The Conceptualization of Grammatical Number

The current study investigated the nature of the mental representation of grammatical number. We used methodology from Stanfield and Zwaan (2001) in an attempt to distinguish amodal from perceptual systems. Participants read a sentence that ended with either a singular or plural noun. After reading the sentence, they viewed a picture that matched or mismatched the number of the sentence final-noun. They then judged whether the referent in the picture had been in the sentence. Participants were slower when matching a singular lexical stimulus (e.g. apple) to a plural graphic stimulus (See Figure 2) compared to the other three conditions. The results did not follow the pattern found by Stanfield & Zwaan (2001). The results are more consistent with logical entailment