problematic nouns wereremoved), and there was preference variation on all but 2 of the 48 nouns, so the variationin pairing nouns with count- and mass-compatible frames was not limited to a few individ-uals or nouns. However, especially high rates of deviation from the expected response werefound for the same six nouns as in Experiment 1. The pattern of deviations from prescriptivebehavior in Experiment 2 was in many other respects similar to the pattern in Experiment 1,but there were some important differences that indicate how language experience that comesfrom the continued use of language over time changes frame preference patterns.

As in Experiment 1 there was a higher error rate, with less consistency across tests, on countnouns than on mass nouns. This result can again be explained as the consequence of a moreflexible cognitive schema for mass syntax than count syntax, which would increase the use ofmass syntax with any noun. However, an influence of semantics on preferences could also beseen; responses were more prescriptive (and more consistent) for concrete count nouns thanfor abstract count nouns. The effect of imageability suggests that it was the perceptual featuresof the concrete nouns’ referents that increased the likelihood of a (consistently) compatiblechoice on the count nouns. This conclusion is in line with the numerous studies showingan influence of specific perceptual qualities, such as salience (e.g., Middleton et al. 2004)and spatial or functional contiguity (Wisniewski et al. 1996), on concrete noun classification.However, the mass noun choices were less prescriptive when these nouns were concrete thanwhen they were abstract. This result may also be interpreted as the influence of perceptualfeatures. Some mass stimuli were object-mass nouns, such as macaroni, toast, furniture,and clothing, which refer to collections of objects. The object mass nouns had the highesterror rates among the concrete mass nouns (see Fig. 4). Because they refer to collections ofobjects and quantify over individuals (Barner and Snedeker 2005), these nouns introducedambiguity into frame choices, if frame compatibility is based on individuation properties of

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the referent, as has been proposed (Bloom 1994, inter alia), perhaps making it more likelythat participants will match them with count-compatible frames. The observed interactionof noun class and imageability thus results from the combined influences of semantic andgrammatical factors on frame selection.

The older adults performed more consistently and somewhat more prescriptively acrosstests than did the young adults. It should be noted that this difference in performance betweenthe two groups is attributed to their difference in age, but there are other possible differencesbetween the two groups that might also contribute to the observed effects of age. Specifi-cally, there were differences between the two groups in the testing conditions (younger adultstested in a group and older adults tested individually) and in the educational background of theparticipants (all younger adults were college students but the older adults varied from high-school-only to graduate-training). The variation in educational background of the older adultscould have increased the error variance, obscuring some possibly significant performancedifferences between the two age groups, whereas the difference between the two groups intesting conditions might have led to differences in participant motivation that might havecontributed to the performance differences between the two age groups that were observed.

Despite the superior performance of the older adults, they still made non-prescriptivechoices 8.7% of the time. Only six of the older adults could describe a rule for the use ofeither the equative or non-equative frames, so that the older adults’ more prescriptive behav-ior cannot be ascribed completely to their explicit knowledge of a rule for the use of mass-and count-compatible frames. The older group’s more consistently prescriptive behavior waspresumably the result of their greater experience with count-mass nouns and constructionalvariants due to age, similar to other effects of experience with age on count-mass usage (Talerand Jarema 2007). The more consistently prescriptive behavior of the older adults than theyoung adults could largely be ascribed to a greater knowledge of which frame variant is com-patible with abstract count nouns, because concrete noun preferences were similar across thetwo groups. For the older adults the semantics of concrete count nouns apparently did notprovide an advantage over abstract count nouns, as they did for the young adults. This obser-vation is in contrast to earlier findings, reviewed in the Introduction, that for children moreweight is given to semantic cues for classification of novel nouns with increasing age (Froudand van der Lely 2007). In the present case, the experience of the older speakers allowedmore prescriptive choices for count nouns, which were not dependent on semantic factors.

