Does Grammatical Structure Accelerate Number Word Learning? Evidence from Learners of Dual and Non-Dual Dialects of Slovenian
How does linguistic structure affect children’s acquisition of early number word meanings? Previous studies have tested this question by comparing how children learning languages with different grammatical representations of number learn the meanings of labels for small numbers, like 1, 2, and 3. For example, children who acquire a language with singular-plural marking, like English, are faster to learn the word for 1 than children learning a language that lacks the singular-plural distinction, perhaps because the word for 1 is always used in singular contexts, highlighting its meaning. These studies are problematic, however, because reported differences in number word learning may be due to unmeasured cross-cultural differences rather than specific linguistic differences. To address this problem, we investigated number word learning in four groups of children from a single culture who spoke different dialects of the same language that differed chiefly with respect to how they grammatically mark number. We found that learning a dialect which features “dual” morphology (marking of pairs) accelerated children’s acquisition of the number word two relative to learning a “non-dual” dialect of the same language.
2016
2016-08-09 16:07:16
1033
števila, številke, slovnično število, dvojina, narečja, usvajanje, učenje, slovenščina, angleščina, numbers, grammatical number, dual, dialects, acquisition, learning, Slovenian, English
r6
Franc
Marušič
260
Franc
Marušič
70
Rok
Žaucer
70
Vesna
Plesničar
70
Tina
Razboršek
70
Jessica
Sullivan
70
David
Barner
70
COBISS_ID
3
4474107
DOI
15
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0159208
NUK URN
18
URN:SI:UNG:REP:GZLWMR3U
journal.pone.0159208.PDF
1446654
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