Vague quantifiers, such as few<\/em>, some<\/em>, most<\/em>, are words that refer to an underspecified amount of things. They do not directly map onto an exact numeric system, but are rather argued to map onto a separate, approximate numeric system (Coventry et al., 2010). The mapping can be influenced by a number of different factors, such as linguistic frequency of the expression (Newstead & Collis, 1987), the spatial arrangement of the objects in relation to background objects (Coventry et al., 2010; Newstead & Coventry, 2000), and the number of objects vs. the number of background objects (Coventry et al., 2005).<\/p>\n In this paper, we report results from an experiment with two Estonian quantifiers: paar<\/em> \u2019a couple\u2019 and m\u00f5ned<\/em> \u2019some\u2019. Both of these quantifiers are used to express a small, countable amount of something, as in Poisil on paar \u00f5una<\/em> \u2019The boy has a couple of apples\u2019 or Poisil on m\u00f5ned \u00f5unad<\/em> \u2019The boy has some apples\u2019. Paar<\/em> has a strong connotation of mapping onto two objects, and similarly to English pair<\/em> and German Paar<\/em>, the Estonian paar<\/em> also refers to entities that are composed of two parts (e.g. paar k\u00e4\u00e4re<\/em> \u2018a pair of scissors\u2019). Furthermore, Pezzelle et al. (2018) have found that there seems to be a larger perceived difference between the categories of small-amount quantifiers than large-amount quantifiers, i.e. there is a larger difference between few<\/em> and some<\/em> than between many<\/em> and a lot<\/em>. Considering the latter and the etymology of paar<\/em>, m\u00f5ned \u00f5unad<\/em> and paar \u00f5una<\/em> should refer to a different amount of apples. Nevertheless, paar<\/em> and m\u00f5ned<\/em> can also be used seemingly interchangeably, as in \u00f5ues on paar kraadi sooja<\/em> \u2018there are a couple of plus degrees outside\u2019 vs. \u00f5ues on m\u00f5ned kraadid sooja<\/em> \u2018there are some plus degrees outside\u2019. This raises the questions of which parts of the numeric scale paar<\/em> and m\u00f5ned<\/em> actually occupy, and under which conditions.<\/p>\n We use a picture choice paradigm to investigate the scope of paar<\/em> and m\u00f5ned<\/em>. Participants see a sentence such as Poisil on paar \u00f5una<\/em> \u2018The boy has a couple of apples\u2019 and they have to choose a picture that best matches the sentence. On each picture, there is a different number of target objects. We explore two conditions in the experiment: one with only target objects, and one with the addition of non-target background objects. From the two stimulus pictures simultaneously shown to the participant, we expect to see paar<\/em> consistently matched with the picture that depicts fewer objects (even if the number of objects is greater than two) and m\u00f5ned<\/em> to be matched with the picture that depicts the larger number of objects.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n References<\/p>\n Coventry, K. R., Cangelosi, A., Newstead, S. E., Bacon, A., & Rajapakse, R. (2005). Grounding natural language quantifiers in visual attention. In B. G. Bara, L. W. Barsalou, & M. Bucciarelli (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society<\/em> (pp. 506\u2013511).<\/p>\n Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Coventry, K. R., Cangelosi, A., Newstead, S. E., & Bugmann, D. (2010). Talking about quantities in space: Vague quantifiers, context and similarity. Language and Cognition<\/em>, 2(2), 221\u2013241. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1515\/langcog.2010.009<\/a><\/p>\n Newstead, S. E., & Collis, J. M. (1987). Context and the interpretation of quantifiers of frequency. Ergonomics<\/em>, 30(10), 1447\u20131462. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/00140138708966038<\/a><\/p>\n Newstead, S. E., & Coventry, K. R. (2000). The role of context and functionality in the interpretation of quantifiers. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology<\/em>, 12(2), 243\u2013259. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/095414400382145<\/a><\/p>\n Pezzelle, S., Bernardi, R., & Piazza, M. (2018). Probing the mental representation of quantifiers. Cognition<\/em>, 181, 117\u2013126. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.cognition.2018.08.009<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mariann Proos, University of Tartu Maria Reile, University of Tartu Vague quantifiers, such as few, some, most, are words that refer to an underspecified amount of things. They do not directly map onto an exact numeric system, but are rather argued to map onto a separate, approximate numeric system (Coventry et al., 2010). The mapping … <\/p>\n