The greater error rate in frame pairings for the non-equative construction (which includesthe quantifiers less/fewer) was also again evident in Experiment 2. However, in Experiment 2the increased error rate for the non-equative construction resulted specifically from a greatertendency for both age groups to pair count nouns with the mass-compatible frame (involvingless) than to pair mass nouns with a count-compatible frame (involving fewer), the samepattern seen in the anecdotal examples from written language. The overgeneralization of thenon-equative frame with less to count nouns did not diminish with age, suggesting the useof less with count nouns is becoming established as a norm.

General Discussion

Syntax and semantics interact in the acquisition of count and mass nouns, both for childrenand adults (Bloom 1994; Bloom and Kelemen 1995; Froud and van der Lely 2007; Soja1992). But semantic cues to a noun’s class are not always available, and syntactic cues arenot consistent across noun usage. The present study examined how speakers’ knowledge ofnoun class, as measured by preferences for pairing count and mass nouns with prescriptively

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compatible or incompatible syntactic frames, is influenced by syntactic and semantic factors,and whether noun class knowledge changes with language experience.

There was general agreement in the pairing of nouns with count- or mass-compatiblesyntactic frames in both experiments. However, in both experiments there was also variationacross participants and nouns in frame preference. The present results are thus consistentwith Serwatka and Healy’s (1998) finding of non-prescriptive responses in frame preferencechoice for their pair of mass- and count-compatible frames. The present results extend theirfindings to other constructions and other quantifiers, even in a task where there is no clue toframe compatibility except the quantifier. In the current study, variation was found regard-less of noun class, imageability, or construction type, but there were consistent patterns ofvariation in the experiments. Greater variation in frame choice was found for count nounsthan for mass nouns. That is, participants were more likely to place count nouns, which com-monly are used to refer to numerically quantifiable objects, in mass-compatible frames thanto place mass nouns, which as a class are not pluralizable, in count-compatible frames. Thewillingness to pair count nouns with mass-compatible frames is consistent with the proposalthat mass syntax does not constrain reference to non-individuals, making it available foruse with nouns that quantify over individuals, including all count nouns. The more flexiblecognitive schema of mass nouns in English may generalize to other languages as the basisfor the language typological asymmetry that there are languages with only mass nouns (oronly mass syntax) but no languages with only count nouns (Chierchia 1998).

There was evidence that lexical semantics influenced participants’ frame choices, but theinfluence of semantics interacted with noun class. In both experiments concrete count nounshad fewer incompatible pairings than abstract count nouns, suggesting that the perceptualand functional properties of the concrete referents, which abstract nouns lack, guided par-ticipants more often to pair these nouns with prescriptively count-compatible frames. Massnouns, for which responses were generally more prescriptive, also showed an influence ofimageability; however, unlike count nouns, concrete mass nouns had more incompatiblepairings than abstract mass nouns. The higher variation in concrete mass noun pairing pref-erences is attributable to a greater tendency to pair object-mass nouns in the experimentalstimuli with prescriptively count-compatible frames. Object-mass items refer to collectionsof individuals and, because of this characteristic, may have been interpreted more readilyas being compatible with count syntax (Barner and Snedeker 2005). The very existence ofobject-mass nouns in the English lexicon can itself be attributed to the more flexible cognitiveschema for mass syntax.

The degree of variation in frame pairing was different in the two construction types tested,with more variation with the non-equative construction (whose frames include the quantifi-ers less and fewer) than with the equative construction (whose frames include the quantifiersmuch and many). The use of less with count nouns has been noted (Quirk et al. 1985) and,as was shown, is observable in contemporary written English, but has not previously beenempirically established. The participants in Experiment 2 had a heightened tendency to paircount nouns with less; however, the participants in Experiment 1 (whose average age wasyounger than those in Experiment 2) overgeneralized both less and fewer comparative frames.For older participants there thus appears to be a usage norm for less that allows pairing lesswith count nouns, but, possibly, speakers only converge on the norm gradually. Pressuretoward a norm that replaces the contrast between less and fewer with the single form lessmay come from analogy with comparative constructions involving more, for which there isno mass-count frame distinction (e.g., mass: more dust, count: more lemons), as well as otherparadigmatic contrasts involving more and less, such as periphrastic adjective comparatives(e.g., more important, less important). In any event, it is important to note that despite a higher

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error rate for the non-equative construction relative to the equative construction, the patternof errors across individual nouns was the same for both constructions in all age groups. Thisresult implies that knowledge of noun class compatibility for a frame variant and knowledgeof a noun’s class are independent and must be learned separately.

