The Emergence of Natural Language Quantification

Classical quantifiers (like "all," "some," and "none") express relationships between two sets, allowing us to make generalizations (like "no elephants fly"). Devices like these appear to be universal in human languages. Is the ubiquity of quantification due to a universal property of the human mind or is it attributable to more gradual convergence through cultural evolution? We investigated whether classical quantifiers are present in a new language emerging in isolation from other languages, Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL). An observational study of historical data collected in the 1990s found evidence of potential quantifier forms. To confirm the quantificational meaning of these signs, we designed a production study that elicited, from three age cohorts of NSL signers (N = 17), three types of quantifiers: universal (all), existential (some), and negative (none). We find evidence for these classical quantifiers in the very first generation of signers, suggesting they may reflect a universal property of human cognition or a very rapid construction process.