One leaf or four leaves?:
Distributive and collective meanings in Hebrew
Einat Shetreet1,2, Rama Novogrodsky3,4
1Department
of Linguistics, Tel Aviv University; 2Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University; 3Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Haifa; 4The
Center for the study of Communication and the Deaf, Boston University
[email protected];
Experiment 1: within-subject design
 Languages use different ways to convey distributive and collective meanings:
 In English there are different lexical items (each and all, respectively).
 In Hebrew, the distinction is represented morpho-syntactically, using a single
quantifier (Kol)
Distributive: KOL Nsingular
Collective: KOL det-Nplural
 English-speaking preschoolers recognize the difference between the two lexical items,
but they have difficulties in associating obligatory distributivity to the distributive
lexical item (each, e.g., Brooks & Braine, 1996; Syrett, 2015).
 The present study examines whether the developmental path would be similar or
different in a morphosyntactic language where meaning acquisition is independent
from vocabulary acquisition.
Adult responses:
Adults
Task
Participants were asked to draw items to pictures based on different instruction forms:
(a) A distributive form:
Tsyer ale le-kol gamad
[Hebrew]
(b) A collective form:
Tsyer ale le-kol ha-gamadim
[Hebrew]
(c) A no-quantifier form:
Tsyer ale la-gamadim
[Hebrew]
Draw a-leaf for-the-gnomes.
Distributive form
(a)
92%
Collective form
(b)
83%
No quantifier form
(c)
88%
94%
40%
58%
Experiment 2: between-subject design
Methods
Draw a-leaf for-all the-gnomes.
Collective drawings for (b) & (c)
Correct responses (based on most adults’ performance)
Preschoolers
Draw a-leaf for-each gnome.
Distributive drawings for (a)
Participants
Experiment 1: 15 native Hebrew-speaking preschoolers (4-6yrs, M= 5;7) and 15 adults
(18-37yrs, M=26).
Experiment 2: 45 native Hebrew-speaking preschoolers (4-6yrs, M= 5;1)
Preschoolers
Distributive form
(a)
87%
Collective form
(b)
68%
No quantifier form
(c)
86%
Conclusion
 Hebrew speaking children prefer one-to-one (distributive) mapping between objects.
 This distributivity preference interacted with the experimental context and the linguistic
material:
One-to-one mapping was more prominent when the distributive form was present
(Experiment 1).
One-to-one mapping was NOT evident across the board, as there were few
distributive drawings when no quantifier was introduced in the experiment (no
quantifier condition, Experiment 2).
 Children speaking lexical languages (i.e., English) also, sometimes, show distributivity
preference (e.g., in ambiguous sentences such as “two boys are pushing a car”, Syrett
& Musolino, 2013).
**This work was funded by the Israeli Science Foundation Grant #1068/16 (to R.N.) and the Alon Fellowship (to E.S.)