Preference patterns also differed in other ways as a function of language experience, asindexed by age. Frame preferences were more consistent and somewhat more prescriptivein the older age groups of both experiments, although even the oldest group, the older adultsin Experiment 2, exhibited a good deal of variation in frame choice, especially on countnouns, suggesting that even older speakers exhibit probabilistic behavior in their implemen-tation of the count-mass distinction, as in other types of language variation (e.g., the use ofEnglish definite article variants; Raymond et al. 2009). There was no evidence that youngerspeakers start by using the more flexible mass-compatible frames as a default frame type,but rather that the frame preferences of younger speakers largely show the same pattern asthose of older speakers, even on individual nouns. Thus, younger speakers’ knowledge of anoun’s class appears generally to be more uncertain than that of older speakers, leading toovergeneralization of both count- and mass-compatible frame variants. The older speakers’more prescriptive behavior was most evident among the abstract count words, suggestingthat increased language experience results in a smaller reliance on the lexical semantics ofperceptual experience in making frame choices.

In summary, with the caveats discussed earlier concerning possible educational and moti-vational differences between the age groups, the observed preference patterns tentativelysuggest that, with age, there is an increased certainty of the noun class of all nouns and areduced reliance on lexical semantics in making frame choices. There is also evidence for anincreased certainty with age of the noun class compatibility for frame variants, and, possibly,a convergence on the observed English usage pattern that licenses pairing less variants withcount nouns.

Acknowledgments This work was supported by Army Research Office Grant W911NF-05-1-0153 to theUniversity of Colorado. We thank Wendy Schweigert for helpful comments concerning this research.

Appendix

Following is the set of stimulus sentences used in Experiments1 and 2 with the target wordunderlined. The sentences are listed in the order in which they were presented in both con-struction conditions. To the right of the sentences is the category assumed to be correct foreach word, based on pluralizability for the intended word sense.

Context sentence Correct stimulus category1. The spinach is delicious. MASS2. His disposition is peaceful. COUNT3. The hour is long. COUNT4. The boredom is increasing. MASS5. Her furniture is outrageous. MASS6. His apple is green. COUNT7. The lemon is sour. COUNT8. His obedience is admirable. MASS9. Her brain is destroyed. COUNT10. Your attitude is disgusting. COUNT11. Your gratitude is touching. MASS

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Context sentence Correct stimulus category12. His toast is burnt. MASS13. The advice is timely. MASS14. Your house is immaculate. COUNT15. Your clothing is worn. MASS16. Her advantage is diminishing. COUNT17. Your macaroni is stale. MASS18. The car is totaled. COUNT19. Her health is improving. MASS20. Her mind is sharp. COUNT21. The idea is great. COUNT22. The anger is genuine. MASS23. The elephant is hungry. COUNT24. The flesh is weak. MASS25. The coin is counterfeit. COUNT26. The moment is close. COUNT27. Her dress is ruined. COUNT28. His blood is cold. MASS29. The method is foolproof. COUNT30. Her money is plentiful. MASS31. His ignorance is excusable. MASS32. The cooperation is appreciated. MASS33. The window is stuck. COUNT34. His lip is split. COUNT35. The fun is ending. MASS36. Your happiness is contagious. MASS37. The butter is melting. MASS38. The gold is pure. MASS39. The situation is precarious. COUNT40. Your opinion is valuable. COUNT41. His blessing is welcome. COUNT42. The evidence is overwhelming. MASS43. The dust is settling. MASS44. Her safety is paramount. MASS45. The mood is changing. COUNT46. Your yacht is immense. COUNT47. The steam is stifling. MASS48. The rock is falling. COUNT

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