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Barnera, D., Woodb, J., Hauser, M. D., and Carey, S. (2008) Evidence for a non-linguistic distinction between singular and plural sets in rhesus monkeys. Cognition, 107(2):603--622.
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Abstract

Set representations are explicitly expressed in natural language. For example, many languages distinguish between sets and subsets (all vs. some), as well as between singular and plural sets (a cat vs. some cats). Three experiments explored the hypothesis that these representations are language specific, and thus absent from the conceptual resources of non-linguistic animals. We found that rhesus monkeys spontaneously discriminate sets based on a conceptual singular-plural distinction. Under conditions that do not elicit comparisons based on approximate magnitudes or one-to-one correspondance, rhesus monkeys distinguished between singular and plural sets (1 vs. 2 and 1 vs. 5), but not between two plural sets (2 vs. 3, 2 vs. 4, and 2 vs. 5). These results suggest that set-relational distinctions are not a privileged part of natural language, and may have evolved in a non-linguistic species to support domain general quantitative computations.

Keywords: Sets; Singular/plural; Language; Evolution of language; Number; Parallel individuation

BibTex
@article{barner08monkeyCOGNITION,
  author={David Barnera and Justin Woodb and Marc D. Hauser and Susan Carey},
  title={Evidence for a non-linguistic distinction between singular and plural sets in rhesus monkeys},
  journal={Cognition},
  year={2008},
  volume={107},
  number={2},
  pages={603-622},
  doi={10.1016/j.cognition.2007.11.010},
  url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/barner08monkeyCOGNITION.html},
  keywords={Sets; Singular/plural; Language; Evolution of language; Number; Parallel individuation}
}

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